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Earlier quoted context omitted.
Presumably doing it locally within a known few mile radius is different from nation-scale broadcast areas bounced from god-knows-where?
If you can receive a shortwave signal, you can triangulate the source.
Antennas with high directivity, which are needed for accurate triangulation, must be very big in the shortwave range (wavelength from 100 meter to 10 meter). Moreover, if they are too big it would be difficult to move them, to be able to measure an angle.
So traditional triangulation is inaccurate in this frequency range.
With modern technologies, using highly accurate synchronized clocks, one could distribute shortwave antennas over a large area, to create a synthetic aperture array, enabling a precise triangulation. However this would be expensive. An amateur would certainly not have such a thing. I doubt that even a state would bother to build such a thing, because it would not be worthwhile.
While precise triangulation of a shortwave transmitter from far away is very difficult, such a transmitter would not be hard to find during a local search wherever it is placed, because there not only the direction, but also the intensity gradient of the signal would allow finding it.
I wonder why they keep using a dedicated numbers station instead of embedding the code in a regular radio broadcast on a traditional channel? I'm sure that even before LLMs one could find a way to create a story where certain numbers / code words would be embedded without altering the underlying story too much. And they could probably get BBC / whatever station to air it. It would be a bit less inconspicuous to liste…
Shortwave propagates better and also its just a one time pad being distributed so embedding doesn't matter as much as long as the one time pad is longer than the intended message to send. There is no way to decrypt it because once you encrypt a message using a one time pad it is impossible to decrypt without the exact one time pad that it was encrypted with.
Distributing a one time pad like this is a stupid idea: it isn't hard to collect everything you ever send, and it takes a computer a few ms to check every encrypted message against every possible sequence. That is breaking a distribute one time pad via shortwave like this is something a single layperson can do, it doesn't even need a government scale attacker to break it.
Don't get me wrong, this can be used for good encryption. However it isn't a one time pad they are doing, it is something more complex.
I wonder why they keep using a dedicated numbers station instead of embedding the code in a regular radio broadcast on a traditional channel? I'm sure that even before LLMs one could find a way to create a story where certain numbers / code words would be embedded without altering the underlying story too much. And they could probably get BBC / whatever station to air it. It would be a bit less inconspicuous to liste…
N 48.690438° E 9.086693°
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Known locations can be taken out, no ?
Yes, but the locations of the big transmitters are in well-defended areas and smaller transmitters are easy to replace.
Assuming, of course, the hypothetical that it's a signal emanating from Iran. The current fix seems to indicate Germany, in which case you would be correct.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Shortwave propagates better and also its just a one time pad being distributed so embedding doesn't matter as much as long as the one time pad is longer than the intended message to send. There is no way to decrypt it because once you encrypt a message using a one time pad it is impossible to decrypt without the exact one time pad that it was encrypted with.
One time pads work only if only the sender and receiver have a copy of the pad - and they destroy each sheet on use. Distributing the pads is hard, but often it can be done easier than the message. Distributing a one time pad like this is a stupid idea: it isn't hard to collect everything you ever send, and it takes a computer a few ms to check every encrypted message against every possible sequence. That is breaking…
For intelligence agencies, it is important to communicate with their spies to gather intelligence,” says John Sipher, a former US intelligence officer Is Sipher really his name. Nominative determinism strikes again. Sifr is also a valid word both in Farsi, I think. An Ironic and cruel pun.
> Sifr is also a valid word both in Farsi, I think That is the root of 'cipher'; meaning zero/empty/nothingness.
I knew 'sifr' was an Arabic word and only today I came to know that it works in Farsi too.
The double pun/irony is that the John Sipher's surname is related to the topic of cryptography and that the etymological roots is Middle-Eastern.
48°41'26"N 9°05'12"E
https://www.google.com/maps/place/48%C2%B041'26.0%22N+9%C2%B...