Cold-war era IBM Selectric Keyloggers

trankzen

14 Oct 2015, 10:20

I thought I'd share with you this fascinating and kind of on-topic article ran by Arstechnica, about keyloggers installed by russian spies in US embassy-based typewriters during the cold war.

http://arstechnica.com/security/2015/10 ... diplomats/

From the article:
The electromechanical implants were nothing short of an engineering marvel. The highly miniaturized series of circuits were stuffed into a metal bar that ran the length of the typewriter, making them invisible to the naked eye. The implant, which could only be seen using X-ray equipment, recorded the precise location of the little ball Selectric typewriters used to imprint a character on paper. With the exception of spaces, tabs, hyphens, and backspaces, the tiny devices had the ability to record every key press and transmit it back to Soviet spies in real time.
The hack went undetected for years. James Bond's Q got nothing on this.

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seebart
Offtopicthority Instigator

14 Oct 2015, 11:42

Nice find, thanks for sharing. The stuff both sides came up with to spy on each other... :o

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richfiles

18 Oct 2015, 22:06

Wow! The Russians enabled wireless "bluetooth" in Selectrics ages ago! :lol:

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hoichi

18 Oct 2015, 22:14

Is Modern Selectric immune to this kind of exploit? :D

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