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.
1258965 (Score:5, Informative)
1258965
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19574811 227958 31819326 you insensitive clod!
Re:1258965 (Score:5, Funny)
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This first number (Score:2)
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Slash has its own numbers station (Score:4, Interesting)
Numbers Stations Move From Shortwave To VoIP [slashdot.org].
IP Addresses (Score:2)
207 46 225 60 207 46 18 30
Re:IP Addresses (Score:5, Funny)
C0016UY: 1337641: 69?
1337641: 637 1057!
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Re:IP Addresses (Score:5, Funny)
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jason
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Re:IP Addresses (Score:5, Funny)
A fine, upstanding gentleman: Dearest, skilled lady... wouldst thou join me in mine bedchambers for some chaste frolicking?
Skilled lady: Alas! No, I must not! For thou art neither truly updstanding, nor the gentleman thou claim'st to be. Now, leav'st me be posthaste!
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I've picked these up on short wave (Score:5, Interesting)
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TLF
Re:I've picked these up on short wave (Score:5, Funny)
Twice.
I spent a lot on booze and whores.
I wasted the rest.
Re:I've picked these up on short wave (Score:4, Funny)
And if you're going to steal, get it right! George's wording was far better:
"I spent a lot of money on booze, birds and fast cars. The rest I just squandered."
See? That word: squandered. Much, much better than wasted. You can waste anything but only riches can be squandered. And you forgot the fast cars [photobucket.com]. Unforgivable.
Re:I've picked these up on short wave (Score:5, Funny)
CIA? I suspect not. (Score:2)
However, I'm interested as to why you think it's specifically the CIA? It seems like the CIA would probably have more sophisticated methods of communication, via
Re:CIA? I suspect not. (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
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Blessent mon coeur d'une langueur monotone...
rj
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Blessent mon coeur d'une langueur monotone...
Aww shit, do we gotta invade Franc again?!
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.
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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 rad
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 pene
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One of the advantages of using numbers stations is that your agent only needs an ordinary short-wave radio, a one-time pad, and minimal training. That's safer than giving them some widget that can't pass as a normal piece of electronics.
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There was a BBC radio programme about this... (Score:5, Informative)
http://jamesholden.net/2005/04/23/the-lincolnshir
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Oooo, just heard a broadcast (Score:2, Funny)
1 2 3 4 5? That's amazing! I've got the same combination on my luggage!
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That explains it... (Score:3, Funny)
I suppose your questions have been answered... (Score:2)
Forty Two.
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Ob Penny Arcade (Score:2)
Shortwave (Score:5, Interesting)
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http://www.arrl.org/ [arrl.org]
Source code (Score:5, Funny)
The "numbers" stations only exist to confuse people. On Wednesdays, we have "beer" day, where you are entitled to a beer from the cooler if the number 12725 comes out.
So we had one day, last year, where somebody (I think it was the Chinese) hacked our main server, and made it broadcast 12725 continuously all day. So there we were, plastered out of our mind, when 270 Lbs of fissionable material was stolen from our floor. The investigation is due to be completed sometime around 2021 - we don't talk about that very much.
Anyway, here's the source code: Information wants to be free!
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!
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4 8 15 16 23 42 (Score:5, Funny)
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Could have been worse. It could have been every 108 posts. Try to get that right
Conet Project MP3 Download (Score:4, Informative)
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.
Next: Numbers Websites / Numbers IRC Channels (Score:2)
Ron
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Top Of The Pops! (Score:3, Interesting)
Hotel [archive.org]
Foxtrot [wilcoworld.net]
HELLO WORLD (Score:2)
Whiskey Tango Foxtrot (Score:2)
Whiskey Tango Foxtrot
Whiskey Tango Foxtrot
I try so hard... (Score:4, Funny)
"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"
Interesting... random numbers... Ok, so my friends were right.
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I am a habitual NPR listener, but everyone I know finds it slow, uninteresting, easily dismissed radio. I try to expose them to intriguing news material that's delivered spin free and very palatable, but have not yet impressed a single person. It's times like these that I just shake my head and sigh.
"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"
Interesting... random numbers... Ok, so my friends were right.
So, the Number Stations story is completely boring, and your friends were right. And yet, you're reading (and posting) about it when it's on Slashdot? What about /. makes the story inherently more interesting?
NPR covered it years earlier, and their story has much better content than the submitted story here. I remember listening to the story in question, and it was very interesting.
So yes, NPR might just not suck.
(comming to you live from a Cambridge, MA, brie eating liberal)
Anyone got info on this one? (Score:2)
I think this is to keep all those 'conspiratists' busy decrypting random data instead of real transfers going on on other channels.
Better... (Score:2)
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.
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?
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.
Re:Triangulation to locate sources? (Score:4, Funny)
Given the right atmospheric conditions, you can pick up the signal decades later: one of the coolest things that ever happened to me was picking up battle chatter from Vietnam while on a training exercise with Army Signals. I'm 25. It was eerie people die in a transmission that was sent before I was born.
Re:Triangulation to locate sources? (Score:5, Insightful)
The number of reflections that an HF signal would undergo in a decade of bouncing around anything the size of the earth, is simply astronomical. The efficiency of reflection would have to be similarly astronomical.
Let alone enough of the signal staying intact to still hear several seconds of it (enough to identify it as Vietnam chatter).
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.
8675309 (Score:2)
Not code but keys? (Score:3, Insightful)
The info is then sent by email, ground mail, radio, etc. encrypted with that key.
So not only would there be nothing to crack, but the vast majority of the numbers would just be noise.
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?
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Makes you wonder who will come out of the woodwork to sue them for the copyright violation.
© 2006 MillionthMonkey
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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]
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I thought SW radio would actually be a real challenge to trace, because of the way it's bounced off the ionosphere in order to defeat the curvature of the Earth. I'm not a radio technician, so please do tell me where I went wrong, if I did.
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Re:Time Bomb. (Score:5, Informative)
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Uhm, if these stations are being used for message dispersal, chances are good that they are using a one-time pad [wikipedia.org] to encrypt the data. This isn't public-key cryptography: it's actually impossible to decrypt one of these without information about the original encrypting pad - not just practically impossible, theoretically impossible too, and no amount of processing power, classical or quantum, wil
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
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> pad encryption has ever been broken was when the agents misused their one-time pads. The Venona decrypts are a good example of this.
Yep, that's the more fascinating part - who is generating the pads, HOW are they being generated and distributed? This has been going on for soooo long it's hard to believe that someone hasn't broken it from that end.
Al
Re:Time Bomb. (Score:5, Informative)
You can find more at Wikipedia's article on hardware random number generators [wikipedia.org]:
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What if one station's bunch of random numbers is broadcasting the one time pad, which is then later used by the other station to broadcast other numbers that are the actual message?
Because that would be a good way to destroy the security of the encryption.
If that were done, all the enemy would have to do is record all of the numbers and then overlay them, sliding them against each other and looking for the matchup that produces non-uniformly distributed values. Such comparisons are very easy to do with computers.
You also wouldn't want to broadcast the one-time pad and then use it to encrypt messages sent via another channel, because then if the enemy ever intercepted your messa
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Because you have something sensitive to say later.
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Which raises the obvious question: If you have a way to transport the one-time pads with absolute security, why not just use that to transport your messages?
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.
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(pseudo random number generator or a generator which depended on hardware events which can be predicted) that was meant as an example of what isn't a truly random generator.
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I've seen an article on it, here or on digg.
-Interesting.
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Er, afford a one-time pad? All you need to do is cat /dev/random, or if you're without a computer, spend an hour or two rolling polyhedral dice. Make two copies of your set of random numbers.