Three Cybersecurity Lessons from a 1970’s KGB Key Logger
In the 1970s, Russians were building keyloggers into typewriters
A keylogger is a piece of software or hardware that records what you type, presumably so some bad guy can steal your secret data. You might think the earliest one used a PS/2 connector or installed on an old-fashioned IBM PC. An older computer, maybe? It turns out, what may very well be the first keylogger was built by the Soviet Union and used on IBM Selectric typewriters in the U.S. Embassy way back in the 1970s. What the NSA learned back then can still apply to cybersecurity today.
If you are under a certain age, it is hard to realize just how ubiquitous the IBM Selectric was in the office world before computers. The heavy-duty typewriter didn’t use type bars like an ordinary typewriter. It used a “golf ball” that had the font on it. The machine would spin and pitch the ball before striking it on the paper. You could replace the ball to change fonts.
The Selectric was a mechanical typewriter. But it also was a kind of digital device, too. How could you hack a typewriter into sending everything typed covertly? Oh. And do it with 1970’s technology, please.
