The Numbers Stations Analyzed, Discussed 224
GMontag wrote to mention a Washington Post article about the always-intriguing 'number' radio broadcasts. The numbers stations, as they are known, are 'hiding in plain sight' spycraft. Random digits broadcast at little-used frequencies are known to be intelligence agencies broadcasting their secrets in encrypted form. The Post article gives a nice run-down on the truth behind the transmissions, and touches a bit on the odd community that has grown fascinated by them. From the article: "On 6840 kHz, you may hear a voice reading groups of letters. That's a station nicknamed 'E10,' thought to be Israel's Mossad intelligence. Chris Smolinski runs SpyNumbers.com and the 'Spooks' e-mail list, where 'number stations' hobbyists log hundreds of shortwave messages transmitted every month. 'It's like a puzzle. They're mystery stations,' explained Smolinski, who has tracked the spy broadcasts for 30 years."
This article made me recall a great All Things Considered story from a few years back about Akin Fernandez's 'Numbers' CD, a CD compilation of some of the most interesting strings of randomly read numbers reaching out across the airwaves.
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There was a BBC radio programme about this... (Score:5, Informative)
http://jamesholden.net/2005/04/23/the-lincolnshir
Re:Shortwave (Score:2, Informative)
http://www.arrl.org/ [arrl.org]
Conet Project MP3 Download (Score:4, Informative)
Re:IP Addresses (Score:1, Informative)
Re:locating (Score:4, Informative)
Yes. Automatic radio direction finding is common and was often used in the cold war. The spectrum is constantly monitored and when a new broadcast pops up, it is automaticaly DF'ed and logged. When several DF sites pickup the same broadcast, triangulation to the source is a simple task.
Here is what a typical DF site looks like. Both the US and Russia have them.
http://www1.shore.net/~mfoster/FLA_Wullen.htm [shore.net]
Re:Time Bomb. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Time Bomb. (Score:4, Informative)
No.
Decrypting one-time pads isn't hard because there isn't enough compute power to throw at it. It's hard because it can't be broken, no matter what you do to it. Given a message to decrypt, the best an enemy cryptanalyst can do is random chance. There are better ways of compromising secrets.
This is a well-established result in encryption and there is no point in arguing about it. The only time one-time pad encryption has ever been broken was when the agents misused their one-time pads. The Venona [nsa.gov] decrypts are a good example of this.
(Wow! First time I've ever linked to the NSA!)
...laura
HF, VHF, UHF... (Score:5, Informative)
Of course, by calling things in the 1-30 MHz range "high frequency," those engineers forced us to use such terms as "very high frequency," and "ultra high frequency" when equipment finally became capable of transmitting at those wavelengths.
Re:Why not just use spam (Score:2, Informative)
I've seen an article on it, here or on digg.
-Interesting.
Re:Time Bomb. (Score:5, Informative)
You can find more at Wikipedia's article on hardware random number generators [wikipedia.org]:
Shortwave Station Leaders - nothing sinister (Score:3, Informative)
When a station moves to a new frequency, they continue to play a unique identifier tune and read out the frequencies where the station may be received better. For example, 39715 would be 39MHz715.
Others may simply be a station transmitting automated junk, in order to 'occupy' the channel, so that someone cannot apply to the IETF to use the unused channel. Since they all have these number voice systems to announce their frequencies, it is logical to use that system to occupy the channel with random junk.
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