If you know much about radios and espionage, you’ve probably encountered number stations. These are mysterious stations that read out groups of numbers or otherwise encoded messages to… well… someone. Most of the time, we don’t know who is receiving the messages. You’d be excused for thinking that this is an old technology. After all, satellite phones, the Internet, and a plethora of options now exist to allow the home base to send spies secret instructions. However, the current-day global conflict has seen at least one new number station appear, apparently associated with the United States and, presumably, targeting some recipients in Iran, according to priyom.org.
As you might expect, these stations don’t identify themselves, but the Enigma Control List names this one as V32. It broadcasts two two-hour blocks a day at 0200 UTC and a repeat at 1800 UTC. Each message starts with the Farsi word for “attention” followed by what is assumed to be some header information as two 5-digit groups. Then there is a set of 181 five-digit groups. Each message is padded out to take 20 minutes, and there are six messages in each transmission.
How Do You Know?
While this could, in theory, be from (and to) anywhere, direction finding has traced the signal to a US base near Stuttgart, Germany. In addition to using Farsi, Iran has repeatedly attempted to jam the signal, causing V32 to change frequencies a few times. There’s also a more recent, so far unidentified, jammer trying to block the signal.
In addition to direction finding, there is a surprising amount of information you can glean from the audio. The first few days of broadcasts had specific beeps in the background, which appear to be warning tones from a specific type of American military transmitter that warns the operator when encryption is not engaged. At first, a human read the numbers. Eventually, the station switched to using automated numbers.
Oops
In addition, there have been a few times when Windows 10 system sounds have leaked into the transmission. Other oddities are several cases where a word was read out in the middle of the numbers. We aren’t cryptographers, but that suggests the numbers refer to words in some sort of codebook, and that book doesn’t contain the proper words.
If you want to try your hand at decoding, you can hear the station on USB just under 8 MHz, or just listen to the recordings made by others (like the ones below or this one). You might like to read what other people say about it, too.
We are fascinated by spy stations. Even when they aren’t really number stations.
Are there any number stations that have been “decoded” (or their meaning leaked)?
I really wonder what kind of messages are relayed through these.
Since they likely use one time pads, it is impossible to decipher them without having the specific cipher.
That’s why I added the “leaked”.
It is possible if there’s faults in the creation of the one time pad. If I remember correctly, the CIA was able to decrypt a few messages from German number stations during WW2 due to numbers being generated in a predictable manner.
Suppose knowing who runs it would help some. Might run some AI to break the code. It is in an ordered language
The day AI can crack cryptographic messages is the day you should probably be burning all of your electronic devices and withdrawing your money as cash.
I did some CTF’s with the current top agentic AI models, it turns out that it’s rather good at breaking cryptographic messages.
Oh yea? Forgive me while I suspend disbelief. If you get an example of it breaking AES256 I think you ought to share that with the world because that would be a form of super intelligence but also put all of the worlds banking infrastructure at risk.
I wouldn’t be surprised if it helped you find ways to steal keys. Or that it happily hallucinated a decrypted message for you. But yea, there is nothing in theory that suggests this type of thing is possible with current tools and approaches
” withdrawing your money as cash”
What? So you have something to burn on cold days? I mean would the whole system not run the risk of a crash and your cash would be a bit useless? Better to get gold or something surely.
Without deciphering it how do you know “[i]t is in an ordered language”? It’s a different language every day, maybe a different language for every recipient or every message. Even a book code would defeat your confidence unless you knew what book. تمام شد.
AI is not going to break properly implemented OTP encryption, which this almost certainly is.
Where did the previous comments go?
I suggested we train AI to learn one of the number stations and read it back in the same monotonous voice on the same frequency as a gag. I suspect HD did that, took our comments, converted them into numbers, read them aloud, then deleted them here so as to leave no traces.
While I’m not surprised the concept is still alive I’m a bit amused by the delivery method apparently remaining entirely unchanged for new stations – keeping the old ones going as long as the old infiltration groups exist just makes sense – why risk figuring out a new method and getting it to them when you don’t have to.
Though if this is all performance theatre meant to mess with your opponents heads and perhaps reveal the location of their electronic warfare systems, rather than genuine is always the question as well. As really setting up a new number station seems kinda stupid – better secure ways to send messages even using what by today’s standards are really really throwaway level of available hardware exist.
“Bashir sure throws away a lot of hardware.”
“Yeah, it’s because satellite phones aren’t legal here and Starlink receivers are fixed points on Earth (per HaD).”
“ better secure ways to send messages even using what by today’s standards are really really throwaway level of available hardware exist.”.
Care to give an example of a better secure way? Because it really doesn’t exist.
Compared to OTP sent in a way that can be received and decoded with inoccuous equipment found in most homes?
I think you’ll find most homes these day do not actually have shortwave receivers.
I imagine that if they find a shortwave receiver now; those that have one are immediately suspects on some level in Iran.
If it’s tuned to that frequency when they find it.. well that would not be good I imagine.
Oh and we live in an age where normal cellphones can now message to satellites, so there’s you alternative maybe?
There’s value in a communication system that is 1-way, so the receiving party is not traceable at all. All the consumer systems you’re thinking of have some packet acknowledgement pattern, which means a receiver must also transmit and reveal their location.
And listening to 8mhz radio doesn’t require anything exotic. A $15 software-defined-radio will do it. I use one to monitor my wireless doorbell. If you were being investigated then they might find it and use it as evidence, but it isn’t rare enough to draw attention on its own.
@D I never said it’s hard to get a shortwave receiver, I was merely challenging the “inoccuous (sic) equipment found in most homes” statement.
They are rare and getting rarer for people to have.
And SDR dongles usually start above 30MHz or something, and don’t come with an antenna to receive shortwave. Short/medium wave consumer units have the ferrite rod and coil based antenna which works somewhat and is small, but a real shortwave radio receiver would have a very long or large antenna, which might not be appropriate here.
I wonder if a tuned IR laser could morse transmit from space over a large area and be picked up by a filtered receiver. Although the low orbit ones are possibly moving too fast to be used that way.
These revealed holy truth and were uprooted by instances from above.