🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1993Jan25.182906.9035@netcom.com> strnlght@netcom.com (David Sternlight) writes:
>In article <fraserdt.727978978@unixg.ubc.ca> fraserdt@unixg.ubc.ca (David T.S. Fraser) writes:
>>In <1993Jan25.154016.10434@cas.org> jac54@cas.org () writes:
>>
>>>In article <1993Jan23.181520.18783@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu> jebright@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu (James R Ebright) writes:
>>>>
>>>>Both books are great reads!  (Ever wonder why regular typewriters are
>>>>not used to type crypto messages...Read SPYCATCHER for that and much more.)
>>
>>>     That's regular ELECTRIC typewriters, regular manual typewriters
>>>     are very popular with the security-conscious.
>>
>>Same goes for PCs, too.
>
>I understand from my current reading, including a recent and excellent book
>on the CIA, apparently published with CIA cooperation to help with their
>more "open" image, and filled with revelations not previously seen, that

	That would be "Inside the CIA" by Ronald Kessler.

>manual typewriters are no more secure than electric. One simply uses
>different techniques for eavesdropping. In the case of "golf-ball"
>electrics, the motor is on for different lengths of time depending on the
>characters typed. In the case of manual ones, the sound is different
>depending on the key being struck.

	It all goes back to the old problem: a system is only as secure
	as the people who operate it.  Anybody paranoid enough not to
	use an electric typewriter, but not careful enough to consider
	attacks on the manual typewriter isn't really thinking about
	what they're doing and whether or not their information is
	valuable enough to an opponent to make them try that sort of thing.

>The book (sorry I haven't a pointer--I returned it to the library) has a
>particularly fascinating account of how the Soviets installed eavesdropping
>transmitters in the vertical support bar of U.S. typewriters in such a way
>that the workmanship was completely undetectable visually and the bugs had
>the same X-ray density as the support bar and thus didn't show up via
>X-ray. It took newer scanning techniques to spot the anomalies in the
>support bars and lead to the detection of the hidden bugs.

	And to think that they can't produce a TV set that doesn't
	explode.

	Alec Chambers