Subj : Numbers stations
To   : Digital Man
From : Angus McLeod
Date : Mon Aug 15 2005 01:19 pm

  Re: Numbers stations
  By: Digital Man to Angus McLeod on Mon Aug 15 2005 02:35:00

 > Well the source would obviously need to be some sort of random number genera
 > (the less "pseudo" the better),

Sure, but a loooong shift register might give pseudo-ramdomness sufficient 
to your needs (whoever you are!).

 > but the out-of-band delivery is what I found intriguing. In other 
 > words, if I mail you a CD/flopy of OTP-encoded data, an transmit the 
 > OTP over the radio at a pre-determined time and frequency, that seems 
 > like a pretty cool combination that would be extremely difficult to 
 > crack.

Yeah, but by broadcasting the OTP via a numbers station would make it far 
too 'public' and 'well known' for my liking.  I'd be more likely to 
conceal the OTP steganographically in an image or something.  OTP's are 
supposedly as random as possible, right?  And the way that stegano- 
graphically concealed data is detected is by looking for non-randomness.  
So it should be virtually impossible to detect a steganopgraphically 
concealed OTP.  You could just have a nice, image (or a set of images) on 
a website, and rotate them daily.

 > The real "key" here would be the OTP transmission time/frequency, but
 > once it was missed by any potential eavesdroppers, there would be no permane
 > record of the transmission.

True, but it is feasible for a security system to set up receiver farms 
and capture many (if not all) of the transmissions from numbers stations, 
and apply them as potential OTP's to signals to see if they give sensible 
results.  I think it would be much more secure to send the OTP via some 
un-eavesdroppable mechanism (even sneaker-net) and then use the numbers 
stations to send the encrypted signals over the broadcast bands.

 > The "number stations" sounded mysterious and eery. And to know that the numb
 > mean something (apparently very important) to someone somewhere, is intrigui

I know what you mean.  I don't dwell on it -- there lies madness!  :-)


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