This Is How They Tell Me the World Ends: The Cyberweapons Arms Race

by Nicole Perlroth

But late one evening, on July 23, 1984, one of the analysts working alone that night noticed an extra coil on the power switch of a Selectric typewriter. That was hardly unexpected—newer typewriter models contained additional memory that would explain additional circuitry and coils. But the analyst decided to run the typewriter through an X-ray machine, top to bottom, just to be sure. “When I saw those X-rays, my response was ‘holy fuck.’ They really were bugging our equipment,” he recalled. There on the X-ray film, he could see that inside an unassuming metal bar that ran the length of the typewriter was the most sophisticated exploit he, hell, anyone at the agency, had ever seen. The bar contained a tiny magnetometer, a device that measures the slightest distortions in the earth’s magnetic field. The magnetometer was converting the mechanical energy from each typewritten keystroke into a magnetic disturbance. And next to it was a tiny electronic unit recording every disturbance, cataloging the underlying data, and transmitting the results in short bursts via radio to a nearby Soviet listening post.