14 ms·

Operation Gunman – how the Soviets bugged IBM typewriters (2015)

229 points by dictum 9y ago

justherefortart 9y ago
Fantastic technology for the 1970s. Well done Soviets! One of the best programmers I've ever worked with is a guy that got his Master's under the USSR before the collapse. Great guy (H1b).
- utellme 9y ago
  Let's make Soviets great again!
- xenadu02 9y ago
  I would assume the NSA/CIA had even more sophisticated tech; maybe the soviets did too. We only find out about the ones that got discovered or leaked.
chuckdries 9y ago
> At the embassy, all equipment had to be carried up to the attic by hand, as the Russians had shut down the elevator after the first day of the arrival of the equipment, for 'preventive maintenance'. I'm really curious about the elevator part. Did the US lease the space from the soviets or something? I would have assumed we owned the building.
- homero 9y ago
  I assume they had a building inspector paid off to do it
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
themodelplumber 9y ago
> The bug was fairly large and consisted of state-of-the-art integrated circuits and single-bit core memory. It was completely hidden inside a hollow support bracket at the bottom of the keyboard mechanism, and was invisible to the naked eye, but also to the detection equipment of the era. Only an X-ray scan could reveal the presence of the device, which is shown in the image below. It contains special components to hide its presence even from non-linear junction detectors (NLJD). Holy cow. I wouldn't have thought this was possible in the mid-1970s. Also the article says that the NSA didn't trust the CIA or State Department to handle the investigation properly, which was very interesting to read. Had the NSA already been established as a "we do tech better" agency?
- hwillis 9y ago
  As an electrical engineer (but a new one, so take this with a grain of salt) it really is kind of staggering. This probably could only have worked with the selectric- they're quite special and if you haven't seen one in slow motion it's a thing of beauty[1]. The bug only had to measure magnetic disturbances in a few dimensions to recover text, and because it can measure the amount of time it takes to locate a new letter the field measuring error is much more acceptable. You wouldn't be able to do that with a more classic typewriter. The level of sophistication here reminds me of current research[2] using software-defined radios. I'd LOVE to see a diagram of this thing. Old circuits were elegant by necessity, and something this sophisticated has to be a work of art. > It contains special components to hide its presence even from non-linear junction detectors (NLJD) That's really amazing. NLJDs work by blasting broadband noise at a circuit- any internal wire trace gets turned into an antenna, and if it's attached to a transistor or diode it'll re-radiate at multiples of the frequency. Typically you can even find just chunks of metal touching a semiconductor with those... the fact that they evaded detection is very impressive. [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=izZ02t2UEGc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=izZ02t2UEGc [2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VZ7Nz942yAY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VZ7Nz942yAY
  - shriphani 9y ago
    Did these need qwerty keyboards? The mechanism seems to not need the qwerty arrangement - might have been a legacy thing?
    - hwillis 9y ago
      As in, were they fast enough to be used with other layouts? Yeah, but this was back when letters were dictated- secretaries didn't go switching to dvorak. Any typewriter could technically use any layout, since you'd just have to swap out the characters. The biggest advantage of the selectric was that you could swap out the ball to get different characters or fonts. The ability to get italics was a pretty big deal. Here's Bill Hammond talking about them: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bRCNenhcvpw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bRCNenhcvpw
- 9y ago
dang 9y ago
Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10773214 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10773214
warwickchapman 9y ago
One must wonder what Russia might have become if it had combined its engineering prowess with an economic system that encouraged and supported innovation.
- dfox 9y ago
  To some extent the engineering prowess comes from experience gained from trying to sidestep the effects of the Soviet economic and political system (which in fact encouraged and supported inovation, but only as long as such innovation didn't disrupt the system itself).
- utellme 9y ago
  Actually they really supported innovations, maybe not the way like it supposed to be when you pursuing to receive economican benefit from R&D, but it's because political interests occupied first, second and third places, economy questions was on fourth place in good days. There were no arms conversion, so economy didn't take any benefit from beautiful minds behind the scenes.
leoc 9y ago
See also the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser_microphone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser_microphone , invented by Léon "Theremin" Theremin for Soviet espionage.
gumby 9y ago
What lovely engineering! A shame it was wasted on this spy-vs-spy stuff.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

229 points by dictum 9y ago

Fantastic technology for the 1970s. Well done Soviets! One of the best programmers I've ever worked with is a guy that got his Master's under the USSR before the collapse. Great guy (H1b).

utellme 9y ago
Let's make Soviets great again!
xenadu02 9y ago
I would assume the NSA/CIA had even more sophisticated tech; maybe the soviets did too. We only find out about the ones that got discovered or leaked.

chuckdries 9y ago

> At the embassy, all equipment had to be carried up to the attic by hand, as the Russians had shut down the elevator after the first day of the arrival of the equipment, for 'preventive maintenance'. I'm really curious about the elevator part. Did the US lease the space from the soviets or something? I would have assumed we owned the building.

homero 9y ago
I assume they had a building inspector paid off to do it
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

themodelplumber 9y ago

> The bug was fairly large and consisted of state-of-the-art integrated circuits and single-bit core memory. It was completely hidden inside a hollow support bracket at the bottom of the keyboard mechanism, and was invisible to the naked eye, but also to the detection equipment of the era. Only an X-ray scan could reveal the presence of the device, which is shown in the image below. It contains special components to hide its presence even from non-linear junction detectors (NLJD). Holy cow. I wouldn't have thought this was possible in the mid-1970s. Also the article says that the NSA didn't trust the CIA or State Department to handle the investigation properly, which was very interesting to read. Had the NSA already been established as a "we do tech better" agency?

hwillis 9y ago
As an electrical engineer (but a new one, so take this with a grain of salt) it really is kind of staggering. This probably could only have worked with the selectric- they're quite special and if you haven't seen one in slow motion it's a thing of beauty[1]. The bug only had to measure magnetic disturbances in a few dimensions to recover text, and because it can measure the amount of time it takes to locate a new letter the field measuring error is much more acceptable. You wouldn't be able to do that with a more classic typewriter. The level of sophistication here reminds me of current research[2] using software-defined radios. I'd LOVE to see a diagram of this thing. Old circuits were elegant by necessity, and something this sophisticated has to be a work of art. > It contains special components to hide its presence even from non-linear junction detectors (NLJD) That's really amazing. NLJDs work by blasting broadband noise at a circuit- any internal wire trace gets turned into an antenna, and if it's attached to a transistor or diode it'll re-radiate at multiples of the frequency. Typically you can even find just chunks of metal touching a semiconductor with those... the fact that they evaded detection is very impressive. [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=izZ02t2UEGc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=izZ02t2UEGc [2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VZ7Nz942yAY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VZ7Nz942yAY
- shriphani 9y ago
  Did these need qwerty keyboards? The mechanism seems to not need the qwerty arrangement - might have been a legacy thing?
  - hwillis 9y ago
    As in, were they fast enough to be used with other layouts? Yeah, but this was back when letters were dictated- secretaries didn't go switching to dvorak. Any typewriter could technically use any layout, since you'd just have to swap out the characters. The biggest advantage of the selectric was that you could swap out the ball to get different characters or fonts. The ability to get italics was a pretty big deal. Here's Bill Hammond talking about them: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bRCNenhcvpw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bRCNenhcvpw
9y ago

dang 9y ago

Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10773214 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10773214

warwickchapman 9y ago

One must wonder what Russia might have become if it had combined its engineering prowess with an economic system that encouraged and supported innovation.

dfox 9y ago
To some extent the engineering prowess comes from experience gained from trying to sidestep the effects of the Soviet economic and political system (which in fact encouraged and supported inovation, but only as long as such innovation didn't disrupt the system itself).
utellme 9y ago
Actually they really supported innovations, maybe not the way like it supposed to be when you pursuing to receive economican benefit from R&D, but it's because political interests occupied first, second and third places, economy questions was on fourth place in good days. There were no arms conversion, so economy didn't take any benefit from beautiful minds behind the scenes.

leoc 9y ago

See also the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser_microphone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser_microphone , invented by Léon "Theremin" Theremin for Soviet espionage.

gumby 9y ago

What lovely engineering! A shame it was wasted on this spy-vs-spy stuff.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]