Firmware updates in Gnome

Sitting at my computer the other day, I was surprised to see this update notification in Gnome. surprised because it didn't look like any update notification I had seen before. A quick check with apt-get upgrade confirmed there were no system updates pending.

Here are the details:

The text reads, for anybody Googling:

Device Firmware Unifying Receiver (RQR12)
Device Update RQR12.01_B0019 > RQR12.10_B0032
...This release addresses an encrypted keystroke injection.

I vaguely remembered reading something about how a Gnome upgrade was going to allow Gnome to update firmware for connected hardware, and indeed this is the explanation for the notification I saw: the USB dongle for my mouse (and other Logitech hardware) needed a firmware update, or a hacker sitting under my table might have been able to interfere with my button presses with my wireless mouse.

This was confirmed by the excellent arch Linux wiki:

A quick check with Synaptic (running in non-admin mode, of course, because Buster uses Wayland), revealed that the fwupd daemon was indeed installed.

So there you go: Gnome now offers updates to firmware for connected hardware.

If you are the one person running Gnome who comes across a similar notification, is curious, Googles it and arrives here, I hope you find this post helpful.