Spycatcher
by Peter Wright · first published 1987
44mentions
7recommended by
24HN commenters
2009–2026first – last mentioned
29% recommend63% neutral8% critical
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I'm currently reading "Spycatcher" by Peter Wright, I would recommend if you're interested in topics like this.
on “The Thing” ↗The book "Spycatcher" by Peter Wright documents fairly intensely the battle to both analyse and counteract the thing, and generally combat Soviet signals intelligence. The latter parts of the book are very interesting too,…
on “Havana syndrome: 'directed' radio frequency likely cause of illness” ↗i remember reading an excellent book called "spycatcher" which details a first-hand account of peter-wright (employed by mi5) exposing kgb spies in the highest echelon of mi5.
on “Kim Philby, Lecturing in East Berlin, Bragged of How Easy It Was to Fool MI6” ↗Anyone interested in this should read the book Spycatcher[1]. It covers a bit of this and was even banned in certain countries. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spycatcher
on “Ghostbuster: Detecting the Presence of Hidden Eavesdroppers [pdf]” ↗Read Spycatcher by Peter Wright. It's an opinionated tale of someone actually doing the business of catching spies. Even better for the HN crowd, the author was an engineer so there's some tidbits about just how advanced…
on “Good Books for a Lousy Year” ↗The book spycatcher https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spycatcher is an engaging read that has many interesting bits about bugging capabilities. Its author, Peter Wright played a significant role in figuring out how the device…
on “How a Gift from Schoolchildren Let the Soviets Spy on the U.S. For 7 Years” ↗…cryptography was invented in 1882/1917: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-time_pad Fun further reading: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venona_project Also, fun reading: The Code Book by Simon Singh, and Spycatcher by Peter Wright
on “Don't use bcrypt” ↗Read "Spycatcher" by Peter Wright. It's one of not many books on spying like this (Wright was cleaning up the mess Venona revealed for years) actually written by an intelligence officer, in clear breach of the official…
on “Neofeudalism and the Digital Manor” ↗https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_RAFTER another sneaky one (highly recommend the book spycatcher, really unique perspective in that the author was a proper engineer on the frontline in the cold war)
on “Van Eck Phreaking” ↗Peter Wright's book (Spycatcher) about his (story of his) adventures reverse engineering the thing is a good read. He had another trick of using simple phasing to make cocktail party type problems easier for analysts. Just play it…
on “Extracting Audio from Visual Information” ↗…device (bug) for its time that went undetected for a long time. It did not have a conventional power source such as a battery or mains connection. My first intro to this was the fascinating book The SpyCatcher. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thing_(listening_device)
on “Carolina Eyck, renowned superstar of the theremin” ↗…years ago -> therefore it's a lying propaganda institution -> therefore it should be disbanded first of all, even if MI5 vetting for this kind of thing wasn't a completely reasonable precaution--read Spycatcher if you don't know why--do you think the BBC had a choice in matters? second, this was 30 years ago. third, if we're going to just disband any institution that's silently beholden to MI5, you may as…
on “How can traditional British TV survive the US streaming giants” ↗read Spycatcher. in the post-war/cold war era, Britain, particularly the upper classes, was fucking riddled with soviet agents, mostly British-born communist sympathisers who were activated by the USSR, and many of them…
on “How can traditional British TV survive the US streaming giants” ↗Read Spycatcher by Peter Wright, incredibly interesting story of a working class MI5 scientific intelligence officer (engineer) turned literal spycatcher - largely spending his time chasing the work of naive upperclass…
on “The Suspected Poisoning of Alexey Navalny, Putin’s Most Prominent Adversary” ↗…British merchant banks' eventual deaths at the hands of meritocratic American ones is strong evidence that this is not a good system in areas where ability is more valuable than trust. [1] Peter Wright, Spycatcher - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Spycatcher-Candid-Autobiography-Int... [2] Yuri Modin, My Five Cambridge Friends - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Five-Cambridge-Friends-Cairncross-C... - Modin died a hero in Moscow…
on “Bugger: Maybe spies aren't very good at their jobs (2013)” ↗