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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

#61

Post by andyjohnson0 »

timeinput wrote: post #17
rcxdude wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Can I trust any paper he creates in the future when I can tell this one has factual errors?

What are the factual errors?

Re: The Quiet Numbers Station: Decoding Nineteen Years of GPS Cryptography

#62

Post by [deleted] »

rcxdude wrote: post #5
timeinput wrote: post #3

This 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.

[deleted]

Re: The Quiet Numbers Station: Decoding Nineteen Years of GPS Cryptography

#63

Post by DANmode »

cryzinger wrote: post #57
DANmode wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Contrasting the tone of innocence the larger publications use around these institutions feels perfectly within a journalistic mandate.

For new and under-reported (or otherwise downplayed) stories, I think it's understandable and maybe even good. But when every single story has a breathless, scandalized headline, it gets exhausting fast, and it's hard for me to know what to pay attention to. I remember last year 404 put out a clickbait-y story about the shitty "covert" websites that the CIA used to communicate with spies they'd recruited in Iran, eve…

> it's hard for me to know what to pay attention to.

If it’s a decent institution?

All of what they’re reporting on! =]

Re: The Quiet Numbers Station: Decoding Nineteen Years of GPS Cryptography

#64

Post by dang »

moritzwarhier wrote: post #8

Later submission: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48414479 https://www.404media.co/the-u-s-military-quietly-turned-gps-... The 404 article seems fluff-free and cites https://insidegnss.com/current-issue/ as source.

We'll merge the threads and put the relevant links in the toptext. Thanks!

Re: The Quiet Numbers Station: Decoding Nineteen Years of GPS Cryptography

#65

Post by dang »

timeinput wrote: post #3

This 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…

(This comment was posted when the article was https://lsc-pagepro.mydigitalpublication.com/publication/?i=...; we've since done a merge and changed the URL above)

Re: The Quiet Numbers Station: Decoding Nineteen Years of GPS Cryptography

#66

Post by dang »

NelsonMinar wrote: post #40

Summary from the study author: https://www.benthamsgaze.org/2026/06/02/the-quiet-numbers-st... PDF of article (page 62) https://cdn.coverstand.com/61061/865273/2c88ea662e2b57478723...

Thank you! That first link does seem to be the best one (in terms of easiness to access and information explained). We'll use it above.

Re: The Quiet Numbers Station: Decoding Nineteen Years of GPS Cryptography

#67

Post by dang »

anigbrowl wrote: post #42

The story links to the current issue of the Inside GNSS magazine but the article isn't available in the digital edition, apparently. It's in the print edition, readable at https://lsc-pagepro.mydigitalpublication.com/publication/?i=... The source data and analytical code (in Julia) is also available at https://lsc-pagepro.mydigitalpublication.com/publication/?i=... In my view people nitpicking the 404 media story are…

(This comment was originally posted to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48414479, where the article was https://www.404media.co/the-u-s-military-quietly-turned-gps-.... We've since merged the threads.)

Re: The Quiet Numbers Station: Decoding Nineteen Years of GPS Cryptography

#68

Post by dang »

rafram wrote: post #20

Clickbait 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 delive…

(This comment was originally posted to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48414479, where the article was https://www.404media.co/the-u-s-military-quietly-turned-gps-.... We've since merged the threads.)

Re: The Quiet Numbers Station: Decoding Nineteen Years of GPS Cryptography

#69

Post by dang »

ck2 wrote: post #28

People are complaining about a clickbaity title but it's a fascinating article I am not sure most would read otherwise What's interesting to me is how out of date US GPS system is compared to China's BeiDou and while most US GPS receivers will use Russia's GLONOSS, China's BeiDou is blocked https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47849174

(This comment was originally posted to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48414479 - we've since merged the threads)

Re: The Quiet Numbers Station: Decoding Nineteen Years of GPS Cryptography

#70

Post by defrost »

anigbrowl wrote: post #35
Analemma_ wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

This implication is purely in your head. The article and the scientist whose work it describes are just pointing out the identification of some data that's been transmitted across a public channel for years without anyne noticing.

It's been noticed for a long long time, as noted in the article, this is more or less the first time it has broken in more general public news media.

Civilian high precision surveying has been reverse engineering raw GPS since the Navstar sats and swapping notes on back channels.

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