Typewriters are back, and we have Edward Snowden to thank

http://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2014/11/12/typewriters-are-back-and-we-have-edward-snowden-to-thank/

by doctorshady • 12 years ago

65 55 12 years ago

eksith5• 12 years ago

The laughter was nearly deafening when this product was introduced http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/05/password-minder-the-b...

I wonder whether its time has finally come.

Edit: It's worth noting that each typewriter is unique and will leave a telltale signature subject to identification https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typewriter#Forensic_examinatio...

Of course, modern printers aren't immune to this and many models incorporate identifiers by the manufacturers to aid forensic investigation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Printer_steganography

adamnemecek• 12 years ago

Plus, the password minder features a discrete leatherette bound cover to ensure your passwords stay secret.

First time I'm hearing about "security through leatherette".

eksith5• 12 years ago

It will look like every other book... intended to hold private information so they'll never suspect anything! ;)

I once had the bright idea to put passwords written on a small piece of paper and place it inside a 3.5" floppy. If it's in a pack of other unlabeled disks, that's going to be a nice fishing trip.

ganzuul2• 12 years ago

This is the public key for my server's SSL certificate: http://nya.dy.fi/static/nginx.png

A camera phone could easily use this format to do impressive things.

joezydeco• 12 years ago

"Earlier this year, German politician Patrick Sensburg announced that Germany’s government officials might start using typewriters, as they are seen as being an “unhackable” technology."

Yeah, about that...

http://legalinsurrection.com/2014/07/using-old-school-typewr...

http://www.magicmargin.net/2012/12/silencing-chatty-selectri...

Unless they're going back to mechanical ones.

yzzxy2• 12 years ago

(Nonmechanical) computer keyboards, relatively quiet in the world of text input technology, have been found to be extremely vulnerable to acoustic attack:

http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~tygar/papers/Keyboard_Acoustic_E...

A mechanical or electric typewriter full of moving parts? Sounds like side channel city to me.

001sky2• 12 years ago

If your using a mechanical typewriter, your likely not in a public (and/or pre-deterined place). This forces an attacker into a cumbersome, intrusive, and maybe-evidence-left-behind espionage scenario (B&E). That in and of itself is quite useful.

rtpg• 12 years ago

Even for mechanical ones, isn't it possible to read off the ribbons to see what someone has typed? Granted, there are no spaces but we can still get the gist I imagine.

DrStalker2• 12 years ago

I'd assume that ribbons get securely disposed of, just like old documents/backup tapes/etc.

jonnathanson3• 12 years ago

Typewriters are subject to attack, but it's a much more laborious and non-scalable process. It requires social engineering, infiltration, or else planting bugs, intercepting shipments, etc. It can be done, and certainly was done, back in the age of typewriters. But it requires some old-fashioned, boots-on-the-ground fieldwork. It's a lot tougher to place bugs in embassies today than it was in the 1970s. And in some respects, it's logistically tougher than hacking into computers, which can be done from any location on Earth. (Which is not to say that computer hacking doesn't benefit from social engineering strategies, of course).

"Unhackable" is a poor choice of words -- more like "practically speaking, tougher to hack." This is a speed bump, not a roadblock.

Of course, if the US were to adopt this sort of strategy, we'd have to make sure we're manufacturing the typewriters domestically. Which probably means setting up a puppet company somewhere in the States, purely for the sake of making typewriters for government contracts. And then you'd have to make sure that company isn't socially engineered, infiltrated, or hacked. And so on, and so forth.

lukifer• 12 years ago

Typewriters are subject to attack, but it's a much more laborious and non-scalable process.

I definitely subscribe to the idea that security is not about making unauthorized access impossible (no such thing), but rather about making it prohibitively expensive (both in terms of resources and risk).

In that light, it should surprise no one that government agencies have always had the ability to spy on citizens when sufficiently motivated. What is truly concerning is that per-capita, it is becoming more and more affordable for agencies to spy on every single person everywhere, all the time.

dllthomas• 12 years ago

You might just need a sufficiently sensitive microphone on a computer in the next room.

swartkrans3• 12 years ago

Unless they're going back to mechanical ones.

I've been going back to cash instead of using credit cards because I've been exposed twice now via Target and Home Depot. I want to even avoid using ATMs and go into the bank to get cash because you can't really even tell when an ATM has a malicious card scanner installed.

Once we have automated cars maybe we'll go be back to walking and riding bikes to avoid being victimized by remote car jacking.

Imagine the mess hijacked delivery drones might cause.

Your phone can be cloned remotely. You can't easily clone a rotary phone that plugs into the wall.

I'm definitely not looking to automate my home, especially after reading how Chinese hacker had installed back doors on wall mounted AC devices or whatever which had access to the internal network at the New York Times building to keep infiltrating and reinfecting all the machines on the network.

Maybe we jumped into the digital world a little bit too quickly.

xur17• 12 years ago

Serious question - why do you very concerned if your credit card number is stolen? By law, credit cards have > 30 days (I forget the exact amount) of fraud protection as long as you report it. The only downside I can see is the pain of getting a new card. Your money really isn't at risk.

That said, I do agree that security is becoming a major issue in our world.

jMyles2• 12 years ago

These seems completely unfounded. Even without the research to which other commenters have linked, it just seems plainly obvious that typewriters are vulnerable to all sorts of attack.

Is open source software and reasonably security practice really that bad? I mean I know it's bad, but is it abandon-common-sense-and-just-grasp-at-straws bad?

DrStalker2• 12 years ago

If you're willing to use a typewriter you're willing to use a computer with no network connection, so all you need to do is block radio transmissions. A faraday cage can't cost that much compared to the other costs involved in espionage.

jMyles2• 12 years ago

block radio transmissions

To what attack are you referring here?

MarkPNeyer• 12 years ago

People can hop airgapped networks using speakers and microphones.

tuke• 12 years ago

Reminds me of how Neal Stephenson in The Diamond Age taught us that a culture might control the copying of information by utilizing mechanical type to print newspapers, where each printing shows the grain of the type and is hard to simulate.

bane• 12 years ago

Good, because the spy agencies of the world have an even deeper library of techniques to handle espionage off of typewriters than off of computers.

freshflowers• 12 years ago

It's disheartening how few people in this thread have actually read the article instead of reacting to the linkbait headline.

God forbid we shouldn't worship new technology as always better.

johnchristopher• 12 years ago

I've always liked that paragraph from W. Gibson's `Virtual Light`

The offices the girl rode between were electronically conterminous—in effect, a single desktop, the map of distances obliterated by the seamless and instantaneous nature of communication. Yet this very seamlessness, which had rendered physical mail an expensive novelty, might as easily be viewed as porosity, and as such created the need for the service the girl provided. Physically transporting bits of information about a grid that consisted of little else, she provided a degree of absolute security in the fluid universe of data. With your memo in the girl’s bag, you knew precisely where it was; otherwise, your memo was nowhere, perhaps everywhere, in that instant of transit.

tincholio• 12 years ago

Vinyl is one of the most notable technologies to have achieved a noticeable revival, not only for its retro value but also for its superior sound quality.

After this, I have trouble taking the rest of the article seriously...

firat• 12 years ago

I was under the impression that vinyl records sound better. Are you saying that they are not or that they haven't achieved a noticeable revival?

ganzuul2• 12 years ago

The loudness war is common knowledge.

WalterBright3• 12 years ago

If you like the sound of snap, crackle, and pop, vinyl does sound better.

DanBC2• 12 years ago

When you double-blind test you have people preferring better quality[1], which normally means carefully created MP3 is preferred to vinyl.

When you just ask them what they prefer they say whatever they want to say, which often means things like "vinyl is warmer".

There are some confounding factors. "Dynamic compression" (As ganzuul mentions, "loudness wars") does make a difference and MP3s (as created today) tend to have less variation between quiet and loud.

[1] the benefits of "better quality" stop at quite a low point. Most people can't hear any difference between 256k or 350k MP3 file. Very few people can hear a difference between 350k CBR and FLAC.

doctorshady• 12 years ago

I've worked in audio engineering before. Generally speaking, I think the reason vinyl ends up sounding better isn't because it's necessarily a better medium. I mean, it's certainly resilient, but it inherently has some limitations that make the mastering process a little different. Let me explain:

Digital audio has a very clearly defined limit as to how loud it can go. With magnetic tape, you have to consider the saturation point, or for vinyl, what the lathe cutting the master can physically cut, but depending on the conditions, how loud the actual medium can go changes.

With digital formats, it simply goes to 0 dBFS. Period. That's a spot that's clearly marked on most meters. If you exceed it, you'll hear a very nasty sounding audible clipping, and a red light on your meter will turn on to let you know whatever you're recording is too loud.

Anyway, in 1989, Sony came out with a digital "brickwall" limiting device that used a technique called lookahead to anticipate changes in loudness. Compared to conventional compression and limiting, it's very transparent, and produces drastically less artifacts - desirable or otherwise when it works.

So when that happened, a shitton of developers came out with their own versions, and started accelerating what's called the loudness war. Fast forward twenty five years, it's very common for someone - whether it be a band member or a record label or somebody to use this tool very aggressively on their releases. You can push a brickwall limiter to quite literally absolute amplitude if you want - as in, the loudness level doesn't change at all for the entire song. Much to the chagrin of some of the engineers who have to actually work the brickwall limiter, people will occasionally want that.

Anyway, back to the world of analog mediums. Without that clearly defined volume limit, it doesn't make much sense to be using a tool like that. That's the biggest difference in how vinyl and CD/mp3 releases are made. Some people don't like it ridiculously loud, others don't like the distortion aggressive brickwall limiting introduces, but I think the physical inability to use brickwall limiting is what's giving vinyl a comeback. Compare a vinyl/CD release of a Foo Fighters song for yourself if you want;

http://www36.zippyshare.com/v/58998249/file.html

tl;dr, digital releases can sound just as good as vinyl, but the people producing them don't want it that way. People disagree. Therefore, vinyl ends up with better sound quality.

Typewriters are back, and we have Edward Snowden to thank

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