Printers are munitions?

[Michael Stutz]

On Tue, 13 May 1997, Sidney R. Phillips wrote:

> One thing which caught my attention however, was a claim by
> Win Schwartau (of inforwar fame) that NSA had placed narrow band
> transmitters in printers which wound up in air defense sites in Iraq.
> Subsequently the transmissions were used for targeting durring the gulf
> war.  Has anyone heard of a separate source for this?

_2600 Magazine_ had an article about this a few years back, called "Gulf War
Printer Virus," I believe. I think in that version of the story, it wasn't a
narrow band xmitter but a virus that affected a computer connected to the
printer's parallel port, infecting itself via the sole pin ("out of paper" i
think it said) on the port that xmitted from printer to computer rather than
the normal other way around. As to whether or not this virus was of the
computer or media variety, however, remains to be seen.

m