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.
Slash has its own numbers station (Score:4, Interesting)
Numbers Stations Move From Shortwave To VoIP [slashdot.org].
I've picked these up on short wave (Score:5, Interesting)
Shortwave (Score:5, Interesting)
Neat (Score:3, Interesting)
Ad revenue (Score:4, Interesting)
Or worse:
1) Create personal numbers station with especially intriguing sequences to draw audience
2) Sell ads on your personal number station
3) Profit!
Broadcasting From Here (Score:2, Interesting)
It's quite likely they're broadcasting from here Google Satellite [google.com]
That's Ayios Nikolaos [wikipedia.org]. Supposedly part of the Echelon network. If you look to the north of the building, there's a large mast that might easily be a short-wave antenna.
Re:CIA? I suspect not. (Score:5, Interesting)
Now, it's hard to say if the US transmits numbers, but it's pretty clear that there appears to be some intelligence value in teaching the electronic warfare people how to listen to streams of numbers in other languages.
It's probably a great way to send one-way messages to the field. A simple AM radio can be modified work in different frequencies. With that and a normal-looking one-time-pad code book can go a long way to providing secure communication that is inconspicuous.
So, the CIA might not do it, but other countries and services probably do.
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:CIA? I suspect not. (Score:3, Interesting)
Computer data requires equipment to receive and decode, even if it just a laptop. Short wave requires only a receiver that can be made almost arbitrarily small and can therefore be ditched or hidden in an emergency.
Top Of The Pops! (Score:3, Interesting)
Hotel [archive.org]
Foxtrot [wilcoworld.net]
Re:Time Bomb. (Score:3, Interesting)
Methods generally don't advertise themselves (Score:1, Interesting)
Or perhaps the action is on IRC.
Or maybe the first letter on every site gives a clue. The beauty is that these methods don't advertise themselves and are nearly undectable to anybody.
Shortwave radio is known so the thrill is somewhat gone from catching those fleeting messages.
Triangulation to locate sources? (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't have any shortwave equipment myself, but it seems that would be a very interesting project.
It would be quite exciting, say, to discover signals originating from a mountain in Wyoming
This is pretty sweet. It's a very interesting strategy. Shortwave receivers are easy to come by, do not arouse suspicion, and no one can detect that you are listening in.
EME/Moonbounce (Score:3, Interesting)
To do it right you need a very directional beam antenna. There are particular regions of VHF that are known to be good for EME, because of the way they penetrate the Earth's atmo/iono/magnetospheres. However, people have done it on virtually all bands, from 6m into the microwave. (There is a neat page on 6m EME here [jzap.com], he claims that as of 2002 only 30 or 40 people have ever had successful QSOs, so if you want to be on the bleeding edge of amateur radio, that's where you go.)
Re:Shortwave Station Leaders - nothing sinister (Score:5, Interesting)
Take the old Radio Moscow transmitter in East Berlin, for example. You are quite right that such HF broadcasts would often end with a looping tape containing info on what freq(s) the site would be transmitting next. Well and good.
Eventually, though, the tape ends and the transmitter shuts down. Fine. Now all you're listening to is a whole lot of nothing but white noise, right? STAY ON THE FREQ FOR ANOTHER 5-10 MINUTES. Suddenly another carrier comes up, and a woman's voice starts. On the Radio Moscow freq she would always start with "Achtung, achtung," then proceed to read-off a long string of number groups (NOT freqs!). When done, she would finish with "Ende," and the carrier would immediately drop.
Still sound like a freq change notice to you?
Yosemite Sam station in the US (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Time Bomb. (Score:3, Interesting)
Because you have something sensitive to say later.
But why not just use the same secure channel later?
No, there has to be another reason. I mentioned the most common reason -- that the secure channel is too slow. There can be others, of course, such as that the secure channel is only temporarily available, or that it can only be used a limited amount, or that it is one-way, etc..
A secure channel is required to be able to use an OTP, but it must be deficient in some way (other than its security) or it doesn't make any sense to bother with an OTP.
Re:locating (Score:3, Interesting)
I have done some HF amature radio hidden transmitter hunts in the 28 MHZ range. The bearing you get as you get close is pretty good. A couple guys working together sharing information can locate the final area very quickly. It is a lot of fun to see how many people you can beat to the hidden transmitter.
Re:Triangulation to locate sources? (Score:4, Interesting)
I know I have heard a signal I sent, bounce right around the earth and come back to our receiver a few mins later. I also remember picking up a signal on Military frequences in Northern Ontario (I was in the Canadian Military) that originated down in Florida, evidently on a Taxi transmitter, judging by the conversation I had with the guy when I asked him to leave our channel.
Radio is fascinating stuff, its a shame its losing its popularity to the Internet and computers, because its still a very neat and geeky technology.
The Moscow Radiotelephone Station (Score:3, Interesting)
They were once reputed to have closed their broadcast on New Year's Eve with "and greetings to our friends in the CIA." Who says spies have no sense of humor?
Re:CIA? I suspect not. (Score:3, Interesting)
Terms such as "short wave" and "long wave" have largely passed into disuse, replaced by High Frequency (roughly short wave) and Medium Frequency (roughly long wave), and then for mostly point-point communications, VHF, UHF, and above.
Except for the exotic moonbounce and tropospheric ducting mentioned, all long distance radio communications on this planet uses various layers of the ionosphere, and depends on ionosphereic reflection and refraction, and is thus dependent on the state of the Sun, which has an 11-year up-down cycle. We're going to reach rock bottom in 2007, and then things will start looking up again.
If you want to see what frequency is best for reliable communications around the globe, check out this site [hflink.com] and look at the map closest to you. These maps are compiled using ionosondes, and represent hourly experiments. They will tell you what frequency in the HF has the best chance of bouncing off the ionosphere and reach the destination. The NVIS map at the top is for transmitting straight up and having your signal come down in a ~250 mile radius. The maps below that, centered on cities around the world (San Francisco, Sydney, etc.) will show you what you need to do to get a signal to or from those cities. There's no quality info, but if you want current solar conditions, see the Propfire [mozilla.org] plugin, which will tell you.