Modern Love
In the salad days of spying, back when Ivy Leaguers working for the CIA would sneak messages into and out of East Germany in walnuts carried by unsuspecting globetrotting boy’s choirs, intelligence services used coded shortwave radio transmissions to send one way messages to their agents.
The transmissions consisted of repeated strings of numbers and the military alphabet code and were made famous years later when Wilco used a recording of a East German woman repeating Yankee Foxtrot Hotel in its breakout album (and got sued for it).
Now, it seems someone is keeping the mystery alive via the potent 21st Century combination of Craigslist and VoIP, according to Homeland Stupidity blogger Michael Hampton.
On or around May 8, the following personal ad appeared on the Internet classified ad site Craigslist. (It has since been removed.)
For mein fraulein
Mein Fraulein, I haven’t heard from you in a while. Won’t you
call me? 212 //// 796 //// 0735
If you actually called the number, up until a couple of days ago you would have heard this prerecorded message (MP3). It’s a head scratcher to keep you National Security Agency analysts occupied in your spare time. Each block of numbers is repeated twice; but below I have transcribed them only once for clarity.
Group 415
01305 60510 12079 04606 50100
93000 08203 90130 94069 01207
81080 17028 01706 90220 73038
01401 70150 15073 00402 00680
12013 12510 00540 04091 01401
30150 86022 09608 10660 02082
05507 00020 00000 02208 30290
08022 01200 40710 13065 02709
40190 29014 02200 80020 11083
07300 30260 19000 00700 00000
86
Link.
Hampton and the fine pholks over at 2600 Magazine did some digging and found that the number was a pre-paid VoIP account, but not much more than that could be divined.
Hampton suggests that the best way to figure out the answer is to attack the code.
I think he’s probably wrong.
My guess is that some young cryptanalysts are sending love notes and taunting Mossad, the NSA and the phone phreakers at the same time.
And if they are using unbreakable one-time pads, nobody, including the NSA with their fancy computers, can ever be privy to their sweet nothings.
My blessings (29564 20456 18435 05689 77329) to the happily anonymous couple. […]
http://blog.wired.com/27BStroke6/index.blog
!
“cryptanalysts … sending love notes and taunting Mossad, the NSA and the phone phreakers at the same time”
Romantics….
UPDATE:
‘Now there’s two of them!’
415-704-0402
Is the telephone number that has a recording of a musical intro, then some numbers read out by a machine, made up of very different voices.
These two messages have an interesting feature. They both have a ‘group’ count that has nothing to do with the number of groups delivered.
Now why would someone do that?
A: They know the form of Numbers Stations, but not the actual workings.
B: They know the form and the workings, and are misusing the word ‘group’ deliberately.
Someone has pointed out that all the groups in these messages can be found in large primes. Large primes are big enough so that you can find many five figure groups in them. This doesn’t prove, point to or say anything.
Some people are saying that this is for sure, a government operation of some kind. Any telephone call can have its two ends pinpointed. That means that anyone calling this number to recieve a message can be black bagged. Also because the messages are long, the person collecting it will be exposed for a signifigant amount of time while she transcribes it. Its risky. A far safer way to send a message like would be to use the radio.
No criminal would do this, because they understand how telephones work. ‘Terrorists’ don’t use crypto. So, what we have left is the most likely culprit; someone having fun.
But who could it be? It could be anyone, and now that they know that people are actively looking at the source of the ‘call me’ messages we will no doubt have some more of them. Or maybe not.
Who wants to bet?
