Is it possible for a wireless mouse to be malicious?

Question

Is it possible for a wireless mouse to be malicious? (Or, said better, how likely is it that a wireless mouse is malicious?)

I bought online a cheap wireless mouse (which works well btw), however, when I connected it to my laptop (not sure if right away or a little bit later, however certainly after I connected it), my antivirus started to alert that Google Chrome wants to access my camera (and that, as far as I know, for no reason…I wasn't browsing anything related to being recorded or something like that. I would simply open Chrome and in a little bit, my antivirus would alert! The only thing (as far as I remember) I did differently was logging into my bank account around that time (however I'm not sure if i that was before or after connecting the mouse) and I suspected that that Chrome behavior was somehow related to this and my mouse has nothing to do with it).

I did scan my laptop twice and nothing suspicious was found, but..!

Any Idea?!

ps. I am not a developer and I don't really know if I am exaggerating it too much (I know that it takes a lot of effort and money for certain attacks), however I try to be careful as I understand a lot of things with regard to security, and I do know that by physically plugging in something, everything can happen including bypassing or tweaking the antivirus itself!

Answer 1

Any USB device can potentially be malicious. It doesn't matter in what shape it comes.

In this case though it doesn't sound like the mouse would be at fault. For Chrome to request webcam access, some website must request webcam access. Theoretically a malicious USB device could try to open a malicious website that uses webcams for something, but then you'd notice a tab opening in Chrome all by itself, which you didn't. So it doesn't sound like the mouse did something suspicious. One of the legitimately opened tabs must have done it.