Slashdot Mirror
UVB-76 Explained
Useful Wheat writes "Recently slashdot covered the reappearance of UVB-76. The function of the mysterious transmitter has been revealed: UVB-76 is used to transfer orders to military personnel, along with the time at which they should be executed. 'Words for the radio messages and code tables are selected mainly from the scientific terms of chemistry (Brohman), Geology (ganomatit), philology (Izafat), geography (Bong), Zoology (kariama), history (Scythian), cooking (drying), sports (krolist) and others, as well as rare Russian words (glashatel).' The page continues to list all 23 transmissions that have been made from the station in the past, showing that UVB-76 may be more active than believed."
Actually the Wikipedia page clearly cites a geocities page as the "creditable source"... Not sure if that makes it better or worse.
If you read down further in that article there is a section that states "According to an archived Russian webpage (purportedly written by the Russian Strategic Rocket Forces), UVB-76 is used to transfer orders to military personnel, along with the time at which they should be executed." The citation for this, however, is an unavailable Wayback Machine archived page. Maybe it's being Slashdotted now but it's not helping the veracity of these claims. Yeah, this is a crappy submission. All it links is a Wikipedia page and nothing of substance.
The fact that Taco submitted this is a nice reflection of the declining state of Slashdot submissions -- if Taco doesn't give a fuck, then why should anyone else?
This particular submission may be crap, but the situation around UVB-76 demonstrates that it is becoming hard to keep any secrets on the shortwave band. There are thousands of listeners at any given time. And what is much more important, they now have the ability to record big chunks of spectrum and analyze it in a way that was only available to government agencies not long ago. $500 receiver (there are even sub-$100 DIY alternatives) and free software is all you need. /.
The next big step is exchange of such information. It may be outright illegal (UK) or borderline legal (US) to tell other what you've heard, but people do this more and more on various forums. Now including
Sometimes I think stupid shit is posted just for us to poop on.
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