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Numbers stations- calling all spies.

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T-rav20
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10 Apr 2007, 2:00 am

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numbers_station
Has anyone ever heard of this? Or, even better, is anyone into shortwave radio, and actually heard these transmissions? I'm not, and I find the subject both fascinating, and rather disturbing, and there seems to be precious little about it on the web.


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10 Apr 2007, 2:43 am

Back in the earily 90's I listened to shortwave alot and heard them as I surfed the dial.



T-rav20
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10 Apr 2007, 3:18 am

Cool, so, what do you think, The CIA? Drug dealers? A Hoax? I'd say the government but it's such an elegant and simple solution, and so well hidden, it's hard to beleve that a bureaucracy has anything to do with it. :lol:


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10 Apr 2007, 4:31 am

lol Lost 4 8 15 16 23 42 :d

they r prob nothing. if i had a powerful radio broadcaster i would do s**t like that.



0_equals_true
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10 Apr 2007, 4:34 am

Even if it is for spies it isn't anything profound. My dad was in the foreign office. They had an FCO Telegram slot every week for every foreign mission. the operator would type it up on disk encrypt it using a one time only and wait for their slot then transmit. Having an RF signal means you can get it to anyone in the field and they wouldn't need a descrambler. It is likely it is low order encryption meaning the message is for short term information. The pentagon has even been known to transmit unencrypted satellite surveillance of operations in Bosnia. Their argument was it was it was the operation was in real time so there was no need to encrypt. But if an enthusiast in UK was able to get hold of them then the people they were raiding might of.

There is a myth about spies. Most people who work in the security services are not spies. Sure they are called that. Sure they have agent and officer do some of the field intelligence work. But real spies are run by operators. This is to give a degree of separation between the organisation and the spies.



matt271
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10 Apr 2007, 4:38 am

another thing, if they had to broadcast secret messages, why have a voice say it in code?? why not enccode it sorta like ASCII but a non-standard one. say a 7bit system with 128 chars in no logical order, that can than be decoded to several out of order strings making up messaged, spelled badly, or even in another language. they could replace key words like "the" with gibberish, and use 2 or 3 dif chars to represent a common letter like "t". ohhhhhhh they could use a "newspeak"-like language :d



T-rav20
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10 Apr 2007, 5:00 am

0_equals_true wrote:
Even if it is for spies it isn't anything profound. My dad was in the foreign office. They had an FCO Telegram slot every week for every foreign mission. the operator would type it up on disk encrypt it using a one time only and wait for their slot then transmit. Having an RF signal means you can get it to anyone in the field and they wouldn't need a descrambler. It is likely it is low order encryption meaning the message is for short term information. The pentagon has even been known to transmit unencrypted satellite surveillance of operations in Bosnia. Their argument was it was it was the operation was in real time so there was no need to encrypt. But if an enthusiast in UK was able to get hold of them then the people they were raiding might of.


Yeah, but look at how it's set up- illegaly broadcasting over open channels, using one time pads, if it is the government it's either A) A hoax, disinformation, stuff like that or B) (more likely, imho) they're actually transmitting to agents in the field, and besides, look at all of those transmissions coming from the former ComBloc countries, I doubt they're going to play mind games over the radio.


0_equals_true wrote:
There is a myth about spies. Most people who work in the security services are not spies. Sure they are called that. Sure they have agent and officer do some of the field intelligence work. But real spies are run by operators. This is to give a degree of separation between the organisation and the spies.
Yeah, I know, most of them are analysts and all that, but again, if this is kosher, why are they dinking around with shortwave, and why are other countries doing the same?


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Last edited by T-rav20 on 10 Apr 2007, 5:05 am, edited 2 times in total.

0_equals_true
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10 Apr 2007, 5:03 am

matt271 wrote:
another thing, if they had to broadcast secret messages, why have a voice say it in code?? why not enccode it sorta like ASCII but a non-standard one. say a 7bit system with 128 chars in no logical order, that can than be decoded to several out of order strings making up messaged, spelled badly, or even in another language. they could replace key words like "the" with gibberish, and use 2 or 3 dif chars to represent a common letter like "t". ohhhhhhh they could use a "newspeak"-like language :d

It is not necessary this messages are not deemed that level of secrecy they would be sort term operation information. What you are talking about is effectively a primitive scrambler. The more stuff you but on the more kit the agents are going to have to carry around. This system they just use a normal radio receiver and the one time pad. Though the encryption is not likely to be a simple substitution method because it is easily to use frequency analysis on that.



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10 Apr 2007, 5:05 am

T-rav20 wrote:
0_equals_true wrote:
Even if it is for spies it isn't anything profound. My dad was in the foreign office. They had an FCO Telegram slot every week for every foreign mission. the operator would type it up on disk encrypt it using a one time only and wait for their slot then transmit. Having an RF signal means you can get it to anyone in the field and they wouldn't need a descrambler. It is likely it is low order encryption meaning the message is for short term information. The pentagon has even been known to transmit unencrypted satellite surveillance of operations in Bosnia. Their argument was it was it was the operation was in real time so there was no need to encrypt. But if an enthusiast in UK was able to get hold of them then the people they were raiding might of.

There is a myth about spies. Most people who work in the security services are not spies. Sure they are called that. Sure they have agent and officer do some of the field intelligence work. But real spies are run by operators. This is to give a degree of separation between the organisation and the spies.


Yeah, but look at how it's set up- illegaly broadcasting over open channels, using one time pads, if it is the government it's either A) A hoax, disinformation, stuff like that or B) (more likely, imho) they're actually transmitting to agents in the field, and besides, look at all of those transmissions coming from the former ComBloc countries, I doubt they're going to play mind games over the radio.


I'm not dissagring with you, i'm just saying it is not profound. Its a sytem that can be used by anyone and probably is.



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10 Apr 2007, 5:10 am

0_equals_true wrote:
T-rav20 wrote:
0_equals_true wrote:
Even if it is for spies it isn't anything profound. My dad was in the foreign office. They had an FCO Telegram slot every week for every foreign mission. the operator would type it up on disk encrypt it using a one time only and wait for their slot then transmit. Having an RF signal means you can get it to anyone in the field and they wouldn't need a descrambler. It is likely it is low order encryption meaning the message is for short term information. The pentagon has even been known to transmit unencrypted satellite surveillance of operations in Bosnia. Their argument was it was it was the operation was in real time so there was no need to encrypt. But if an enthusiast in UK was able to get hold of them then the people they were raiding might of.

There is a myth about spies. Most people who work in the security services are not spies. Sure they are called that. Sure they have agent and officer do some of the field intelligence work. But real spies are run by operators. This is to give a degree of separation between the organisation and the spies.


Yeah, but look at how it's set up- illegaly broadcasting over open channels, using one time pads, if it is the government it's either A) A hoax, disinformation, stuff like that or B) (more likely, imho) they're actually transmitting to agents in the field, and besides, look at all of those transmissions coming from the former ComBloc countries, I doubt they're going to play mind games over the radio.


I'm not dissagring with you, i'm just saying it is not profound. Its a sytem that can be used by anyone and probably is.


I'm not saying that it's the missile codes, or SDI, or anything like that, but the last time I checked, the Cold war was over, why are programs like this continuing, even increasing?


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0_equals_true
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10 Apr 2007, 5:19 am

T-rav20 wrote:
0_equals_true wrote:
T-rav20 wrote:
0_equals_true wrote:
Even if it is for spies it isn't anything profound. My dad was in the foreign office. They had an FCO Telegram slot every week for every foreign mission. the operator would type it up on disk encrypt it using a one time only and wait for their slot then transmit. Having an RF signal means you can get it to anyone in the field and they wouldn't need a descrambler. It is likely it is low order encryption meaning the message is for short term information. The pentagon has even been known to transmit unencrypted satellite surveillance of operations in Bosnia. Their argument was it was it was the operation was in real time so there was no need to encrypt. But if an enthusiast in UK was able to get hold of them then the people they were raiding might of.

There is a myth about spies. Most people who work in the security services are not spies. Sure they are called that. Sure they have agent and officer do some of the field intelligence work. But real spies are run by operators. This is to give a degree of separation between the organisation and the spies.


Yeah, but look at how it's set up- illegaly broadcasting over open channels, using one time pads, if it is the government it's either A) A hoax, disinformation, stuff like that or B) (more likely, imho) they're actually transmitting to agents in the field, and besides, look at all of those transmissions coming from the former ComBloc countries, I doubt they're going to play mind games over the radio.


I'm not dissagring with you, I’m just saying it is not profound. Its a sytem that can be used by anyone and probably is.


I'm not saying that it's the missile codes, or SDI, or anything like that, but the last time I checked, the Cold war was over, why are programs like this continuing, even increasing?


The cold war is over but there is a lot of organised crime and corruption, as well as current conflicts. Like I said it could be anything. It is not strictly necessary there are a dozens other ways they could do it. Pigeon is one. Low tech solutions are often used when they want to maintain 'silence' on a particular system. There is no particular reason for intelligence agencies to use these systems other than arbitrary, or they are unable to use the more expensive methods.



T-rav20
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10 Apr 2007, 5:24 am

I suppose


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lau
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10 Apr 2007, 9:19 am

0_equals_true wrote:
... This system they just use a normal radio receiver and the one time pad. Though the encryption is not likely to be a simple substitution method because it is easily to use frequency analysis on that.

I just thought I'd point out... "one time pad" and "simple substitution" are two different encryption methods. The former can be uncrackable. The latter is easy to break, provided the message is long enough. You won't crack the message "Fly west" versus "Run east", encrypted as "Gqv irbt"


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0_equals_true
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11 Apr 2007, 5:31 pm

Lau wrote:
0_equals_true wrote:
... This system they just use a normal radio receiver and the one time pad. Though the encryption is not likely to be a simple substitution method because it is easily to use frequency analysis on that.

I just thought I'd point out... "one time pad" and "simple substitution" are two different encryption methods. The former can be uncrackable. The latter is easy to break, provided the message is long enough. You won't crack the message "Fly west" versus "Run east", encrypted as "Gqv irbt"

Yes you're right. I was referring to the literal system of paper pad I know they where still using in the Foreign Office in the 90s for FCO telegrams as my dad explained it. That was both one time pad and paper pad.



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11 Apr 2007, 6:10 pm

Slightly off topic, but is quantum computing still scaring to pants off the cryptographers? They're pretty redundant if you quantum effects for the encryption/communication. If you don't use quantum for the encryption, only "one time pad" is safe from brute-force decryption by QC.


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methinks
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11 Apr 2007, 11:44 pm

Simply sonically speaking,I think the Conet Project is gorgeous,weird,and spooky.It used to be available free-of-charge at the Internet Archive.Eleventy thumbs up.It's also fun to scan late-night shortwave dials in search of those things,like fishing for sound magic.

fwiw,online shortwave radios: http://www.dxtuners.com/