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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.
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/
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.
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!
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
Great, now we have to post this every 108 minutes.
For those few still using actual radio, rather than just the broadcaster metaphor, sure. But, if you don't mind my asking, to what end? What good would it do you to know the site of origin?
StoneCypher is Full of BS
shouldn't it be fairly straightforward to locate the origin of these transmissions?
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
The truth shall set you free!
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.
A quantum computer is useless against a message encrypted with a properly constructed one-time pad.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
8-6-7-5-3-0-9
Flexible bare-metal recovery for Linux/UNIX
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
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...
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 decrypts are a good example of this.
(Wow! First time I've ever linked to the NSA!)
...laura
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.
Perhaps they do use spam. I've received a number of cryptic junk e-mails recently — not selling anything, just (mis)quoting Shakespeare or some random numbers. Though I figure it's more likely related to criminality than covert intelligence.
>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 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
1 in 4 Maine children in struggle with hunger.
That's actually spammer's trying to mess with any bayesian filtering you have so that more of their viagra ads get through.
I've seen an article on it, here or on digg.
-Interesting.
John Walsh once found me while looking for some other kid. He was not amused.
Whiskey Tango Foxtrot
Whiskey Tango Foxtrot
Whiskey Tango Foxtrot
You can find more at Wikipedia's article on hardware random number generators:
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
*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.
The interesting question is, how do you know whether you're listening to the message or the pad? 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?
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
You want your one-time pads to be very, very secret; that's why you can spread the actual cryptotext anywhere and not have to worry about a thing. If it were as simple as comparing one numbers station to another, any intelligence agency with a few computers to throw at the problem could check the numbers against each other and look for meaningful messages. While you might think that's oh-so-slightly unlikely, is it something you're willing to bet your security as an intelligence agency on?
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
I've gotten a lot of one word emails and whatnot, still caught by spam filters. It is an intiguing idea though. Howver what is more likely is that spyign will take tactics from Al-Qaeda, encrypting messages inside images, and media files. In fact it would make sense if the entirety of U.S. intelligence operates through encoded message within Fox News broadcasts.
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.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
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?
Also it should be remembered OTP is only as good as it's random number source. so unless the OTP was generated using some truly random number generator (pseudo random number generator or a generator which depended on hardware events which can be predicted) then random number sequance becomes predictable and OTP can indeed be broken.
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".
Shoul've read it before clicking the post button
(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.
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 messages, he could just use all of the recorded numbers values, sliding them against your messages.
No, if you want your one-time pads to be secure, they must be kept absolutely secret. 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? Which is exactly why one-time pads are less useful in practice than they might seem to be. In reality, their primary use is in situations where there are two channels available, one fast but insecure, the other slow but secure. Use of the slow-but-secure channel to transport OTPs then allows the fast-but-insecure channel to be used securely.
I have no idea if it's real, but one of Tom Clancy's books described a likely OTP usage scenario -- secure communications between the US government and it's embassies in foreign countries. The OTPs were generated from true random sources and burned onto pairs of CDs, one of which was kept at the State Department and the other of which was sent to an embassy in the diplomatic pouch, hand-carried by a trusted courier. When either Washington or the embassy used the CD to encrypt or decrypt message traffic, the CD was read by a special player with an extra laser, which burned away the OTP data as soon as it was read off the disk. That way, were the embassy to fall the enemy wouldn't be able to recover the OTP data and use it to decrypt already sent -- and intercepted -- messages.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
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.
Crumb's Corollary: Never bring a knife to a bun fight.
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.
Could have been worse. It could have been every 108 posts. Try to get that right
That looks a lot like a AN/FLR-9 (http://www.fas.org/irp/program/collect/an-flr-9.h tm).
:)
The problem with DF-ing HF sites can be realized when you take a look at a FLR-9's or equivalent's antenna arrays: The wavelength of transmissions in the HF range are so long that a huge amount of space must be mapped-out between the receiving elements in order to produce sufficient phase-shift to generate an acceptably accurate line of bearing (LOB). This results in a very large, decidedly non-portable system that, in spite of its size and expense, will only generate a compass bearing, along which bearing the transmitter could be anywhere. You need a dead-minimum of TWO such facilities with AN/FLR-9s or the equivalent, geographically separated enough to create as close to a perpendicular LOB relative to the first as you can get. The width of a major continent will do nicely.
Unfortunately, a two-LOB fix is rarely used on its own, as there is no way to estimate the reliability of the fix. For that, you need at least ONE MORE site, itself just as geographically dispersed from the others, in order to create what is called an Elliptical Error Probablility, or EEP. I'm not going to attempt the math, but in a nutshell it's a circle drawn on the map within which the target transmitter has a certain chance of being found. EEPs range in confidence from 50-90%, depending upon the number of LOBs that can be taken upon a given target. The more LOBs taken, the higher the confidence and the smaller the size of the circle (not a job for the impatient).
Okay, now that's for your plain-vanilla HF transmitter with a plain-vanilla dipole antenna, sending a plain-vanilla carrier wave. Now, toss in a few rather interesting monkey-wrenches that folks can employ when they're not-too keen on being found: Troposcatter. Ionoscatter. Meteorscatter. Spread-spectrum. Hoppers. Things start getting fun at this point.
So, yes; in a way DF-ing a HF broadcast is 'simple,' as long as you have the BOO-KOO BUCKS required to construct, man, and maintain such a string of facilities, as well as the inter-site telecommunications network required to coordinate all operations.
NSA can do it. Me? Sorry; I already spent my lunch money for today.
Regards;
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."
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.
Done with slashdot, done with nerds, getting a life.
>: 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
Of course it's possible to crack with enough computing power - just brute force it (ie make EVERY CONCIEVABLE KEY and try it against that), have the computer spit out solutions it thinks might be the one (test for words formed) and have the user tell it which is correct and which ones just happened to form words. It'd take a long long time with todays computing power, but its not IMPOSSIBLE.
Commodore64_love: I don't comprehend people who're so frightened of death that they'll bankrupt themselves to stay alive
...is a longitude.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
Commodore64_love: I don't comprehend people who're so frightened of death that they'll bankrupt themselves to stay alive
Are you trying to be funny, or are you clueless. I can't tell.
As is often the case this post is in fact a secret message encoded with a one time pad. Try to guess what the secret is.
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
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.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
Not as creepy as an MD5 checksum.
36 24 366 -24-36.html
http://www.seeklyrics.com/lyrics/Violent-Femmes/3
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?
Does the laptops and sat phones come with a t-shirt that says "American Spy" on it? I guess not, as just carrying a laptop and sat phone around in many parts of the world is equivalent to a t-shirt which says "American Spy" on it in big, orange letters.
Chernobyl 'not a wildlife haven' - BBC News
Yeah. Would you choose a neurosurgeon who pokes around people's brains in his spare time? I wouldn't.
The ionosphere bounce is most often like a flat mirror in the sky much like seeing the sky reflected on a hot road in the desert (looks like water on the road). Even though the direction of the wave appears to be from a few degrees above the horizon, the azmith is not skewed much most of the time. Most of the CDAA antennas have the delays set to focus not on signals from the horizon, but from a few degrees above the horizon. The more antennas you have which are spread out increases the antenna apature and much of the drift gets averaged out providing a reasonably accurate line of bearing. The sky wave is dynamic. The longer a signal is present, the more samples can be integrated also increasing the accuracy. With many coordinated stations, the circle you get on the map that may contain the source of the transmission becomes quite small.
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.
The truth shall set you free!
You do realise that using that process all you'd get is a list of every possible message the same length as the original message, right? It would still be impossible to know which of the numerous possible coherent messages it was - there is simply no way to distinguish "bribe the president" from "shoot the president", for example.
Chernobyl 'not a wildlife haven' - BBC News
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
> But why not just use the same secure channel later?
Because a spy looks kinda suspicious when he's accompanied by his handler 24/7
Done with slashdot, done with nerds, getting a life.
Because a spy looks kinda suspicious when he's accompanied by his handler 24/7
Right, that's the case where the secure channel's deficiency is that it can only be used occasionally.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
Even if they weren't using One Time Pads, this would make absolutely no difference.
Infosec theory has long regarded crypto more as a means to delay the availability of information to unauthorized parties than as a means of actually denying its availability.
You use a form of crypto that is convenient for the target use and known to take longer to break than the time this information will remain sensitive. Information that will remain sensitive indefinitely should always be OTP-encrypted.
Not much, and that's kind of the point. At the expense of it being relatively easy to locate and listen to the signal, it is impossible to decipher the message or determine the recipients (if any) or their whereabouts.
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.
we have to post this every 108 minutes.
Don't worry, nothing will happen if we don't.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
Grab a dictionary and look up "rhetorical question."
StoneCypher is Full of BS