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The Numbers Stations Analyzed, Discussed
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
1258965
1258965
"Da ist ein Technölüst in mein Unterpanten!"
It was discussed on slash previously in the following article:
Numbers Stations Move From Shortwave To VoIP.
liqbase
I first heard one of these broadcasts at the end of 'Even Less' by Porcupine Tree. Very weird stuff.
-C
What if they were IP addresses?
;)
207 46 225 60 207 46 18 30
Cool! Amazing Toys.
If you have a cheap short wave radio, even a "radio shack" one, you can pick up voice audio coded messages to spies that the CIA sends to agents. You will only find them by pure chance, but I have managed to find them and record them but I would say that for every 6 or 8 months of listening to short wave radio I will hear only 1 of these broadcasts. It's usually the same female voice. It's great fun when you find one, you feel like you hit the lottery.
4 8 15 16 23 42
There was a BBC radio programme about this a few months ago:
e -poacher/
http://jamesholden.net/2005/04/23/the-lincolnshir
Like tinyurl, but one letter less! http://qurl.co.uk/
Coded spam must be easier to send/receive.
Radio: 1... 2... 3... 4... 5!
1 2 3 4 5? That's amazing! I've got the same combination on my luggage!
http://www.archive.org/details/ird059
It's not music, it's numbers stations. You can take a listen at just a few mp3s to check what a number station sounds like.
100% of statistics are wrong.
So the little voices I been hearing is from the spooks instead of the green little men. Maybe I been watching too much X-Files.
... when you hear:
Forty Two.
__ Someday, but not this morning, I'll finally learn to use the preview button.
link
[Insert pithy quote here]
As an avid Shortwave fan, there are less and less clear stations broadcasting to NA, as more and more world service broadcasts move to the Internet. (YEAH I'm talking about you BBC) I wonder how long until the only people who own shortwave radios are spies? Although propaganda stations are well worth the price of the radio. Listen to Cuba's hour loop of things we blame on the US today, and keep a straight face, I dare you.
shouldn't it be fairly straightforward to locate the origin of these transmissions?
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!
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
I remember when I was 12 or so and heard one of these for the first time. A woman reading numbers in Spanish. Damned if I didn't feel like James Bond sitting there listening to it. I still have that radio, too. Too bad it doesn't pick up anything besides evangelical stations now. Yes, technology has advanced and the world has moved on. So have I. I accept that. But there was a certain thrill of finding that clandestine guerrilla propaganda station that just can't be replaced with web surfing.
With these stations becoming so popular, isn't it time to sell ads? After all, spy agencies can always use the extra cash, and the people who listen to these things probably constitute a solid geek demographic.
... why do I feel like I've missed a step there?
Or worse:
1) Create personal numbers station with especially intriguing sequences to draw audience
2) Sell ads on your personal number station
3) Profit!
The big boys can afford one time pads. Transmit only what is really important to decrease the amount of codes required. A little piece of paper carried by operative is reliable. Forget the spy movies and gadgets. Listen to the radio, know what parts to XOR on paper (or whatever) and you got the data. It's 100% moot that people record those number series since they have absolutely zero chance ever revealing a thing.
four eight fifteen sixteen twentythree fortytwo
Search your logs like the web: splunk!
I'm not disbelieving you in the slightest; while I haven't heard any numbers stations personally (although actually I have the equipment to do so, I've just never hunted around -- now maybe I will though), it makes sense that they'd be around. As a method of communication it makes quite a bit of sense, particularly given their pre-Internet origins.
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 email or other methods, and would hardly need to rely on numbers stations anymore. Do you have some reason to actually think it's the CIA, or were you just being facetious?
My understanding was that most of the remaining numbers stations are broadcast by countries whose intelligence infrastructures probably are a bit behind the times technologically, and are still using older methods for communicating with their human assets. Given the U.S. focus on sigint and technology (even at the expense of humint) it seems odd that they would still be using numbers stations.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
You can download the mp3's for free: http://irdial.hyperreal.org/the%20conet%20project/
It's quite likely they're broadcasting from here Google Satellite
That's Ayios Nikolaos. 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.
Awaiting the follow-up Slashdot article about Numbers Websites and Numbers IRC Channels ... are there any known ones?
Ron
In ten years someone who has been recording them for thirty years will have quantum breakers to decode them with. Once this first layer of protection is broken - and it will be - then I hope our information inside of that is also semantically encoded (Windtalkers) to give it a few more years after that before someone else knows our old secrets.
Shh.
For those of you who like this sort of thing, check out 202-386-6909 and http://code-cracker.cerbumi.org. This is a test project that I developed for Cerbumi.org, a new and entirely non-commercial (no ads, fees, etc) website designed to help with real-world problem solving. (Think of it as a "Sourceforge.net" for projects like the "Open Prosthetics Project.") The first person to solve the puzzle and post the answer to the code-breaker project can choose where the Cerbumi.org team will make a $100 donation on their behalf.
:)
If this sounds like fun, please consider signing up for the Cerbumi.org site at http://public.cerbumi.org/goons (a "secret back door for a site that normally requires registration) and try to crack the code. Also, please consider checking out the main planning project at http://cerbumi.cerbumi.org and our Flash-based demo at http://cerbumi.org/flash. I'd love to hear your thoughts, too... just reply.
8-6-7-5-3-0-9
Flexible bare-metal recovery for Linux/UNIX
I'm surprised there has not been a J-Horror movie about this. I'm am not easily scared by anything, but listening to these stations seriously freaks me out.
207 46 225 60
207 46 18 30
You couldn't have given us a warning before you linked there?
g
Yankee
Hotel
Foxtrot
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.
So... who's the guy that determines which strings are more interesting than others? That's what I want to know...
i been a shortwave lister for over 20 years with a high quality R.L. Drake, i listened to number stations and after listening to them for a moment i spun the dial in search of something more interesting...
i miss the weekend evenings of listening to Pirate radio - Captain Eddie & his Radio Airplane, Dr. Tornado and Joe Mamma, frequencies like 7385KHz & 6955KHz have not had any good listening lately, i sure wish i knew of some other frequencies to monitor because dialing thru 30 megahertz of bandwidth is just too much to search thru in a single evening...
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
You're correct, but just in the interests of preventing confusion, the idea of what was a "long wave" in the early 20th century was very different from what an electrical engineer might think of today. What are today rather low frequencies for radio communication were at the time rather high, hence the term 'short waves.' The preferred frequencies for communication at the time are now barely used by anyone, with the possible exception of naval communication with submarines and the like. Their data-carrying capacity is just too low, and the antennas they require are obnoxiously large.
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.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Um, hello? Typical bloody troll. Now it's appropriate, it sods off.
"So... who's the guy that determines which strings are more interesting than others? That's what I want to know..."
The guy who invented string theory.
271828 459 04 5314 15926 53 58979 323 84!
62643 38 32795 028841 97169399 3751058?
Whiskey Tango Foxtrot
Whiskey Tango Foxtrot
Whiskey Tango Foxtrot
*cough* http://forums.anti-slash.org/viewtopic.php?t=1324 *cough*
I wonder if I use bold in my signature, people will notice my posts.
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.
First of all, you should immediately refocus all of your thoughts on "How to pretend to be a spy". The number one thing you should be doing, in the first few hundred hours you invest in pretending to be a spy, is lining up a good reward for successfully pretending. What use is someone who's an expert at pretending to be a spy? First of all, they become an immediate hot ticket for top corporate positions; their social skills lead to immediate pay and romantic benefits; as effective human beings, they lead more meaningful lives. These are just a few ideas to get you started.
Next, the number one thing you need to keep in mind all day, every day, is "How does this look?" For example, right now, I am trolling slashdot. This is the most important word for me, in my life as a pretend spy: trolling. It explains, in a heartbeat, everything less than literally so that a person might say or lead another person to perceive. Trolling. Trolling is its own reward, and one of the main reasons for pretending to be a spy. Wikipedia's article on trolling is a good starting resource.
Long-term possibilities after effectively pretending to be a spy include:
- Book-writing
- Screenplay-writing
- Consultancy
What are you pretending to do?
You are pretending to be completing actions distinct from those a typically socialized observer would consider you to be doing. Specifically, you are pretending to be gathering and recording information about your surroundings and the people you interact with, without appearing to do so. Thus one of the most effective ways of pretending to be a spy is to do creative work that reworks intelligence gathered. Many professional stand-up comics in fact pretend to be spies, for example Seinfeld. When mentioning "gathering material", they are in fact gathering social intelligence. During the Cold War, Russia trained tens of thousands of spies using networked American television.
Fundamental test. The fundamental test for "appearing to do so" is the sanity-test: is it clear and obvious to you that you are currently gathering intelligence? If so, it is clear and obvious to others. You must instead use tools and methods that leave you in a state of mind such that you only suspect you are doing something as part of pretending to be a spy. For example, using TrueCrypt is a clear and obvious act of inexplicable social deviation: you would have to have a reason for doing so, and you would always have this reason somewhere in your mind. (For example "I'm using TrueCrypt as part of pretending to be a spy, or "I am reading this nonfiction book on espionage as part of my pretending to be a spy" ) On the other hand, there is no clear distinction between using web-mail that happens to be secure for practical reasons, or because the spy you're pretending to be would find it useful also. Similarly, there is no clear distinction between reading a fiction spy thriller for fun, or to be more effective at pretending to be a spy.
Spy gadgets and hardware: This is a tough one. I am still investigating what devices you may use (tentatively, it would appear you may have on your person a mobile phone and car keys, to the exclusion of any other item.) However, you may definitely use any and all web-based applications from Yahoo or Google. However, your best bet is to post in forums. For example, this post is one of the main tools I am using as part of pretending to be a spy. That's right, I am pretending to be a spy (with the below allegience) even as we speak.
Allegience: The primary purpose for pretending to be a spy, as opposed to finding work in actual espionage, is in having an allegience to progress over military advantage. Obviously, it's much cooler to make the world work better and more easily than it is to forward some data to the military. No one pretends to be a spy for military reasons.
Slashdot and The Open Source Community: Unfortunatel
Why couldn't it be replaced by websurfing? Maybe the codes are ultra subtle? Perhaps the .gif on the title bar of a certain webpage has it's pixels on one row manipulated in a very small way to give a massages, perhaps instead of being pitch black (0,0,0) it is (1,0,0) undectable to the human eye and perhaps seen as irrevelant to 99.999% people who do detect it but write it off as an artifact/noise introduced somehow in the making of the gif.
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.
nuff said!
I picked up a radio station once on one of those obscure channels that wasn't registered to any radio stations. It just seemed to be random sentences and/or words, nothing all day but random sentences and words. Listened to it for a while, got bored and moved on.
I think this is to keep all those 'conspiratists' busy decrypting random data instead of real transfers going on on other channels.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
This one is better than the silly numbers stations http://www.spamradio.com/
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
867-5309?
If they are truly "random digits" they either would not mean anything, or whatever they happened to mean would very probably be of no interest to the decoder. I'll settle for "seemingly-random digits".
I listened to some of those recordings and they were clearly the leaders transmitted by commercial stations, to indicate where the real transmission is. Over the course of the day, shortwave stations move to different frequencies, that are better propagated by the ionosphere.
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.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
Shouldn't it be possible to use a directional antenna or some similar technology, from several points around the globe to locate the source of the transmissions with a reasonably high degree of precision?
:)
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.
You definitely can, it's (as you stated) usually called "moonbounce" or EME, for Earth-Moon-Earth. I'm not sure that it's really a particularly useful form of communication, but that doesn't stop hams from doing it just for the hell of it. (Though I've wondered if there are some 'Mad Max' style disaster scenarios where EME would conceivably be useful...)
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, 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.)
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
>: 4 8 15 16 23 42
The fate of the world depends on you posting these numbers to slashdot every 108 minutes.
Thanks,
Hanso
codename: Jenny. Passphrase: Tommy Tutone
...is a longitude.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
Lest you think all these secret stations are foreign, here's the story of Yosemite Sam, a station that transmitted "I'm a gonna get you, you varmint!" followed by a quick digital BRAP sound, and how it was traced by enterprising hams to a US military-industrial facility.
Has anyone ever done any sort of an analysis of the HELLO WORLD trolls? I was always curious as to whether they're truly random, or whether they're some sort of encrypted or obfuscated text. Seems like if you could get enough of them, it might be possible to analyze them and get a better understanding of what they are. Or at least tell whether they're somebody's idea of a practical joke (some sort of weak cipher designed to be broken) or a modern cipher or one-time pad.
I was disappointed to note that they've removed the section about the HELLO WORLD troll (and most of the other interesting Slashdot phenomena) from the Wikipedia page, which used to have links to a bunch of them.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
The Cuban station mentioned in the article sounds like the cut-numbers station, which sends 5-letter groups that are morse code numbers, but shortened.
So instead of 1 (*----) they send A (*-), and instead of 2 (**---) they send U (**-), and 3 (***--) becomes V (***-), etc.
OK, what if the sequences are one time pad keys or other crypto keys? Then there would be nothing to crack, there is no message. The end user and the transmitter agree on a protocol, e.g., only use the sequence generated at 1620 UTC. Then after each day that sequence is discarded.
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.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
Why would the American spooks broadcast such things in American territory? Why are they going to spy on in their own territory?
The primary tactical advantage of broadcasting is that it does not reveal who is receiving the message - on a large scale you cannot find the few people who are listening to the broadcasts. This worked well for the saboteurs in Vichy France.
What benefit would you get on friendly territory?
Melissa
"Screw Sun, cross-platform will never work. Let's move on and steal the Java language." - Visual J++ Product Manager
Not as creepy as an MD5 checksum.
4815162342 what?
When my Karma level reaches 0 I feel in piece with the Universe
I for one welcome our new Dharma Initiative/Hanso Foundation overlords.
No one has any idea what these number stations are for. There was only one post that mentioned that they keep the channels occupied in this way.
A real mystery on our hands...why hasn't any journalist try to interview personnel from these stations? they can not be found?
$ cat /dev/random | od -d
0000000 44861 24463 27411 63733 923 2320 30799 6773
0000020 15073 49403 34050 30446 64169 55874 50166 578
0000040 52122 33340 29292 25946 12090 32538 16436 56851
0000060 4308 51330 33500 60065 42297 15480 41734 48922
0000100 26139 32551 12345 5375 56736 2246 15226 15503
0000120 38370 56665 22823 53801 29420 52343 56713 63720
0000140 39529 53935 64657 60112 8309 38789 51823 26533
0000160 27458 8548 58528 22448 566 7408 50269 11947
0000200 61260 33187 36703 59854 51138 13947 62274 24150
0000220 20773 4642 40180 40570 3646 11936 26718 7876
0000240 8587 42667 45243 17710 56362 16606 16919 63247
0000260 37960 28875 19628 12323 23320 4985 44964 23526
0000300 33470 17054 8891 28931 59153 24617 33775 10443
0000320 36086 12801 49810 54515 40104 36856 16482 29448
0000340 60702 13686 35316 24215 8780 59142 52885 37912
0000360 36537 47625 32982 63748 20631 33248 44324 228
0000400 48636 27661 22426 63422 39525 44553 9084 43212
0000420 27193 64294 15114 18778 4856 38298 23296 5047
0000440 38354 47682 20214 6906 10058 25771 778 43583
0000460 45710 5708 52664 47667 33310 15816 56341 50350
0000500 25527 25100 45844 28883 56629 24571 64227 16336
0000520 3957 19412 13898 1025 63880 42455 40742 44593
0000540 55417 29999 30644 14005 29567 39929 20657 58152
0000560 52580 27791 22793 37578 43684 49665 58398 31041
0000600 61896 15080 64829 62694 17055 18169 58824 53430
0000620 22526 56617 41545 24848 44889 38466 39472 54927
0000640 25332 42434 32998 37080 64113 24865 31620 23166
0000660 13613 16702 3578 8921 44862 54909 56065 25561
0000700 60396 57468 38470 32917 40534 57998 53715 15195
0000720 8928 34967 16258 52072 54777 24717 51490 4853
0000740 47095 48384 37876 62391 37538 58973 27590 37970
0000760 12311 48452 44741 3783 9456 32836 31829 36270
Years ago, some friends of mine used to find sport listening to "Numbers Stations". One in particular, during the Soviet era, used to identify itself as "The Moscow Radiotelephone Station." They would get on the air and proclaim "This data is for Testing Purposes Only, from the Moscow Radio Telephone Station, Book xx, Page yy, Group zz..." and then proceed with five letter cipher groups in perfect english phonetics. (Substitute xx, yy, and zz with whatever numbers of book, page and group they were sending at the time).
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?
Nearly fifty percent of all graduates come from the bottom half of the class!
Looks like the site used to have a Wullenweber antenna, judging from the big circle with the smaller concentric circle inside, and the little building in the middle. Those are being decommissioned more and more these days, though. It's sad, 'cause they're incredibly cool, but there's just not much need for high-precision HF direction finding any more.
If you claim that your signal had been flying for just one minute then it would have circled the globe over 400 times:+ %2F+40076+km&btnG=Search ... or it could have bounced between the moon and the earth almost 50 times:+ %2F+360000+km&btnG=Search
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=c+*+60+s
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=c+*+60+s
If you had claimed a few seconds, then that would have been likely as 2.5 seconds is the time it takes to bounce a signal off the moon once.
In two minutes you can boucne a sigal off mars, but think about how small mars looks from this distance, you'd need a very powerful transmitter and a very directional antenna to pick up the signal again.
Think about it; if signals really bounced around for several minutes inside the ionosphere, then all transmissions would be jamming themselves and all radio communication would be impossible.
-- To dream a dream is grand, but to live it is divine. -- Leto ][
As long as you're trolling. . , here's another freebie you might want to include in your dossier: If you deliberately disconnect yourself from the human race, you will not be connected when it comes time to share your thoughts as a writer. Being a writer means getting on the same wavelength as your audience and you cannot do this from the sociopath's perspective.
To say that in another way; If you want to be a writer, you will need to have decent communication skills. Your post was difficult to understand, and that's not because the ideas themselves are particularly complex. Humans are very good at connecting dis-connected ideas, but only when they are dis-connected in a way Humans are good at connecting; that is, some types of random taste better than others. You can only know which is which by going native.
Yes, there is an advantage to stepping outside the automatia of the average human head-space. Heck, everybody should strive to step beyond the automatic behavior they run around using 95% of the time. But to do this simply by becoming another type of machine is, in my opinion, A Bad Idea. Pretend to be something long enough and that's what you become. Be careful. Love is the key, not coldness.
-FL
its horrible i just figured it out .....
the number stations are linked to the mayan calendar !!
they are broadcasting number sequences in a coutdown fashion or maybe trying to predict the exact time
of the great cataclysm !!!
these broadcasts are intended for the aliens so they know when its time to launch their take over of the world !!!!!
whoda thunk it the aliens number stations and the mayans are all intrinsically linked TO OUR DEMISE !!!!!
Music the Paint dancefloor the canvas your body the brush
http://www.lostpedia.com/wiki/The_Numbers
OK, it is easy to imagine this being done in the past, before TOR and irc.... but there are so many more, less trackable methods, and the hobbyists make me wonder if this is now mostly fake, like crop circles.
..has said it, i will:
i bought the CDs and listen to them a few times a year. it's just plain strange, which is why i like it. put them on and cook or clean or have a nice fuck. it's just different.