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How to catch a spy that is using a numbers station – The KGB Experience

numbers-stations.com

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Re: How to catch a spy that is using a numbers station – The KGB Experience

#21

Post by eternalban »

jojobas wrote: post #13
082349872349872 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The answer is that in 2020, when the median page weighs 2 MB and makes 70 requests over a dozen TCP connections, everything is a potential numbers station. I had been joking about www.duckdascism.gov in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24458630 but https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24526075 has people who've used that channel. (for the record, ~64kbps is more than most people had over dialup in the early days…

Internet connections are fundamentally different in that they are traceable. You've identified the "station", you can immediately see who's "listening". Unless you co-opt a page everyone "listens" to, such as facebook or something.

"The core principle of Tor, "onion routing", was developed in the mid-1990s by United States Naval Research Laboratory employees, mathematician Paul Syverson, and computer scientists Michael G. Reed and David Goldschlag, with the purpose of protecting U.S. intelligence communications online. Onion routing was further developed by DARPA in 1997." - wiki on Tor

Re: How to catch a spy that is using a numbers station – The KGB Experience

#22

Post by AniseAbyss »

jFriedensreich wrote: post #12
barrkel wrote: post #5

The way you catch the spy is apparently by monitoring sent mail and comparing handwriting. Very little of this is specific to numbers stations.

exactly my thoughts, its like articles about serious "hacks", when the critical steps turn out to be social engineering, definitely interesting, but not what the title suggests.

Spycraft is social engineering. It always comes down to bribing someone with money/passport/sex. Its all quite banal.

Re: How to catch a spy that is using a numbers station – The KGB Experience

#23

Post by C1sc0cat »

082349872349872 wrote: post #15
jFriedensreich wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

exactly my thoughts, its like articles about serious "hacks", when the critical steps turn out to be social engineering, definitely interesting, but not what the title suggests.

I agree, but https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24520757 is about at least seven dozen people from three of the five eyes on one side, and someone who was infamous for "hacking" Tony Blair and Uscentcom on the other, yet nothing in any of the articles suggests anything much more technical than social engineering[1]. (Indeed, the story as written does have Hollywood MacGuffin floppy disk written all over it, in that…

The Article doesn't mention Tony Blair at all?

Interesting story back when I worked for Poptel which was the ISP the labour party used back then.

I had to look up something on our internal system, and was distracted and just hit return when searching and pulled up Tonys's a account details.

When we had uploaded all our data from the internal system some one thought it would be fun to make Tony the first entry in the data base.

Of course hacking Us would have pissed off our ops guys in Manchester who where members of the UK arm of alt 2600

Re: How to catch a spy that is using a numbers station – The KGB Experience

#24

Post by jm4 »

rnhmjoj wrote: post #16

> To intercept the agency letters sent by Filatov or to detect if he has made new places to hide or send documents, a event called “Ruby” was carried out in his work cabinet, his living place and his mailbox by using a special chemical agent. Do you have any idea what they are talking about here? I'm imagining dispersing some invisible chemical (or isotope maybe?) in his house and then looking for increases in concet…

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nitrophenyl_pentadienal

Re: How to catch a spy that is using a numbers station – The KGB Experience

#25

Post by 082349872349872 »

C1sc0cat wrote: post #23
082349872349872 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, but https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24520757 is about at least seven dozen people from three of the five eyes on one side, and someone who was infamous for "hacking" Tony Blair and Uscentcom on the other, yet nothing in any of the articles suggests anything much more technical than social engineering[1]. (Indeed, the story as written does have Hollywood MacGuffin floppy disk written all over it, in that…

The Article doesn't mention Tony Blair at all? Interesting story back when I worked for Poptel which was the ISP the labour party used back then. I had to look up something on our internal system, and was distracted and just hit return when searching and pulled up Tonys's a account details. When we had uploaded all our data from the internal system some one thought it would be fun to make Tony the first entry in the…

Sorry, got that from related surfing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Junaid_Hussain

(Compared to sweden[1], the PLO[2], or even a japanese 財閥[3], either ISIS took a cavalier approach to hooking up their "Cyber Caliphate" or he was not as important as the article, and british tabs, made out.)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Bernadotte#History_of...

"On 21 August 1810, the Riksdag elected Jean Baptiste Jules Bernadotte, a Marshal of France, as heir presumptive to the Swedish throne."

[2] https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2001/12/all-you...

[3] https://www.kalzumeus.com/2014/11/07/doing-business-in-japan...

Re: How to catch a spy that is using a numbers station – The KGB Experience

#26

Post by andi999 »

kingkawn wrote: post #19

What stands out for me after reading this is the number of civilian lives disrupted to carry out this operation. Whether mass surveillance or moving neighbors, the system successfully rooted out a single mole but paid little mind to the impact that doing so had on the rest of society. Short-sighted strategic excellence can conceal long term self-sabotage and risk.

In Russia people never ends.

Re: How to catch a spy that is using a numbers station – The KGB Experience

#27

Post by jojobas »

eternalban wrote: post #21
jojobas wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Internet connections are fundamentally different in that they are traceable. You've identified the "station", you can immediately see who's "listening". Unless you co-opt a page everyone "listens" to, such as facebook or something.

"The core principle of Tor, "onion routing", was developed in the mid-1990s by United States Naval Research Laboratory employees, mathematician Paul Syverson, and computer scientists Michael G. Reed and David Goldschlag, with the purpose of protecting U.S. intelligence communications online. Onion routing was further developed by DARPA in 1997." - wiki on Tor

Monitoring all sensitive employees for Tor usage is rather easy (or at least much easier than tracking down superhet radiation).

Re: How to catch a spy that is using a numbers station – The KGB Experience

#28

Post by implements »

AniseAbyss wrote: post #22
jFriedensreich wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

exactly my thoughts, its like articles about serious "hacks", when the critical steps turn out to be social engineering, definitely interesting, but not what the title suggests.

Spycraft is social engineering. It always comes down to bribing someone with money/passport/sex. Its all quite banal.

(Bribe with) money, (to serve an) ideology, (application of) coercion or (as an outlet for) ego - “MICE”.

Re: How to catch a spy that is using a numbers station – The KGB Experience

#29

Post by caseysoftware »

implements wrote: post #28
AniseAbyss wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spycraft is social engineering. It always comes down to bribing someone with money/passport/sex. Its all quite banal.

(Bribe with) money, (to serve an) ideology, (application of) coercion or (as an outlet for) ego - “MICE”.

You're forgetting a couple motivations:

Money Ideology Conscious/Coercion Ego Revenge and Sex

(The last two are less relevant in hacking/tech but more relevant in straight espionage.)

Re: How to catch a spy that is using a numbers station – The KGB Experience

#30

Post by draugadrotten »

doctor_eval wrote: post #18
draugadrotten wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Today we're seeing number stations move off of ham radio and onto protocols like MQTT. Wouldn't a MQTT station be lacking one of the major advantages of a radio number station - that it is very difficult to know who is listening to the broadcast. Using weather reports (or obituaries in newspapers etc) are not number stations, though they can be used as covert channels.

I would have expected steganography in YouTube videos to be the numbers stations of today?

You seem unaware of the difference between unicast IP and broadcast radio. Watching youtube is just as anonymous as a phone call, not very hard to map to a person. Youtube has a log of every IP accessing their servers and what they do, augmented by cookies and google accounts. A radio station does not know who is listening.
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