GPS was always a dual use system. This is very detailed and specific, but not interesting or surprising. Research has been study GPS signal data, found parts that are encrypted and he doesn’t understand. The end. Article seems only intended to generate an emotional response of “how dare they use GPS for war, man!”
The Quiet Numbers Station: Decoding Nineteen Years of GPS Cryptography
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Re: The Quiet Numbers Station: Decoding Nineteen Years of GPS Cryptography
#12"Numbers station" is a weird analogy, because the idea of a numbers station was to broadcast messages to undercover operatives in a way that can be received using unmodified (and therefore non-suspicious) household radio receivers. Here, it appears to be a rekeying system for specialized military gear.
I think it's simply because of using a public channel for encrypted communication.
Re: The Quiet Numbers Station: Decoding Nineteen Years of GPS Cryptography
#13GPS was always a dual use system. This is very detailed and specific, but not interesting or surprising. Research has been study GPS signal data, found parts that are encrypted and he doesn’t understand. The end. Article seems only intended to generate an emotional response of “how dare they use GPS for war, man!”
> GPS was always a dual use system
It wasn't. It was going to be a military-only system, until KAL007 presented the obvious life-saving civilian case.
But yes, the title of this article might as well read "Satellite system developed for military use is being used for a military purpose."
Re: The Quiet Numbers Station: Decoding Nineteen Years of GPS Cryptography
#14best zero day exploit ever
That's not what a 0day exploit is. It doesn't allow you to take over arbitrary GPS receivers, for instance.
Re: The Quiet Numbers Station: Decoding Nineteen Years of GPS Cryptography
#15GPS was always a dual use system. This is very detailed and specific, but not interesting or surprising. Research has been study GPS signal data, found parts that are encrypted and he doesn’t understand. The end. Article seems only intended to generate an emotional response of “how dare they use GPS for war, man!”
> GPS was always a dual use system It wasn't. It was going to be a military-only system, until KAL007 presented the obvious life-saving civilian case. But yes, the title of this article might as well read "Satellite system developed for military use is being used for a military purpose."
Even better, thanks for clarifying. It’s that kind of omission from the article that makes the rest of it hard to swallow. Even if it is technically correct. Which is sadly the case for most “journalism” these days.
Re: The Quiet Numbers Station: Decoding Nineteen Years of GPS Cryptography
#16"Numbers station" is a weird analogy, because the idea of a numbers station was to broadcast messages to undercover operatives in a way that can be received using unmodified (and therefore non-suspicious) household radio receivers. Here, it appears to be a rekeying system for specialized military gear.
Yeah its not a number station at all.
I disagree? The point of a numbers station is that it broadcasts in the clear and anyone with a receiver can get it, but only people with the appropriate decryption key can make any use of it. Since it's broadcasting all the time, there's no need for steganography or covert transmission. That's exactly what a numbers station is.
Where the article loses me is the implication that this is somehow sinister or beyond the pale: it's just piggybacking on a global transmitter network that exists anyway, why not?
Re: The Quiet Numbers Station: Decoding Nineteen Years of GPS Cryptography
#17This is an interesting article. It has a very strong AI accent. I really wish I could tell how real it is. When some part of it I can tell is AI slop, how much of it is AI slop? Inside GNSS has always been a marketing rag with sometimes some interesting articles. The author is a security researcher, so maybe poking at GPS bits makes sense, but talking about floating point bit depth? There's too much slop for me to fi…
I've worked with the guy credited in the article before, so I'll vouch for his general credibility and the underlying information likely being solid: there's good evidence for this field being some kind of encrypted data stream, probably key distribution, and the behaviour has changed over time. But the breathless LLM-tone really did make it hard to read.
Cool. Some data may have been transmitted over GPS. That's interesting and note worthy.
If only that was all that was posted.
Instead there's this stuff that makes me question Steven Murdoch's research practices. If you're willing to publish slop are his research practices slop? Can I trust any paper he creates in the future when I can tell this one has factual errors? Why should I bother reading it?
I actually think he's a good researcher from a little reading. I wish he hadn't done this.
Re: The Quiet Numbers Station: Decoding Nineteen Years of GPS Cryptography
#18Meanwhile Starlink and Starshield: Hold my beer ;-)
Re: The Quiet Numbers Station: Decoding Nineteen Years of GPS Cryptography
#19"Numbers station" is a weird analogy, because the idea of a numbers station was to broadcast messages to undercover operatives in a way that can be received using unmodified (and therefore non-suspicious) household radio receivers. Here, it appears to be a rekeying system for specialized military gear.
I think it's simply because of using a public channel for encrypted communication.
Technically all RF communications are "public." You have to use encryption if you want security.
Re: The Quiet Numbers Station: Decoding Nineteen Years of GPS Cryptography
#20Clickbait from 404 Media? Surely not!
The part they kept out of the headline:
> for use in distributing the keys for accessing the military GPS signals
It’s common knowledge that the military has access to a separate, encrypted, higher-precision GPS signal. “Numbers station” implies that they’re distributing unrelated encrypted information, but they’re not; it’s not surprising that GPS signals would be used to deliver information related to GPS, even if only military receivers have any use for it!