How To Get Radio Code From Serial Number
Eliecer Brathwaite
A numbers station is a shortwave radio station characterized by broadcasts of formatted numbers, which are believed to be addressed to intelligence officers operating in foreign countries.[1] Most identified stations use speech synthesis to vocalize numbers, although digital modes such as phase-shift keying and frequency-shift keying, as well as Morse code transmissions, are not uncommon. Most stations have set time schedules, or schedule patterns; however, some appear to have no discernible pattern and broadcast at random times. Stations may have set frequencies in the high-frequency band.[2]
Numbers stations have been reported since at least the start of World War I and continue in use today. Amongst amateur radio enthusiasts there is an interest in monitoring and classifying numbers stations, with many being given nicknames to represent their quirks or origins.
According to the notes of The Conet Project,[3][4] which has compiled recordings of these transmissions, number stations have been reported since World War I with the numbers transmitted in Morse code. It is reported that Archduke Anton of Austria in his youth during World War I used to listen in to their transmissions, writing them down and passing them on to the Austrian military intelligence.[5]
Numbers stations were most abundant during the Cold War era. According to an internal Cold War-era report of the Polish Ministry of the Interior, numbers stations DCF37 (3.370 MHz) and DFD21 (4.010 MHz) were transmitted from West Germany beginning in the early 1950s.[6]
Many stations from this era continue to broadcast and some long-time stations may have been taken over by different operators.[7][8] The Czech Ministry of the Interior and the Swedish Security Service have both acknowledged the use of numbers stations by Czechoslovakia for espionage,[9][10][11] with declassified documents proving the same. Few QSL responses have been received from numbers stations[12] by shortwave listeners[13] who sent reception reports to stations that identified themselves or to entities the listeners believed responsible for the broadcasts, which is the expected behaviour of a non-clandestine station.[14][15]
One well-known numbers station was the E03 "Lincolnshire Poacher",[16] which is thought to have been run by the British Secret Intelligence Service.[17] It was first broadcast from Bletchley Park in the mid-1970s but later was broadcast from RAF Akrotiri in Cyprus. It ceased broadcasting in 2008.[18]
The "Atencin" station of Cuba became the world's first numbers station to be officially and publicly accused of transmitting to spies. It was the centerpiece of a United States federal court espionage trial, following the arrest of the Wasp Network of Cuban spies in 1998. The U.S. prosecutors claimed the accused were writing down number codes received from Atencin, using Sony hand-held shortwave receivers, and typing the numbers into laptop computers to decode spying instructions. The FBI testified that they had entered a spy's apartment in 1995, and copied the computer decryption program for the Atencin numbers code. They used it to decode Atencin spy messages, which the prosecutors unveiled in court.[19]
The moderator of an e-mail list for global numbers station hobbyists claimed that "Someone on the Spooks list had already cracked the code for a repeated transmission [from Havana to Miami] if it was received garbled." Such code-breaking may be possible if a one-time pad decoding key is used more than once.[19] If used properly, however, the code cannot be broken.
In 2001, Ana Beln Montes, a senior US Defense Intelligence Agency analyst, was arrested and charged with espionage. The federal prosecutors alleged that Montes was able to communicate with the Cuban Intelligence Directorate through encoded messages, with instructions being received through "encrypted shortwave transmissions from Cuba".
In 2006, Carlos Alvarez and his wife, Elsa, were arrested and charged with espionage. The U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida[20][which?] stated that "defendants would receive assignments via shortwave radio transmissions".[citation needed]
In June 2009, the United States similarly charged Walter Kendall Myers with conspiracy to spy for Cuba, and receiving and decoding messages broadcast from a numbers station operated by the Cuban Intelligence Directorate to further that conspiracy.[21][22] As discovered by the FBI up to 2010, one way that Russian agents of the Illegals Program were receiving instructions was via coded messages on shortwave radio.[18]It has been reported that the United States has used number stations to communicate encoded information to persons in other countries.[19] There are also claims that State Department-operated stations, such as KKN50 and KKN44, used to broadcast similar "numbers" messages or related traffic, although these radio stations have been off the air for many years.[23][24]
North Korea revived number broadcasts in July 2016 after a hiatus of sixteen years, a move which some analysts speculated was psychological war;[25] sixteen such broadcasts occurred in 2017, including unusually timed transmissions in April.[26]
It has long been speculated, and was argued in one court case, that these stations operate as a simple and fool-proof method for government agencies to communicate with spies working undercover.[27] According to this hypothesis, the messages must have been encrypted with a one-time pad to avoid any risk of decryption by the enemy. Writing in 2008, Wallace & Melton described how numbers stations could be used in this way for espionage:[28]
Evidence to support this theory includes the fact that numbers stations have changed details of their broadcasts or produced special, nonscheduled broadcasts coincident with extraordinary political events, such as the attempted coup of August 1991 in the Soviet Union.[29]
A 1998 article in The Daily Telegraph quoted a spokesperson for the Department of Trade and Industry (the government department that, at that time, regulated radio broadcasting in the United Kingdom) as saying
The prelude, introduction, or call-up of a transmission (from which stations' informal nicknames are often derived) includes some kind of identifier,[31] for the station itself, the intended recipient, or both. This can take the form of numeric or radio-alphabet "code names" (e.g. "Charlie India Oscar", "250 250 250", "Six-Niner-Zero-Oblique-Five-Four"), characteristic phrases (e.g. "Atencin!", "Achtung!", "Ready? Ready?", "1234567890"), and sometimes musical or electronic sounds (e.g. "The Lincolnshire Poacher", "Magnetic Fields"). Sometimes, as in the case of radio-alphabet stations, the prelude can also signify the nature or priority of the message to follow (e.g., it may indicate that no message follows). Often the prelude repeats for a period before the body of the message begins.[citation needed]
After the prelude, there is usually an announcement of the number of number-groups in the message,[31] the page to be used from the one-time pad, or other pertinent information. The groups are then recited. Groups are usually either four or five digits or radio-alphabet letters. The groups are typically repeated, either by reading each group twice or by repeating the entire message as a whole.[citation needed]
Finally, after all the messages have been sent, the station will sign off in some characteristic fashion. Usually, it will simply be some form of the word "end" in whatever language the station uses (e.g., "End of message; End of transmission", "Ende", "Fini", "Final", "конец"). Some stations, especially those thought to originate from the former Soviet Union, end with a series of zeros, e.g., "00000" "000 000"; others end with music or other sounds.[31]
Because of the secretive nature of the messages, the cryptographic function employed by particular stations is not publicly known, except in one (or possibly two[32]) cases. It is assumed that most stations use a one-time pad that would make the contents of these number groups indistinguishable from randomly generated numbers or digits. In one confirmed case, West Germany did use a one-time pad for numbers transmissions.[33]
Application of spectrum analysis to numbers station signals has revealed the presence of data bursts, radioteletype-modulated subcarriers, phase-shifted carriers, and other unusual transmitter modulations like polytones.[34] (RTTY-modulated subcarriers were also present on some U.S. commercial radio transmissions during the Cold War.[35])
Those receiving the signals often have to work only with available hand-held receivers, sometimes under difficult local conditions, and in all reception conditions (such as sunspot cycles and seasonal static).[19] However, in the field low-tech spoken number transmissions continue to have advantages even in the 21st century. High-tech data-receiving equipment can be difficult to obtain and even a non-standard civilian shortwave radio can be difficult to obtain in a totalitarian state.[37] Being caught with just a shortwave radio has a degree of plausible deniability, for example, that no spying is being conducted.[citation needed]
The North Korean foreign language service Voice of Korea began to broadcast on the E03 Lincolnshire Poacher's former frequency, 11545 kHz, in 2006, possibly to deliberately interfere with its propagation.[citation needed] However, Lincolnshire Poacher broadcasts on three different frequencies, and the remaining two have not been interfered with. The apparent target zone for the Lincolnshire Poacher signals originating in Cyprus was the Middle East, not the Far East, which is covered by its sister station, E03a Cherry Ripe.[38][39]
In October 1990, it was reported that a numbers station had been interfering with communications on 6577 kHz, a frequency used by air traffic in the Caribbean. The interference was such that on at least one monitored transmission, it blocked the channel entirely and forced the air traffic controller to switch the pilot to an alternative frequency.[39]
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