• AcidSmiley [she/her]
      ·
      3 years ago

      1984 is when women have blue hair and tell you not to say slurs frantically hack slurs into your mechanical typewriter

      • tombo [he/him]
        ·
        3 years ago

        1984 is when women have blue hair and tell you not to say slurs frantically hack slurs into your mechanical typewriter edit audio of you using your typewriter, changing the letter sounds to make it seem like you were typing slurs

  • Alaskaball [comrade/them]A
    ·
    3 years ago

    I spent the past 10 minutes listening to like several different typewriters from 1900 to 1960s and their keystrokes all sound the same as the other keystrokes.

      • Quimby [any, any]
        ·
        3 years ago

        yep. it's absolutely wild what people can do. I saw a POC attack that used the overhead light in a room to spy on a conversation from outside, looking into the window.

        That's actually why I think security through obscurity gets a bad rap.

        You should ALSO do real security, but the fact is that even as there have been hacks of RSA, air gapped computers, etc etc, we still haven't decrypted the Zodiac Killer's letters or whatever. And there's also a puzzle in the halls of the NSA that has gone unsolved for decades.

  • Grownbravy [they/them]
    ·
    3 years ago

    Pretty sure that’s only useful if you had the typewriter in front if you at some point and intimate knowledge of typewriters in an office setting, so literally no one?

    • comi [he/him]
      ·
      3 years ago

      With linguistic analysis if every sound is identifiable, you can do letter frequency analysis :shrug-outta-hecks: prolly even allows for some fuzziness in interpretation

      • Grownbravy [they/them]
        ·
        3 years ago

        There are weird hiccups, like typewriters not being professionally serviced regularly which throws of any degree of consistency. Keys will stick, levers will vary in their action, you’ll have to regularly map out interpretations once you catch drift happening.

        It’s easier to steal letters.

  • Wildgrapes [she/her]
    ·
    3 years ago

    The thing to remember is basically any privacy or security attempts are not full proof. A determined enough attacker with enough resources may eventually be able to untangle you.

    This is true with computers and evidently typewriters as well.

    Doesn't mean you shouldn't be as secure as possible though.

  • a_maoist_quetzal [he/him]
    ·
    3 years ago

    There is such a thing as a laser microphone that you can point at a glass window and hear the conversation inside based on measurements of the vibrating glass. The algorithms just keep getting better, stuxnet already found ways to cross the air gap. Sweet, man-made horrors beyond comprehension.

  • trabpukcip [he/him]
    ·
    3 years ago

    As a puzzle loving nerd, definitely not only feds know this stuff. I know I'm not the only one who spends his whole time at the airport pinpointing weaknesses of their security

    • thirstywizard [he/him]
      ·
      3 years ago

      This, would see this sort of stuff on usernet even back in the 90s as a child. There was an article in the past few years about how this could be used to 'hack' the US supposed hard-core unhackable offline, floppy drive pushing windows 3.1 rig army.

      Going to second as a morbid person that's my favorite airport game, its even better when you can play it as a group and get concerned looks from security/randoms.

      • trabpukcip [he/him]
        ·
        3 years ago

        Lol one time I ran a laptop through security and they checked my shoes, so my mom was asking "yeah but couldn't the detonator be in MY shoes?" to the tsa goons

      • emizeko [they/them]
        ·
        edit-2
        3 years ago

        PC keyboards send a distinctly different electrical signal for each key and that's what TEMPEST picks up

    • crime [she/her, any]
      ·
      3 years ago

      Nah, it's definitely possible. I know someone who did an audio only analysis of mechanical keyboard input and was able to reproduce the text

  • ToastGhost [he/him]
    ·
    3 years ago

    have a second typewriter that you smash with your toes as you type

    • GreenTeaRedFlag [any]
      ·
      3 years ago

      they can track the penstrokes. The real trick is to just not ever say or write anything, maybe just don't think it.

  • blobjim [he/him]
    ·
    3 years ago

    And you can probably use machine learning models to do all kinda of stuff like this by just training on data that you do yourself.