[GreenKeys] Soviet Selectric typewriter bug/keylogger......

[Dave Horsfall]

Somewhat RTTY related (well, a keyboard was involved)...

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Date: Sat, 20 Feb 2021 03:01:44 +0000

Hi all,

I vaguely remember someone(amdrewm?) on this list posting about Operation Gunman some time ago.

Gunman was the US operation to remove and replace typewrites and similar equipment(11 tons worth) from US embassies after the French had alerted them to a Soviet-made implant in a teleprinter.  The implant picked up the movements of the "golf-ball" in the typewriter, transmitted them and the typewriter output was then reconstructed.

Anyways - this page from the Crypto Museum has piccies of one of the implants that had been hidden inside a support bar inside the typewriter(apparently 5 different versions were found) and a rundown on how it worked:

https://www.cryptomuseum.com/covert/bugs/selectric/index.htm
Selectric bug - Cryptomuseum<https://www.cryptomuseum.com/covert/bugs/selectric/index.htm>
The Selectric Bug can be seen as one of the world's first keystroke loggers.It was the first known attack by the Soviets on a plaintext device instead of a cipher machine.Modern variants of such loggers exist as software (in the same way as a computer virus) and hardware, in the latter case commonly implemented as a small device that is installed between a computer and the keyboard.
www.cryptomuseum.com
Cheers!

-- Dave VK2KFU