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

Project Gunman was a landmark development in US intelligence operations; it had a significant impact on modern American espionage activities and on attitudes toward information security. The project involved a six-month investigation into the efforts of the KGB (the Intelligence Service of the former Soviet Union) to bug the United States embassy in Moscow. In 1984, an NSA team led by Deputy Director of Communications Security Walter G. Deeley removed every piece of Soviet surveillance equipment in the US embassy, shipped it back to America, and disassembled it in a top-secret lab. Throughout the Cold War, the KGB had been blatant in their surveillance of any American citizens within the Soviet Union, and recording devices were often planted in offices, hotel rooms, and furnishings used by American government representatives. The NSA had long suspected that more sophisticated bugs were being used to spy on American communications from within the embassy in Moscow, but previous sweeps and investigations had been unsuccessful. Analysts on Project Gunman eventually discovered magnetometers and electrical units in several typewriters used by embassy staff. These devices were able of catalogue, analyze, and transmit keystrokes, allowing the KGB to read everything written on the typewriters before any form of