Originally Posted by
pete376403
IBM Selectric typewriters at the US Embassy in Wellington in the mid 80s (I serviced the typewriters as Thorndon was in my territory) had extra heavy flywheels on the motors as it was discovered that selection of each character put a different load on the motor, resulting in a variation of the hash/noise put on the power line. In theory this could be captured and decoded. The flywheel served to smooth out the motor under varying load. Would also have required the bad guys to have access to the power line the typewriter was plugged into but paranoia knows no bounds.
That sounds awfully similar to a bug that the British discovered in one of their encryption devices that was based off of the Enigma machine, they knew about it, but declined to tell anyone about, sold the machines to their allies knowing that they would be able to decrypt their messages if needed.
Buggered if I can remember any more details about it, but it rings a rather large bell.
Physics; Thou art a cruel, heartless Bitch-of-a-Mistress
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