[Cryptography] Project GUNMAN: How the NSA responded to USSR bugging the US embassy

Dave Horsfall dave at horsfall.org
Fri Jan 3 22:58:02 EST 2020


Picking up voices by a microphone hidden in the Great Seal in the US Embassy is 
well known (at least, amongst crypto freaks) but what is not so known is that 
the typewriters were also bugged; the Russkies could tell just which key was 
pressed on which typewriter i.e. at reception, a briefing room, etc.

https://www.nsa.gov/news-features/declassified-documents/cryptologic-histories/ 
(a fair amount has been redacted).

The PDF is about halfway down the list as "Learning from the Enemy: The GUNMAN 
Project".

Basically, anything with a keyboard had to be replaced without tipping them 
off, and this was a major exercise.

-- Dave


More information about the cryptography mailing list