Kremlin turns back to typewriters to avoid security leaks

A cloth ribbon would be hard to extract anything from, I'd think, maybe you could with a brand new one. Carbon film ribbons as used in the Selectric yes, you can easily read them but they can be shredded or burned to dispose of them securely.

trestles• 13 years ago

bradley manning used cd's and supposedly edward snowden has a bunch of usb drives. Solves a very reasonable problem

ams61102• 13 years ago

Computer displays can be read remotely by their RF emissions. At least it was possible with CRT displays. Not sure if LCD displays have this characteristic.

DanBC2• 13 years ago

There is immense amount of work on audio, possibly coming from the need to discover and identify submarines.

It is easier to tell what a typist is typing from their audio signature than it is to TEMPEST a monitor, especially now with modern EMC requirements cutting down the usable signal.

Some people used to have "low emission fonts"; fuzzy edges in very low contrast.

cenhyperion• 13 years ago

IIRC researches were able to remotely read a laptop display. However, it seems like it would be much easier to build a large faraday cage than it would be to switch to typewriters.

popee• 13 years ago

Imagine. Steampunk typewriter with something like Arduino for Ethernet/TCP/IP/SSH support :-)

DanBC2• 13 years ago

You can buy conversion kits for typewriters, to convert them to USB.

(http://www.usbtypewriter.com/)

gamegoblin• 13 years ago

I actually have fantasies about going back to the late 1800s and making a hyper-simple steampunk style internet with telegraph wires and whatnot. You'd have 'servers' which set up static pages in some analog format (akin to moveable type) which could then be easily coded and decoded across the wire and printed onto a ticker of some sort. You could have a set of panels that flipped to one side of the other (black or white) to form a rudimentary display, maybe 256x128 or something.

liveinoakland• 13 years ago

like BSG

Kremlin turns back to typewriters to avoid security leaks

Related Stories