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Spy toy or find: Barbie ™ typewriter

In this review article, we continue the topic of the art of encryption and all sorts of spyware inventions. Video cameras and audio recorders built into the charms, camera handles, ashtrays with voice recorders - which was not invented. The time has come for such harmless things as children's toys. At first glance, Barbie's toy typewriter: all so pink, for a girl's sweet, doll. But if you dig deeper, we have a real electronic crypto machine.



The Barbie typewriter, also known as the E-118, an inexpensive electronic device, was developed by the Slovenian company Mehano. Later, the invention was acquired by the famous American company Mattel (Barbie, American Girl, Fisher-Price, Hot Wheels, Monster High, MEGA, UNO). The E-118 was the latest model in the product line and was a successor to the earlier purely mechanical models. For all the time since the beginning of the release inside the device there have been few changes, all innovations have touched the appearance.


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Well, we have a toy that consists of a plastic case, a keyboard with 49 buttons, a plastic carriage for ordinary sheets of paper, and a rotating wheel, similar to a daisy. For children from 5 years old.



While earlier models worked on batteries or were powered from an external power supply unit (PSU), the battery compartment was absent in later E-117 and E-118 models. The first was the E-115, it was sold directly by the manufacturer Mehano.



This is the original appearance of Mehano’s electronic typewriter. True, the body in the original version was gray, and the regulators are blue.



This children's toy is fully capable of encoding and decoding secret messages using one of 4 built-in encryption modes. These modes were activated by typing a special key on the keyboard.

The target audience of the car is 5 years old girls, so the corpus received its pink-purple color with a Barbie doll sticker. Hardly little girls would be engaged in printing secret letters, and therefore in the manual for the toy there was no chapter on the activation of encoding / decoding functions.

E-115




E-115 - the first model in the line of typewriters Mehano, the year it went on sale - 1998. Initially, it was gray, after the purchase of Barbie - pink and purple with white buttons on the keyboard. Inside is a well-designed PCB with all components, including a 24-pin microcontroller (Swiss company EM Microelectronic). There is an assumption that the hidden encryption / decryption function was not available for all versions of the machine.

E-116




In the image above, the E-116 version from Mehano. It is very similar to the E-115, the same case design as the predecessor. The battery compartment is still present, but not used, since there is a complete lack of contact.







This is the French version of E-116, in which cryptographic functions are not available. It is not yet known how to activate them and whether it is generally possible.

E-117




Although the E-117 looks different than the previous cars, everything inside is almost identical. In order to save the microcontroller EM directly soldered to the printed circuit board. The machine has 4 software codes that are activated by pressing individual combinations on the keyboard.



Coding: 4 first programs used to enter text. The encoding function was deactivated by pressing the combination of SHIFT + LOCK + 12.

The following key combinations on the keyboard activate the decoding feature.



If the encoding / decoding functions were turned off, the machine could be used as a normal printing device. In the coding / decoding mode on the left side, a LED light was on.

The E-117 keyboard still consisted of 49 buttons: 48 letters + space. Maximum permissible paper width: 210 mm (DIN A4 format), 68 characters per line. Device dimensions: width 320 mm, length 370 mm, weight was 1400 grams (we do not charge batteries).

E-118




This is the latest model, which is still on sale. The design has been slightly improved, given the modern form.

In order to save money, cars are manufactured in China, and the PCB consists of cheaper components. The quality of the printed circuit board is lower than that of earlier models. There are several versions of the device for different languages.

Encoding and decoding modes


Although there are many variations of Barbie typewriters for different countries, encryption / decryption functions appear to be present in all electronic models. You can access the cryptosystem by pressing SHIFT + LOCK in combination with one of the buttons on the keyboard.



The Barbie machine uses a mono alphabetic substitution cipher (MASC), as mentioned earlier, with 4 different keys. To start coding, it was necessary to simultaneously press three buttons on the keyboard:



After the key was selected, a text message was entered on the keyboard, cipher text was printed on the paper. After that, the document was sent to the recipient by mail (in paper form). The recipient, in turn, had to select the appropriate key for decoding, using the appropriate key combination, shown below:





The material was used ryptomuseum , Original Mehano E-117 User's Manual (German)

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Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/419305/


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