Reusing peripherals from an infected machine on a clean one

Question

I just built a new PC and I was wondering if I could use my old keyboard and mouse from my old infected machine on a new one.

I have a Razer Blackwidow V2 keyboard and a Razer Mamba TE mouse and I was wondering if using these from my old machine which had malware on it would pose any threat to my new machine.

Answer 1

It should be safe to use a keyboard and mouse that was previously used on a machine running malicious code.

This answer to a similar question on the Security SE site notes that some keyboards contain upgradeable firmware which could pose a threat:

...some keyboards have upgradable firmwares, so some malware on a machine could send a malicious upgrade to the keyboard, contaminating it permanently.

However the answer states (and I would still agree here in 2018) that the liklihood of this is low.

The same risk would apply to a mouse, though even fewer mice support firmware flashing than keyboards.

Anecdotally I've used the same five keyboards/mice to repair hundreds of computers over the years, including ones with nasty malware infections and I've never had any reason to suspect I was working with code that was capable of transmitting via those peripherals.