Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Number Stations and Enigma Stations

sigidwiki.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 41 posts

Re: Number Stations and Enigma Stations

#21

Post by djaouen »

anonymousiam wrote: post #17
gorgoiler wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The OP message is made of ascii ordinals encoded in hexadecimal. That led me to some interesting ideas based on fooling your adversary into thinking they had cracked your code, when they had in fact missed a hidden message: 1/ In the above example the message was “one if by land two if by…” and the encoding base was hexadecimal. Does a message exist that encodes in a different base but looks like it is hexadecimal? F…

41 74 20 44 45 46 43 4F 4E 2C 20 49 20 68 61 76 65 20 6D 65 74 20 67 6F 76 65 72 6E 6D 65 6E 74 20 53 49 47 49 4E 54 2F 43 52 59 50 54 4F 20 70 65 6F 70 6C 65 20 77 68 6F 20 63 6F 75 6C 64 20 63 6F 75 6C 64 20 6C 6F 6F 6B 20 61 74 20 61 20 73 74 72 65 61 6D 20 6F 66 20 68 65 78 20 62 79 74 65 73 20 61 6E 64 20 72 65 61 64 20 74 68 65 6D 20 69 6E 20 74 68 65 69 72 20 68 65 61 64 20 73 65 61 6D 6C 65 73 73 6C 79 2E

49 20 73 74 69 6c 6c 20 6e 65 65 64 20 22 6d 61 6e 20 61 73 63 69 69 22 20 6c 6f 6c

Re: Number Stations and Enigma Stations

#22

Post by anonymousiam »

djaouen wrote: post #21
anonymousiam wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

41 74 20 44 45 46 43 4F 4E 2C 20 49 20 68 61 76 65 20 6D 65 74 20 67 6F 76 65 72 6E 6D 65 6E 74 20 53 49 47 49 4E 54 2F 43 52 59 50 54 4F 20 70 65 6F 70 6C 65 20 77 68 6F 20 63 6F 75 6C 64 20 63 6F 75 6C 64 20 6C 6F 6F 6B 20 61 74 20 61 20 73 74 72 65 61 6D 20 6F 66 20 68 65 78 20 62 79 74 65 73 20 61 6E 64 20 72 65 61 64 20 74 68 65 6D 20 69 6E 20 74 68 65 69 72 20 68 65 61 64 20 73 65 61 6D 6C 65 73 73 6C 79 2E

49 20 73 74 69 6c 6c 20 6e 65 65 64 20 22 6d 61 6e 20 61 73 63 69 69 22 20 6c 6f 6c

53 6F 20 64 6F 20 49 2E

Re: Number Stations and Enigma Stations

#23

Post by mike_d »

geoffeg wrote: post #6

I assume most numbers stations have disappeared in part due to the proliferation of global internet access. But I've kinda wondered, how does that work? One of the benefits of numbers stations is that it was nearly impossible to determine who was listening to a shortwave radio station. Any internet resource someone visits would be traceable by the government. Even with SSL nearly everywhere it's not nearly as anonymo…

You can blame satellite TV for the demise of numbers stations. Shortwave radios became less common with the uptake in broadcast television, so it in turn became more suspicious to be in possession of one.

I won't speak to the methods the US uses now, but Russians are fond of ad-hoc wireless networks in public places.

Re: Number Stations and Enigma Stations

#24

Post by 082349872349872 »

mike_d wrote: post #23
geoffeg wrote: post #6

I assume most numbers stations have disappeared in part due to the proliferation of global internet access. But I've kinda wondered, how does that work? One of the benefits of numbers stations is that it was nearly impossible to determine who was listening to a shortwave radio station. Any internet resource someone visits would be traceable by the government. Even with SSL nearly everywhere it's not nearly as anonymo…

You can blame satellite TV for the demise of numbers stations. Shortwave radios became less common with the uptake in broadcast television, so it in turn became more suspicious to be in possession of one. I won't speak to the methods the US uses now, but Russians are fond of ad-hoc wireless networks in public places.

> ad-hoc wireless networks in public places.

I wonder if this popular 2001 rumination on the difficulty of source attribution in public local networks had any influence on said preference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TVdoQ2fmIYs

Re: Number Stations and Enigma Stations

#25

Post by wkat4242 »

anonymousiam wrote: post #14
wkat4242 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess that's where tor and similar techniques come in. Don't forget it was created by the DoD for just that purpose. And it's not impossible to locate a shortwave listener (especially in the days when numbers stations were commonplace). At really short range it's possible to detect the local oscillator though modern direct conversion techniques make this harder. In the 80s some countries were using this principle t…

What you say about locating SW receivers may have been true in the era of superhetrodyne receivers, but today, in the era of direct digital sampling, it's no longer true. Old superhet receivers would leak the LO through the mixer out to the antenna so nearby detectors could deduce where the receiver was and what it was tuned to (assuming a standard IF, which is a fair assumption given the plethora of high-Q 455KHz an…

Well yes that's what I said - these days it's less true with the direct conversion (many superhet's around though still!) but SW numbers stations are not really a thing anymore anyway so the solution is a bit late :) And a direct conversion receiver and the computer attached to it can also leak RF. I'm pretty sure equipment these days leaks more RF than in the 80s. And not just RF. People have even been able to determine private keys from the coil whine in the audio sampled across the room from the PC running the crypto!

Though I wonder if spies used SDRs (or other direct conversion receivers) earlier than the mainstream for this reason.. On the other hand I've heard spies usually shy away from special electronics because it's a lot harder to explain than a standard holiday shortwave receiver.

Re: Number Stations and Enigma Stations

#26

Post by wkat4242 »

mike_d wrote: post #23
geoffeg wrote: post #6

I assume most numbers stations have disappeared in part due to the proliferation of global internet access. But I've kinda wondered, how does that work? One of the benefits of numbers stations is that it was nearly impossible to determine who was listening to a shortwave radio station. Any internet resource someone visits would be traceable by the government. Even with SSL nearly everywhere it's not nearly as anonymo…

You can blame satellite TV for the demise of numbers stations. Shortwave radios became less common with the uptake in broadcast television, so it in turn became more suspicious to be in possession of one. I won't speak to the methods the US uses now, but Russians are fond of ad-hoc wireless networks in public places.

Oh good point, I didn't think of that. But a sat transponder has a huge bandwidth, it'd be really easy to hide some data in there with steganography.

Re: Number Stations and Enigma Stations

#28

Post by [deleted] »

nostrilwig wrote: post #18
geoffeg wrote: post #6

I assume most numbers stations have disappeared in part due to the proliferation of global internet access. But I've kinda wondered, how does that work? One of the benefits of numbers stations is that it was nearly impossible to determine who was listening to a shortwave radio station. Any internet resource someone visits would be traceable by the government. Even with SSL nearly everywhere it's not nearly as anonymo…

Maybe there are less than in then "golden days", but take a look at https://priyom.org/ to get some first-hand experience. EDIT: This site features a schedule/calendar with links to several webSDR sites, making it very easy the hear some of those transmissions live.

[deleted]

Re: Number Stations and Enigma Stations

#29

Post by 082349872349872 »

nostrilwig wrote: post #18
geoffeg wrote: post #6

I assume most numbers stations have disappeared in part due to the proliferation of global internet access. But I've kinda wondered, how does that work? One of the benefits of numbers stations is that it was nearly impossible to determine who was listening to a shortwave radio station. Any internet resource someone visits would be traceable by the government. Even with SSL nearly everywhere it's not nearly as anonymo…

Maybe there are less than in then "golden days", but take a look at https://priyom.org/ to get some first-hand experience. EDIT: This site features a schedule/calendar with links to several webSDR sites, making it very easy the hear some of those transmissions live.

"why do I own a shortwave radio? you see sir, I saw this site priyom.org on th' orange website, and kinda got nerdsniped..."

(and in 10th grade, there was this girl I was crushing on who was really into microprinting, so I tried to play cool and wound up with a closet full of photoreducers, and wouldn't you know, that hobby stuck too...)

Re: Number Stations and Enigma Stations

#30

Post by bayindirh »

geoffeg wrote: post #6

I assume most numbers stations have disappeared in part due to the proliferation of global internet access. But I've kinda wondered, how does that work? One of the benefits of numbers stations is that it was nearly impossible to determine who was listening to a shortwave radio station. Any internet resource someone visits would be traceable by the government. Even with SSL nearly everywhere it's not nearly as anonymo…

Number stations are far from being disappeared. The current schedule of tracked ones can be seen in [0].

I guess clandestine operations now use expiring dead drops in the form of IP addresses with some protections, but they may be using applications or other hide in plain sight methods like chats rooms in games, etc., which are not unheard of.

Considering governments and intelligence services love to run Tor exit nodes from time to time, they may have their own darknet servers, too.

There's no way to be sure how they operate, and I don't want to dig into that kind of rabbit holes, to be honest.

[0]: https://priyom.org/number-stations/station-schedule

Post reply on HN