The dates associated with this document seem confusing and contradictory. I can only assume that's intentional.
I'll also not be surprised if it makes my computer self-destruct via spontaneous self-combustion after reading.
Learning from the Enemy: The Gunman Project (2007) [pdf]
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Re: Learning from the Enemy: The Gunman Project (2007) [pdf]
#22Earlier quoted context omitted.
>destroy computer after reading.
Perfectly common, of course. Usually the way to do this is to use a virtual machine which you then throw away.
but why do you trust your hypervisor? QEMU had a floppy controller escape bug published last month. Xen has one today.
Re: Learning from the Enemy: The Gunman Project (2007) [pdf]
#23"As a totalitarian society, the Soviet Union valued eavesdropping and thus developed ingenious methods to accomplish it." (page 2)
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Re: Learning from the Enemy: The Gunman Project (2007) [pdf]
#24Earlier quoted context omitted.
(a) It's from their museum facility (if you ever get the chance to visit the National Cryptologic Museum in Maryland TAKE IT TAKE IT TAKE IT )[1], not the NSA itself. (b) It's a scan of a 30-year-old report on a completed project, redacted heavily. Nothing more. (c) If they want your inside leg measurement they've got better ways to find it without feeding you a PDF they overtly created. [1] Where else will you find…
I'd wager a guess that [2] was necessary for messages using it as a code, e.g., page number+word number, or page number and then the Nth word or letter.
Nope.
The real answer is, the NSA is all about communications -- which isn't just electronics: it includes a huge element of linguistics.
The Bible angle: when a new tribe or culture is contacted, the very first thing that happens is that Christian missionaries get all excited and do their best to go there to spread the gospel. To do this, they have to learn the language sufficiently well to translate the Bible. So you've got this one text (with a quantifiably-variant or de-facto invariant baseline) that gets translated into every language on the planet as fast as is humanly possible after that language is discovered. It's a Rosetta stone.
I forget the number that was given for how many different-language Bibles the NSA has in their library, but it was impressive -- something over 900 languages.
Re: Learning from the Enemy: The Gunman Project (2007) [pdf]
#25"As a totalitarian society, the Soviet Union valued eavesdropping and thus developed ingenious methods to accomplish it." (page 2)
"The GUNMAN project had a major impact on the intelligence community as a whole. It brought about a greater understanding of the thinking and operations in a totalitarian society. The community became more aware of the hostile electronic threat against the U.S. As explained, "If any other agency such as CIA or the State Department had discovered the bug, this change would not have occurred because they would not have publicized the incident." NSA, however, briefed all levels of government to warn them of the danger. NSA was not out to assess blame; it took the problem-solving approach." (p. 17)
Re: Learning from the Enemy: The Gunman Project (2007) [pdf]
#26Re: Learning from the Enemy: The Gunman Project (2007) [pdf]
#27The article mentions the listening bug in the Great Seal in a side note, but it's arguably an even better hack: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thing_%28listening_device%...
I was glad to learn that "The Thing" was apparently designed by Léon Theremin who invented in 1928 (!) the famous "electronic musical instrument controlled without physical contact by the performer."
Re: Learning from the Enemy: The Gunman Project (2007) [pdf]
#28The "How it worked" part is in "Implant Characteristics" section, Page 16 of the PDF and forward.
Re: Learning from the Enemy: The Gunman Project (2007) [pdf]
#29Re: Learning from the Enemy: The Gunman Project (2007) [pdf]
#30The "How it worked" part is in "Implant Characteristics" section, Page 16 of the PDF and forward.
For those too paranoid to open a .PDF from the NSA, several solid parts in the typewriter were replaced by solid-looking parts with embedded circuits and altered magnetic characteristics.
These circuits magnetically detected the motion of the arms that carried and moved the character ball. So non-printing keystrokes, like space, tab, and backspace, and the character that did not rotate the ball, '-', were not detectable. The circuits had a tiny buffer, so would transmit the detected characters as they were being typed. Early models used batteries. Later bugs diverted some of the AC mains power from the typewriter.
It is likely that a relay antenna was employed to increase the detection range of the transmitted signals, which used the same frequencies as local television broadcasts.
That's really about it. The bugs were largely undetectable without x-raying every single part in the typewriter, which is how they were eventually found.