Redazione RHC : 12 November 2025 22:19
We all know Bruce Schneier , a renowned cryptography and computer security expert, member of the board of directors of the International Association for Cryptological Research and a renowned speaker, who famously said the phrase at the RSA conference a few years ago: “the business model of the Internet is surveillance.”
But on October 12, 2015, Bruce Schneier revealed this interesting story that we want to tell you today, the story of the first keylogger.
The first keylogger in history appeared during the Cold War, in the 1970s, when Soviet intelligence officers spied on American diplomats by exploiting a bug in IBM Selectric typewriters.
The electromechanical systems were nothing short of an engineering marvel for their time. The highly miniaturized circuitry was embedded in a metal rod that ran the length of the typewriter, making it invisible to the naked eye.
The implant, which could only be seen using X-ray equipment, recorded the precise position of the ball that Selectric typewriters used to impress a character on paper.
The exploit principle involved the functioning of the writing head of IBM typewriters.
When you typed, the head rotated in a specific direction. This direction was unique for each character typed on the keyboard. The keylogger simply recorded the energy of the magnetic field created to move the carriage and converted it into a digital signal.
Each received signal was stored as a 4-bit symbol. In fact, the device could save up to 8 symbols, after which it transmitted them to Soviet spies.
The Soviet implants were discovered through careful analysis of over 10 tons of equipment seized from U.S. embassies and consulates and shipped back to the United States. The implants were eventually found inside 16 typewriters used between 1976 and 1984 at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow and the U.S. Consulate in Leningrad.
The bugs were discovered following a US ally whose embassy had been targeted by a similar interception operation.
“Despite the ambiguities in knowing which characters were typed, the typewriter attack on the United States was a lucrative source of information for the Soviets.”
concluded an NSA document, which was declassified several years ago.
“It has been difficult to quantify the damage to the United States from this exploitation because it went on for so long.”
The NSA document was published in 2012.
When the implant was first reported, a bug expert quoted in Discover magazine hypothesized that it worked by measuring tiny differences in the time it took for each character to imprint.
This theory was based on the observation that the time taken for the Selectric sphere to complete one rotation was different for each character.
A low-tech listening device installed in the room then transmitted this information to a Soviet computer which reconstructed what was typed.
The devices could be deactivated to avoid detection when the Soviets knew inspection teams were in the immediate vicinity. Newer devices operated by the United States might have been capable of detecting the implants, but even then it would have required great luck, as the infected typewriter had to be turned on, and the scanner would have had to be tuned to the right frequency.
To reduce this risk, Soviet spies deliberately designed the devices to use the same frequency band as local television stations.
The first keylogger in history was invented by the Russians to spy on the Americans during the Cold War, and from then on, this type of malware gained increasing traction in the digital domain, today used in numerous cyber attacks and frauds of various types and degrees.
This story shows that Russia has always been careful to exploit technology for its own purposes and perhaps this is also why it is so advanced today in terms of cyber warfare capabilities.
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