[HN Gopher] Random numbers, Persian code: A mysterious signal tr...
___________________________________________________________________
Random numbers, Persian code: A mysterious signal transfixes radio
sleuths
https://www.wired.com/story/a-mysterious-numbers-station-is-...
Author : thinkingemote
Score : 98 points
Date : 2026-04-01 11:39 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.rferl.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.rferl.org)
| aswegs8 wrote:
| https://archive.is/20260323190952/https://www.wired.com/stor...
| j16sdiz wrote:
| Better source: https://www.rferl.org/a/mystery-numbers-station-
| persian-sign...
| lazyguythugman wrote:
| I've been off put by WIRE recently. Thanks for this.
| dang wrote:
| Ok, we've changed to that from
| https://www.wired.com/story/a-mysterious-numbers-station-is-...
| above, and I've put the latter link in the toptext. Thanks!
| hypeatei wrote:
| This reminds me of UVB-76[0], a shortwave military radio in
| Russia. It would be interesting know _why_ they 're using this
| method to communicate covertly rather than beaming down messages
| to a phone via satellite or something. I'm not an expert on
| radios, though, so maybe it's not as clunky as I'm imagining
| where an undercover asset is hauling around bulky equipment.
|
| 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UVB-76
| jacknews wrote:
| perhaps they're not directed at deeply embedded lone spies with
| radios in their attics, but at 'military assets' which as a
| matter of course can receive these transmissions on a
| designated schedule.
| teeray wrote:
| It's simple, reliable, and effective. Shortwave receivers can
| be made fairly compact. They're also very prevalent in most
| countries (every ham transciever), so there's nothing
| suspicious to pack. People find numbers stations interesting,
| so they are often streamed online. One time pads have their
| logistical shortcomings, but are still the best encryption
| possible. The OTP can be compromised in known, visible ways,
| where a phone has myriad invisible ways to be compromised.
| smegger001 wrote:
| You could probably cheat with the one time pad and use a book
| as a key, pick a pre determined starting point go diagonally
| down accross the page convert the letters to numbers and xor
| that against the message. It would be near enough to random
| and less conspicuous than a pad of random numbers when
| searched.
| teeray wrote:
| That feels like something that could suffer from frequency
| analysis.
| nemomarx wrote:
| Phones usually contain the hardware for radio too, so making
| sure agents have some set of models for that doesn't sound bad.
| Even if you had to use a dedicated one having a radio at home
| isn't that conspicuous? Or in a car, etc
| gorfian_robot wrote:
| a consumer phone usually would only have an FM receiver
| eichin wrote:
| ooh, new fodder for conspiracies about electric cars not
| having AM radios :-)
| ndiddy wrote:
| Like the article says, satellite messages can be traced while
| radio is broadcast to everyone so it's impossible to find out
| who's listening. Shortwave radios are also cheap and
| widespread, so it's easy to get one anywhere in the world and
| if your house gets searched, it won't be suspicious if you have
| one.
| tdeck wrote:
| > Shortwave radios are also cheap and widespread, so it's
| easy to get one anywhere in the world
|
| I always hear this in discussions about number stations, but
| I don't think this is true in the US. In fact, I don't think
| I've ever seen a general consumer "shortwave radio". Unless
| the regular AM band counts, which seems to be medium wave.
| gorfian_robot wrote:
| def a niche consumer item these days. but pretty easy to
| make your own.
| ndiddy wrote:
| The term for shortwave radios targeting the general
| consumer market is "world band radio". They look like a
| standard portable AM/FM radio except they'll also pick up
| long wave, medium wave, short wave, and maybe weather band.
| They're more of a niche in the US now that internet
| streaming is a thing, but you should still be able to get
| one at most electronics stores. Of course like most niche
| products, you'll get much better selection and pricing
| online.
| JohnFen wrote:
| I'm in the US. At least half of the people I know own
| shortwave radios, although most don't think of them as
| "shortwave radios". They're more often called "world
| radios" or some other such synonym. I could run out to a
| consumer electronics store right now and buy one.
|
| The younger people I know tend to own such a radio in the
| form of the Baofeng UV-5R or the like.
| lukeinator42 wrote:
| A Baofeng UV-5R cannot receive shortwave, it's in the
| VHF/UHF range for receive/transmit and can receive
| commercial FM broadcast.
| JohnFen wrote:
| Ah, true. My mistake.
| smegger001 wrote:
| I used to have little battery powered
| AM/FM/Shortwave/weather radio lost it a couple house
| moveings ago. Kept it around for the emergacy weather radio
| during flood events and other extreme weather when
| internet/power isnt reliable. Should probably pick up a
| replacement come to think of it.
| lxgr wrote:
| Satellite unicast receivers also can't be located. Iridium
| pagers were (maybe still are?) a thing, for example.
|
| However, carrying one of these is probably highly suspicious
| compared to a world band radio receiver.
| ErroneousBosh wrote:
| > Like the article says, satellite messages can be traced
| while radio is broadcast to everyone
|
| I don't buy it.
|
| Satellite downlinks are broadcast to everyone under a
| potentially massive footprint. Take a look at the footprint
| for QO-100 which you could use with very inexpensive
| equipment that looks pretty much like a normal satellite TV
| dish.
|
| https://jeremyclark.ca/wp/telecom/sdr-for-
| qo-100-satellite-r...
| srean wrote:
| Does this move around geographically ? Triangulating broadcast
| location is a well understood craft.
| rustyhancock wrote:
| Shortwave radio is more challenging than you might imagine.
|
| Near to the transmitter it's received by ground wave, further
| it's scattered off the ionosphere. In-between it's undetectable
| due to the skip zone. This might also explain why Amelia
| Earhart went missing [1]
|
| Coverage is obtained from multipath and reflections. Leading to
| variable strength and timing. Not as bad as DXing on HF with
| low power but much harder than you might imagine.
|
| Fine for someone to transcribe some numbers but useless for
| people trying to identify sources.
|
| So locally you get an apparent direction to the source which is
| clearly not the source.
|
| Add to that the complex local terrain and a well placed number
| stations can be very difficult to locate with precision.
|
| Edit: unrelated but interesting there are some mysteries in HF
| transmission including long delayed echoes where a signal takes
| far longer than reasonable to travel out and back over several
| seconds [0] which given its travelling light milliseconds is a
| conundrum.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_delayed_echo
|
| [1] https://youtu.be/zTDFhWWPZ4Q?si=Ib8jfbdNP-sLHM0B
| Supermancho wrote:
| My father regailed tales of his college years where it was a
| game to have a HAM radio operator start broadcasting and to
| have teams try to find where they were hiding, first.
|
| More challenging? Not really. It does require multiple boots
| on the ground to do it.
| srean wrote:
| This seems to be a common treasure hunt game conducted by
| HAM clubs.
| Supermancho wrote:
| That was it. Treasure hunt.
| xanderlewis wrote:
| Also known as fox hunting.
| misnome wrote:
| Presumably doing it locally within a known few mile radius
| is different from nation-scale broadcast areas bounced from
| god-knows-where?
| Supermancho wrote:
| If you can receive a shortwave signal, you can
| triangulate the source.
| srean wrote:
| Reflections will pose a problem though.
|
| Two receivers of the same signal may not be from the same
| proximate source. One could from the original antenna the
| other from a reflection. Both could be reflected but by
| different reflectors. Even if the proximate source was
| the same for both the receivers, triangulation might
| yield the location of a _virtual image_ of the original
| source.
|
| BTW I am just going by geometry and may be way off
| because radiowaves behave quite differently compared to
| visible light.
|
| One might need effectively the inverse of beamforming to
| nail it.
| rustyhancock wrote:
| Exactly I have friends who have had voice contacts
| reflecting off aurora at VHF
| srean wrote:
| That made my day. Thanks for the laughs.
| misnome wrote:
| See content of post you initially replied in the context
| of:
|
| > Shortwave radio is more challenging than you might
| imagine.
| adrian_b wrote:
| Besides the problem caused by reflections and by the fact
| that unless you are very close to the transmitter you do
| not receive a direct wave but one reflected from the
| ionosphere, there is an additional difficulty.
|
| Antennas with high directivity, which are needed for
| accurate triangulation, must be very big in the shortwave
| range (wavelength from 100 meter to 10 meter). Moreover,
| if they are too big it would be difficult to move them,
| to be able to measure an angle.
|
| So traditional triangulation is inaccurate in this
| frequency range.
|
| With modern technologies, using highly accurate
| synchronized clocks, one could distribute shortwave
| antennas over a large area, to create a synthetic
| aperture array, enabling a precise triangulation. However
| this would be expensive. An amateur would certainly not
| have such a thing. I doubt that even a state would bother
| to build such a thing, because it would not be
| worthwhile.
|
| While precise triangulation of a shortwave transmitter
| from far away is very difficult, such a transmitter would
| not be hard to find during a local search wherever it is
| placed, because there not only the direction, but also
| the intensity gradient of the signal would allow finding
| it.
| IAmBroom wrote:
| Multiple boots on Iranian ground is tricky for Americans
| right now.
| BenjiWiebe wrote:
| Yes, more challenging. Ham radio fox hunting is usually
| VHF/UHF. Waaay easier to direction-find, since the signal
| isn't bouncing off the ionosphere, and also the much
| shorter wavelength means that you can get highly
| directional antennas that are small enough to be held, and
| don't need to be 50 feet in the air to work well.
| srean wrote:
| Thanks that was quite illuminating. I knew about ionospheric
| reflections to be a problem but not the others.
| red_admiral wrote:
| I would guess that the combined EU/NATO counterintelligence
| forces could find the station if they wanted to, especially
| for the rough location in the article.
|
| EDIT: apparently the source is on a U.S. military base in
| Germany (other posts on this topic). Looks like its "ours"
| then.
| baxtr wrote:
| Explains why it's still sending
| JohnFen wrote:
| The broadcast locations aren't really secret, and don't need to
| be.
| srean wrote:
| Known locations can be taken out, no ?
| JohnFen wrote:
| Yes, but the locations of the big transmitters are in well-
| defended areas and smaller transmitters are easy to
| replace.
| srean wrote:
| Nothing much in Iran is well defended from air I suppose.
|
| Assuming, of course, the hypothetical that it's a signal
| emanating from Iran. The current fix seems to indicate
| Germany, in which case you would be correct.
| AlphaGeekZulu wrote:
| N 48.690438deg E 9.086693deg
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Neat, there's no Street View coverage but there is clear
| sattelite imagery: https://maps.app.goo.gl/RjGUAMExUrD6aqs59
|
| Apple's maps version has that section blurred out though.
|
| Bing's sattelite images seem to be older, the antenna isn't
| visible on there yet and there's just building foundations: htt
| ps://www.bing.com/maps?cp=48.690103%7E9.086240&lvl=18.8&s....
| Can't determine how old those images are though.
| AlphaGeekZulu wrote:
| Until around 2000-2004 there have even been 2 Antennas. The
| whole surrounding forest is a military training ground,
| obviously used by German Bundeswehr and US forces. There are
| German and US barracks on opposite ends of the area. Within
| the vicinity there are an UXO clearance service, K9 school,
| CQB training village, shooting ranges, lots of bunkers and
| who knows what.
| ttul wrote:
| Street View nearby reveals this sign at the edge of the Street
| View area: "Forstarbeiter und Militar Frei," which means
| "Forestry Workers and Military [are free to enter]". The red
| circle around the sign implies that everyone else is forbidden
| to enter. So, it's some kind of military installation.
| Eduard wrote:
| https://maps.app.goo.gl/94ct471W1RjwHSXz5
| philipwhiuk wrote:
| Sounds like a CIA numbers station transmitting info to agents on
| the ground.
| NitpickLawyer wrote:
| I wonder why they keep using a dedicated numbers station instead
| of embedding the code in a regular radio broadcast on a
| traditional channel? I'm sure that even before LLMs one could
| find a way to create a story where certain numbers / code words
| would be embedded without altering the underlying story too much.
| And they could probably get BBC / whatever station to air it. It
| would be a _bit_ less inconspicuous to listen to BBC than to a
| dedicated numbers station, even if the message would be
| undecryptable either way.
| coldpie wrote:
| Seems to me like coordinating with an entity outside of the
| spooks' control, such as the BBC, would give more opportunities
| for leaks. It would also reveal some information about who is
| controlling the signal--someone with some kind of relationship
| with the broadcaster.
| red_admiral wrote:
| During WWII, the BBC would daily have a section after the
| news dedicated to "personal messages" - which everyone knew
| were instructions to the resistance in France, or similar.
| "William waits for Mary" was one of the more famous ones
| related to D-Day, I think.
| gorfian_robot wrote:
| regular AM/FM stations are not broadcasting on shortwave bands
| lxgr wrote:
| There are still quite a few shortwave radio stations
| broadcasting.
| NitpickLawyer wrote:
| Sure, but that would be a benefit, I would think. Most old
| cars come with an AM/FM radio, most cheap phones now have FM
| (? I don't know about AM, don't think so) and so on. So it
| would be more inconspicuous to listen to a regular radio than
| to a special station on special hardware. You don't even have
| to broadcast from EU, you could probably purchase some Radio
| Quatar Classical Rock or something :)
| JohnFen wrote:
| Radios capable of receiving shortwave bands aren't exactly
| rare among normal people. They're not really "special
| hardware". Just owning one would not be inherently
| suspicious.
|
| What would be suspicious is being in possession of the one-
| time pad needed to decode the messages, regardless of which
| media those messages are transmitted through.
|
| For the record, "numbers stations" can be found in nearly
| every communication medium, including the web. The
| advantage of using shortwave (range, primarily) are large
| enough that the benefits outweigh the drawbacks.
| ErroneousBosh wrote:
| > What would be suspicious is being in possession of the
| one-time pad needed to decode the messages
|
| Would it though?
|
| All you need is something with sufficient entropy. I
| reckon you could do a "good enough" job with any
| plausible-looking data you have lying around on your hard
| disk right now. Say for example if you took a couple of
| sha256s of any random image you might post on social
| media, you'd have quite a lot of key right there.
| nhecker wrote:
| I can't find it immediately, but I've read about something even
| sneakier than this. A standard broadcast station was modified
| such that its carrier signal was modulated by a PSK signal. The
| intended listener would use e.g., a PSK-31 modem to listen to
| the carrier signal and would be able to obtain the encoded
| digital data. Everyday listeners would hear the regular
| broadcast. The station involved _might_ have been a BBC
| station, but I don't recall.
| mbirth wrote:
| You could technically just transmit data via RDS, too. Change
| a letter here and there and nobody would know whether that's
| a decoding error or actual ciphertext. (Would need some kind
| of checksum or so, of course.)
|
| @windytan did a fascinating audio clip highlighting the RDS
| data stream in a radio recording some while ago:
|
| https://soundcloud.com/windytan-1/rds-mixdown
| b00ty4breakfast wrote:
| who's to say they aren't doing both? They may not even be
| sending anything over the number station; these stations will
| continue on a schedule even when there is nothing to say and
| nobody is listening because it makes it harder to eek out a
| foothold in the event of a weakness in the encryption.
| red_admiral wrote:
| Even if the encryption is one-time pads, if you broadcast a
| bit every day then you don't warn the enemy that something's
| up by the fact that you're transmitting at all.
| zitterbewegung wrote:
| Shortwave propagates better and also its just a one time pad
| being distributed so embedding doesn't matter as much as long
| as the one time pad is longer than the intended message to
| send. There is no way to decrypt it because once you encrypt a
| message using a one time pad it is impossible to decrypt
| without the exact one time pad that it was encrypted with.
| bluGill wrote:
| One time pads work only if only the sender and receiver have
| a copy of the pad - and they destroy each sheet on use.
| Distributing the pads is hard, but often it can be done
| easier than the message.
|
| Distributing a one time pad like this is a stupid idea: it
| isn't hard to collect everything you ever send, and it takes
| a computer a few ms to check every encrypted message against
| every possible sequence. That is breaking a distribute one
| time pad via shortwave like this is something a single
| layperson can do, it doesn't even need a government scale
| attacker to break it.
|
| Don't get me wrong, this can be used for good encryption.
| However it isn't a one time pad they are doing, it is
| something more complex.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| Every message is equally likely when you attempt this kind
| of brute-force decryption with a one-time pad. The code you
| get is actually 100% unbreakable if the pad isn't
| intercepted.
| BenjiWiebe wrote:
| I think there's some confusion in this thread. GGP talks
| about distributing the one time pad via the numbers
| station. GP (rightly) says that's a stupid idea.
|
| The numbers station should be transmitting a _message_
| encoded with a one time pad. The one time pad itself
| should be physically given in person to the spies who you
| want to communicate with.
| bell-cot wrote:
| Or, if one is uncertain whether to trust the courier
| between you and your spy - one can send two different one
| time pads by two different couriers. If the spy is
| trained to xor those pads together before using, an enemy
| must intercept both pads to be able to read your
| messages.
|
| There are many variants on this, including pads which you
| hope your enemy will intercept.
| SAI_Peregrinus wrote:
| It's not a one-time pad being distributed, because leaking
| the pad leaks all your communications. It's almost certainly
| the actual messages being distributed, at specific times of
| day. The listener records the numbers for the known time
| period to get the message, then decodes it with their pad for
| that period. Then they destroy that pad. Continually
| broadcasting numbers makes it impossible to tell the length
| of the messages.
| zikduruqe wrote:
| And it is faster than the internet. That's why high speed
| traders are starting to use HF.
|
| https://spectrum.ieee.org/wall-street-tries-shortwave-
| radio-...
| some_random wrote:
| I think you're massively overestimating the amount of control
| the US has over news broadcasters.
| fortran77 wrote:
| I think they do this, too.
|
| However, the numbers stations transmissions are never a big
| secret. They're intentionally powerful so someone can pick them
| up on simple equipment without raising suspicion. A person can
| modify an off-the-shelf AM radio to pick up shortwave, for
| example, even in an oppressive regime.
|
| It's a one-time pad, so the encryption is unbreakable.
| daneel_w wrote:
| _> "I'm sure that even before LLMs one could find a way to
| create a story where certain numbers / code words would be
| embedded without altering the underlying story too much."_
|
| It's called _steganography_ , and it's a centuries if not
| millennia old technique.
| shagie wrote:
| I recall reading about this in The Code Book by Simon Singh
| when I was dabbling with writing single and double
| substitution cypher solvers.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steganography#History
|
| > The first recorded uses of steganography can be traced back
| to 440 BC in Greece, when Herodotus mentions two examples in
| his Histories. Histiaeus sent a message to his vassal,
| Aristagoras, by shaving the head of his most trusted servant,
| "marking" the message onto his scalp, then sending him on his
| way once his hair had regrown, with the instruction, "When
| thou art come to Miletus, bid Aristagoras shave thy head, and
| look thereon." Additionally, Demaratus sent a warning about a
| forthcoming attack to Greece by writing it directly on the
| wooden backing of a wax tablet before applying its beeswax
| surface. Wax tablets were in common use then as reusable
| writing surfaces, sometimes used for shorthand.
| user982 wrote:
| The previous time that the US and UK overthrew Iran's
| government
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Iranian_coup_d'%C3%A9tat),
| they used the BBC in that way. Roosevelt told
| the Shah that he was in Iran on behalf of the American and
| British secret services, and that this would be confirmed by a
| code word the Shah would be able to hear on the BBC the next
| night. Churchill had arranged that the BBC would end its
| broadcast day by saying not 'it is now midnight' as usual, but
| 'it is now exactly midnight'
| anigbrowl wrote:
| Because you can drive intel analysts crazy with this one weird
| trick. They know you can't decrypt one time pads, but they
| can't resist checking for entropy and trying to match it to
| known OTPs they may have acquired through intelligence
| channels. Running and programming the shortwave transmitter is
| dirt cheap; tying up some of opponents' SIGINT resources on a
| wild goose chase is good value for money.
| butler14 wrote:
| "We don't need NATO." But we do need our bases in Germany plz.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| These two don't have to be related per se, but it sure helps
| with maintaining a healthy mutually beneficial military
| relationship.
| chinathrow wrote:
| https://priyom.org/number-stations/other/v32
| ndiddy wrote:
| If anyone is interested in further reading, this group are the
| world's leading experts on number stations (outside of
| intelligence services of course). They've done a detailed article
| on the new station, including recordings, technical mishaps, and
| analysis of why they believe the station is CIA run.
| https://priyom.org/number-stations/other/v32
|
| > Considering the topical interest in this station, the Priyom
| team shares its further expertise regarding V32's attribution,
| beyond being transmitted from a US military facility. While this
| remains unconfirmed speculation, and not facts, a prime candidate
| for the operator of this station would be the CIA. Contrary to
| popular belief, US intelligence has not entirely moved away from
| numbers stations. Sources in the intelligence community indicate
| that the CIA provides extra training about numbers stations and
| one-time pads to clandestine agents assigned to locations with a
| very hostile operating environment, such as Iran or North Korea:
| it is envisioned as a last-resort means of communication with
| high-value sources. So according to this, numbers stations are
| actually still an institutional part of the CIA playbook. The war
| in Iran, and the Internet blackout installed by the regime,
| fulfill the very circumstances for which the CIA would have
| planned this.
|
| > We already know that the CIA has a significant presence in Iran
| and involvement in the war, having provided crucial intelligence
| tracking Iranian leaders that enabled the assassination strikes
| that kickstarted the war. They most probably have had a network
| of infiltrated assets already in place and organized, ready to be
| reached through a numbers station if need be right when the war
| started - which makes the CIA a candidate for running V32
| consistent with a legitimate intelligence operation. However,
| what we've observed from V32's operations - technical quirks and
| shifting formats - suggest that the technical deployment of the
| numbers station and shortwave transmissions themselves may have
| been a little rushed by the circumstances.
|
| > Another noteworthy feature of V32 is how all its transmissions
| take place on the same frequency. Most other numbers stations in
| general are comprehensive operations targeting many different
| recipients in different countries, and making use of many
| different transmission times and frequencies suited to the
| particular signal propagation needs corresponding to all those
| areas. In contrast, the fact that V32 always uses a single, same
| frequency, at always two given times of the day, would be
| consistent with an operation that only needs to target a single
| geographical area: Iran.
| kreetx wrote:
| Thanks for the link, really interesting!
| srean wrote:
| For intelligence agencies, it is important to
| communicate with their spies to gather intelligence,"
| says John Sipher, a former US intelligence officer
|
| Is Sipher really his name. Nominative determinism strikes again.
|
| _Sifr_ is also a valid word both in Farsi, I think. An Ironic
| and cruel pun.
| buildbot wrote:
| Random chance has a really good sense of humor!
| Obscurity4340 wrote:
| 1/10 dentists hates nominative determinism. That dentist? Dr.
| Procter
| OJFord wrote:
| > Sifr is also a valid word both in Farsi, I think
|
| That _is_ the root of 'cipher'; meaning
| zero/empty/nothingness.
| srean wrote:
| Indeed and used cleverly in Casino Royale by naming Le
| Chiffre that way.
|
| I knew 'sifr' was an Arabic word and only today I came to
| know that it works in Farsi too.
|
| The double pun/irony is that the John Sipher's surname is
| related to the topic of cryptography and that the
| etymological roots is Middle-Eastern.
| OJFord wrote:
| Also Hindi, Urdu, and no doubt others if we're drawing
| lines :) - there's an awful lot of overlap/loanwords.
| ErroneousBosh wrote:
| You'd be amazed how many firefighters I know called "Burns",
| even leaving aside Ayrshire where lots of people are not-too-
| distantly related to a famous poet who, to put it mildly, put
| it about a bit.
| akssri wrote:
| More so if you know the etymology,
|
| https://www.etymonline.com/word/cipher
|
| (Al Jabr, the translator of Indian Mathematical texts was a
| Persian IIRC)
| lioeters wrote:
| Al-Jabr, from where we get the word _albebra_ , is an
| abbreviated name of the book (The Compendious Book on
| Calculation by Completion and Balancing). The translator's
| name was al-Khwarizmi, from where we get the word
| _algorithm_. He was of Persian origin.
| srean wrote:
| Why do say "translator's name" ?
|
| Al-Khwarizmi authored the book Al-Jabr.
| lioeters wrote:
| Oh you're right, I was confused by the rich cultural
| exchange of translations happening at the time, from
| Greek and Sanskrit texts to Arabic then later Arabic
| texts to Latin. Both the book and the author are
| fascinating subjects I enjoy learning more about.
| srean wrote:
| Islamic golden age was an interesting time indeed. In
| addition to algebra, significant contribution to Optics.
| cathyfin8 wrote:
| Interesting. Some sort of sync signal?
| IAmGraydon wrote:
| The location of this transmitter is a shortwave transmission
| facility within a US military base in Boblingen, 15 km southwest
| of Stuttgart, Germany. The coordinates:
|
| 48deg41'26"N 9deg05'12"E
|
| https://www.google.com/maps/place/48%C2%B041'26.0%22N+9%C2%B...
| andyjohnson0 wrote:
| Interesting. I have no reason to disbelieve you.
|
| So...
|
| If its being broadcast by the US military or the CIA, why
| Persian?
|
| Because they're issueing activation orders to their network of
| ani-regime operatives inside Iran? Who, mysteriously for spies,
| only know that language?
|
| Or because they want the Iranian government to _think_ that?
| And a numbers station broadcasting in - unusually - Persian, is
| an easy way to get the attention of the Iranians?
|
| I'm thinking the latter.
| red_admiral wrote:
| Locally and recently recruited spies inside Iran?
| ndiddy wrote:
| The CIA recruits a lot of Iranians to spy for them. Since the
| Internet is a thing, they typically communicate with them
| that way. For example, in the 2010s the CIA ran hundreds of
| fake news, sports, travel, religious, etc. websites, where
| typing a password into a search box or other text field would
| open a hidden message area where operatives could read
| messages from the CIA and send back information. This network
| was eventually destroyed and hundreds of sources were
| arrested because the CIA made the error of using the same few
| messaging scripts and hosting the sites from a few contiguous
| IP blocks, but it's a good idea of how they generally
| operate. See here for more info:
| https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-
| spie... https://cirosantilli.com/cia-2010-covert-
| communication-websi...
|
| However, since the US-Israeli bombing of Iran on Feb 28, the
| Iranian government has shut down the whole country's Internet
| access. This means that the CIA needs another way to send
| information out, hence the numbers station.
| IAmGraydon wrote:
| The latter seems more plausible to me as well. It's
| psychological warfare - make them think that the enemy is
| amongst them.
| ada1981 wrote:
| over / under it's just some kid broadcasting an encrypted Phish
| Prague 7/6/98 GHOST on repeat?
|
| https://youtu.be/Q6cR7PEyzW4
| andyjohnson0 wrote:
| > Fernandez, who more than two decades ago published a four-CD
| audio compendium of hundreds of recordings from around the world
| called the Conet Project. It's considered the Bible for numbers-
| station enthusiasts.
|
| The Conet Project is an interesting listen -- very analogue, Cold
| War-ish, and a bit sinister. Seems to be available on the
| Internet Archive at https://archive.org/details/The-Conet-Project
| frrlpp wrote:
| Cannot believe they didn't write the frequencies. Incompetents.
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