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Show HN: Bluetooth USB Peripheral Relay – Bridge Bluetooth Devices to USB

(github.com)
233 points bahaaador | 1 comments | 13 Nov 24 13:24 UTC | HN request time: 0.214s | source

Hi HN! I built Bluetooth USB Peripheral Relay, a tool that lets Bluetooth devices (like keyboards and mice) connect to USB-only hosts using a Raspberry Pi Zero W.

Why? My friend needed a way to use his Bluetooth mouse and keyboard on a PC with Bluetooth disabled due to policy restrictions. This tool acts as a bridge, relaying Bluetooth input over USB. It also lets you use Bluetooth peripherals with older devices that only support USB input.

Tech: Written in Go, optimized for Raspberry Pi Zero W.

I love HN’s community and often lurk here—I’m hoping this project is useful or at least sparks some interesting discussions. Feedback and contributions are welcome!

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ChrisMarshallNY ◴[13 Nov 24 15:12 UTC] No.42126707[source]▶
> This project was born out of a desire to help a friend who couldn't use his favorite Bluetooth mouse and keyboard due to Bluetooth being disabled on his work laptop.

Protip: If their company's IT section is like the one at my old company, they are quite unlikely to like this solution, either.

But it's very clever. Kudos.

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bahaaador ◴[13 Nov 24 15:24 UTC] No.42126815[source]▶
Thank you for sharing your thoughts, I had thought about this as well but came to the conclusion that from the company's perspective, this is no different than connecting a random keyboard bought from Amazon, what do you think?

Another thought around this is that I don't even think there's anything intrinsically insecure about BT as an attack vector but most likely some old policy based on security issues that existed in the early days of Bluetooth. Or at least I don't know of any, but I'm no expert in this so I would love to hear other people's insights here.

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ChrisMarshallNY ◴[13 Nov 24 15:29 UTC] No.42126869[source]▶
In my experience, the IT section didn't trust anything they didn't approve, themselves. They certainly wouldn't allow us to buy any random device from Amazon.

It sucked. Big time, but they had the clout.

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1. mmsc ◴[13 Nov 24 16:11 UTC] No.42127281[source]▶
The irony of it is that these types love to then support software and hardware that is full of vulnerabilities. "Oh, our management software/SSL-VPN has just been pwned for the sixth time in two years? Well at least the vendor has a fix and the security team can deal with the problem!" or "well our infrastructure is so poorly managed that a single Bluetooth device could, in fact, take over the whole company!"