Receiving unintentional voice transmissions from GPS satellites • Hacker News Board

Re: Receiving unintentional voice transmissions from GPS satellites

#91

Post by withinboredom » Sun, Jul 16, 2023, 7:31 PM UTC

quonn wrote: post #70

withinboredom wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Encryption uses math, code uses a dictionary. These communications were not “encoded” but an actual language.

That‘s an arbitrary distinction, since encryption uses a key just like „code“ uses a dictionary. In a one time pad where your key is long, how is it different from a dictionary? And in a trivial cipher the key may still encode a dictionary. Basically you are taking a subset of encryption using only substitution and calling that a code.

Yep! You've pretty much nailed it.

Cipher: exchanging letters to hide a message.

Code: exchanging words/phrases to hide a message.

Encryption: combining math + ciphers (sometimes code too!) to hide a message.

Codes are great for real people having fluent conversations, not so great for computers. We actually use "codes" all the time, but when they're used in large groups (and not a 'secret'), we call it "jargon."

"Push it to main, and I'll pull it in to my buggy branch to see if that works" will make almost no sense to anyone but a programmer who works with git and even then, only someone who's used git since everyone renamed the 'master' branch to 'main.'

Re: Receiving unintentional voice transmissions from GPS satellites

#92

Post by withinboredom » Sun, Jul 16, 2023, 7:39 PM UTC

wkat4242 wrote: post #64

cynwoody wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Encrypted" is too strong a word. But the code talkers needed a way to represent English that didn't have a natural Navajo equivalent. So they developed a vocabulary of 411 Navajo words to stand for common military terms. E.g., BESH-LO, which is Navajo for "iron fish", meant "submarine". The vocabulary included a phonetic alphabet to represent the 26 English letters. E.g., the three Navajo words MOASI, TLA-GIN, and B…

It's not really secure as such. It's a simple replacement cipher theoretically speaking. An adversary with enough time will easily be able to figure out what each word means by association of known plaintext. However it sounds like they were mainly used in heavy combat conditions where the enemy didn't have recording equipment for later analysis. So in that scenario specifically (but in that alone) it was pretty secu…

Yes, for the parts that needed to be distinctly translated from English, it was a cipher. However, it IS a language, with it's own grammar and vocabulary. They could have an entire conversation with none of the cipher bits...

If you've ever gone to a foreign country, you know you will have zero idea what anyone is saying for quite a long time. They knew as long as they kept the messages short enough, nobody was going to learn it from immersion.

There are still ancient languages that nobody have deciphered, despite having copious samples to choose from. I don't think it's as simple as you're making it out to be.

Re: Receiving unintentional voice transmissions from GPS satellites

#93

Post by actionfromafar » Mon, Jul 17, 2023, 12:22 AM UTC

wildzzz wrote: post #78

actionfromafar wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Makes me wonder if these ever were used out-of-spec for transmission deliberately by parties. (Thinking spy stuff but it could also be just hijinx.)

Unless someone has proof otherwise, I'd bet that they've never been used for that purpose. Every major government is listening to this SARSAT downlink so it's probably better to use something less visible.

Number stations are also a thing.