I built an encrypted BLE dongle for pasting stuff to air-gapped devices
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Definitely one of those "20 minute adventure gone wrong" projects where all I wanted initially was a quick wireless rubber ducky for bitlocker keys and the like and then I kept adding stuff like AES-256.....Currently working on adding WebAuthn/FIDO support because the hardware is already there and scope creep is a lifestyle at this point.Would love feedback, especially on the security side. Repo and PCB files are fully open source.
HN · launched Jul 4, 2026 · 5 upvotes (top 89%) · 0 views
Niche: open-source hardware and maker electronics · 180 launches, 3 in the last 7 days ▼ -73% · Explore this niche →
Category and tags
- Security
- Hardware & robotics
- Prosumer
- Not AI
- Hobby / open-source project
Visit website ↗ Source listing ↗
More like this: all 180 launches in open-source hardware and maker electronics →
Could you build this?
No Creating custom physical BLE dongle hardware with encrypted air-gapped keystroke injection (BadUSB/HID) and WebAuthn/FIDO firmware demands custom PCB design, embedded C/Rust, and hardware cryptography.
What it would actually take: Building this device requires custom PCB design (KiCad), microcontroller selection (e.g., nRF52840 or ESP32-S3), and low-level firmware development in C or embedded Rust. The hard parts include USB HID stack emulation, Bluetooth Low Energy security pairing, AES-256-GCM hardware crypto integration, and implementing the FIDO2/WebAuthn CTAP2 protocol. This necessitates hardware engineering, embedded systems development, and hardware-level cryptographic expertise.
Discussion
6 comments analyzed.
Competitors mentioned: InputStick, ShareToInputStick (Android F-Droid app)
Concerns raised: AES key stored in browser IndexDB vulnerable to dumps, Password length leaked via keystroke-by-keystroke BLE packets, Missing replay attack protection, Lack of session-specific key negotiation, Insufficient documentation on security implementation
Feature requests: FIDO support, Argon2id password derivation instead of Argon2, Obfuscated packet sending with random padding, Per-session ECDH key negotiation, Commercial hardware assembly/sales option
Competitors
Other products that read as similar to this one : 430 launches clear the similarity bar, closest 8 shown.
Attention rank: #396 of 431 (itself plus its competitors, highest first, normalized so YC and Product Hunt are compared fairly).
Launched 248 days after the earliest competitor.
- 8cryptdo · github · 2026-09-26 · 11 upvotes · similarity 0.51
- diy-fido-key · github · 2026-10-22 · 23 upvotes · similarity 0.48
- withings-ble-protocol-study · github · 2026-10-25 · 11 upvotes · similarity 0.46
- Ellipticc Drive · hn · 2025-10-30 · 21 upvotes · similarity 0.46
- keeper-password-manager · github · 2026-11-10 · 102 upvotes · similarity 0.45
- Hnrepos.com, HackerTube for Repositories · hn · 2026-11-02 · 13 upvotes · similarity 0.45
- I created a BGP-based blackhole system that you can set up in minutes · hn · 2026-09-30 · 7 upvotes · similarity 0.45
- witness-vault · github · 2026-10-01 · 26 upvotes · similarity 0.45
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