How the KGB Bugged American Typewriters During the Cold War
The device was an early example of keylogging technology.
By Kyle Mizokami
Jan 1, 2020
In the 1970s, U.S. intelligence believed the embassy in Moscow was leaking information.
Repeated searches for a secret t***smitter in the embassy turned up nothing.
Finally, engineers discovered a typewriter with a t***smitter hacked into it.
The Cold War spy drama that played out between the U.S. and the Soviet Union was the source of much ingenious spy technology. One of the most ingenious devices fielded by both sides was a typewriter designed to spy on the user, quietly t***smitting its keystrokes to KGB listeners. The technology was an early form of keylogging but done entirely through hardware—not PC software
Charles Gandy, an electrical engineer with the National Security Agency, was charged with figuring out if the U.S. embassy in Moscow had been c*********d. Counterintelligence had reason to believe that somehow, information was getting out that c*********d American intelligence agents. Officials suspected a t***smitter planted inside the agency, perhaps in the form of a listening device. Still, they had no concrete proof it existed, and sweeps of the embassy from top to bottom revealed no definitive t***smitter.
But there was almost certainly something—a secret antenna was discovered behind a false wall. What t***smitter was the antenna listening to? It had to be something inside the embassy.
The NSA eventually shipped all of the electronics located at the embassy back to the U.S. for study. They struck gold: parts inside an IBM Selectric typewriter had been cleverly duplicated but r****d to t***smit the typist’s keystrokes. The typewriter still worked, but it also quietly broadcast the keystrokes, using Soviet over-the-air TV signals as a form of electronic camouf**ge. It was in effect a non-digital form of the keylogging malware that hackers install on PCs.
Rather than feel anger, Gandy reportedly felt a “kinship” with the Soviet engineers that had constructed the eavesdropping equipment. The equipment was so brilliantly designed and well hidden it commanded respect from those that discovered it. In the battle of wits between spies from both sides, a bugged IBM Selectric typewriter was just one of many salvos until the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991.
Source: IEEE Spectrum
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