61–70 of 77 posts
The way you catch the spy is apparently by monitoring sent mail and comparing handwriting. Very little of this is specific to numbers stations.
> 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…
"Spy Dust" https://io9.gizmodo.com/how-the-soviet-union-tracked-people-... In SpyCatcher, Peter Wright describes contemplating a similar system to catch spies removing sensitive documents from MI5. From the book: "I was asked if there was any technical way we could prove Vassall was removing documents from the Admiralty. I had been experimenting for some time with Frank Morgan on a scheme to mark classified documents…
Makes you wonder if the person removing the documents was management.
To me the most remarkable thing about this story is that the KGB was apparently stymied for an extended period by the fact that Filatov had a "difficult" lock of "foreign origin" on his apartment door, to the extent that they had to steal and copy a key carried by his wife using an elaborate setup. It seems odd that an agency known for its skilled spycraft apparently was unable to pick a door lock.
I'd guess the problem is if you spend a long time trying to pick a lock in an apartment building, it looks pretty suspicious.
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I'd guess the problem is if you spend a long time trying to pick a lock in an apartment building, it looks pretty suspicious.
Well if you watch videos like Lockpicking Lawyer they make it seem like a skilled person can open a typical door in a few seconds. Though he's probably pretty experienced compared to even the average locksmith or spy.
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Well if you watch videos like Lockpicking Lawyer they make it seem like a skilled person can open a typical door in a few seconds. Though he's probably pretty experienced compared to even the average locksmith or spy.
If you learn a lock you can open it quickly when pressed, but most pick-resistant locks are quite troublesome to open. If you can't bump the lock or use a pick gun and the area is not secluded it may not be reasonable to pick the lock.
>> When Filatov was at work, the operative workers infiltrated his apartment and installed technical surveillance resources for video surveillance and photography. 1977. Video equipment was VERY different then, especially on that side of the iron curtain. It would have had moving parts, motors, probably requiring a degree of soundproofing. I want to see pictures of where/how they hid this stuff because it wasn't easy…
Talk about power though, imagine getting a knock on your door and being told "you're moving apartments, and don't ask why or who we are.".
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Only if it's poorly designed (leaks local oscillator frequency back into antenna) and not shielded. Modern receivers use quadrature sampling detectors rather than traditional superheterodyne. In that setup any leakage would be on the same frequency and harder to detect.
It is as good as impossible to run an oscillator based receiver that is also connected to an antenna that does not radiate. That's nothing to do with poor design, it's just physics. Zero coupling does not exist in practice. By design the mixer stage sits pretty close to the initial amplifier and it will result in some of the oscillator energy making it back to the antenna circuitry. FWIW I built a ton of transmitters…
More importantly, there's a lot of background noise on HF bands that will mask that weak signal.
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It is as good as impossible to run an oscillator based receiver that is also connected to an antenna that does not radiate. That's nothing to do with poor design, it's just physics. Zero coupling does not exist in practice. By design the mixer stage sits pretty close to the initial amplifier and it will result in some of the oscillator energy making it back to the antenna circuitry. FWIW I built a ton of transmitters…
Note also with a highly directional high gain receiver that tiny bit of radiating energy is very detectable. It's just going to feed into background noise for most receivers so no one cares. But it will be detectable by a motivated hunter with the right equipment.
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Note also with a highly directional high gain receiver that tiny bit of radiating energy is very detectable. It's just going to feed into background noise for most receivers so no one cares. But it will be detectable by a motivated hunter with the right equipment.
A directional antenna has to be much larger than wavelength. Won't fit in a van if we're talking about HF (with wavelengths measured in tens of meters).
[0] http://www.kr1st.com/swlloop.htm
[1] https://www.fmuser.org/fm-receiver/receiver-antenna/DE31MS-l...
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It is as good as impossible to run an oscillator based receiver that is also connected to an antenna that does not radiate. That's nothing to do with poor design, it's just physics. Zero coupling does not exist in practice. By design the mixer stage sits pretty close to the initial amplifier and it will result in some of the oscillator energy making it back to the antenna circuitry. FWIW I built a ton of transmitters…
Initial amplifier does not let much energy flow backwards. More importantly, there's a lot of background noise on HF bands that will mask that weak signal.
If you've never built a radio and tried to shield this unintended export than I can totally see how you might think this is just a matter of careful design and more shielding but it really is a lot harder than that and you will simply never reach zero to the point where even an ordinary spectrum analyzer hooked up to the input of your radio will not show the oscillator frequency as a nice fat peak.