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Cold-war era IBM Selectric Keyloggers

Posted: 14 Oct 2015, 10:20
by trankzen
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.

Posted: 14 Oct 2015, 11:42
by seebart
Nice find, thanks for sharing. The stuff both sides came up with to spy on each other... :o

Posted: 18 Oct 2015, 22:06
by richfiles
Wow! The Russians enabled wireless "bluetooth" in Selectrics ages ago! :lol:

Posted: 18 Oct 2015, 22:14
by hoichi
Is Modern Selectric immune to this kind of exploit? :D