Crypto Love Letters. How Sweet!
June 1st, 2006Modern 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 //// 0735If 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
86Link.
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. […]
!
“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?
June 2nd, 2006 at 10:19 am
It would be interesting to know who ‘found’ the original message. After all this someone seemingly has enough time to reply to messages for other people on craiglist, and is also aware of the Numbers Stations (or has a friend who can explain). Somewhat more involved than accidently finding something whilst changing radio channels. Hmm.
June 2nd, 2006 at 10:37 am
Odd isnt it? Its clearly ‘meme injection’ at work; because of the chicken and egg way that the information has found its way into the blogosphere.
June 2nd, 2006 at 11:16 am
Did you see the numbers station related transmission in the pilot to Lost? Also a sequence of numbers appears through the series.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_%28TV_series%29#The_numbers
June 3rd, 2006 at 12:41 am
I haven’t been watching Lost, but I have read about the connection; somone gave me a heads up via email. You would be amazed (actually, probably not) at how some of these ‘Hollywood Types’ who claim to love TCP so much will do anything they can to avoid forking over cash to use it. The only american TV I watch at the moment is David Letterman, and that is not for the guests normally, but for the comedy, which is sometimes very VERY funny. I read somewhere once that Dave is a Shortwave Radio enthusiast….hmmmmmmmmmmm
June 14th, 2006 at 9:36 am
I watched Letterman the other nigfht – just to see – didn’t get as far as any comedy as Michael Keaton was being a repugnant beast and chewing gum through his interview, but in any case what I noticed was that the sound is awfully compressed – to levels radio engineers can only dream about, absolutely no dynamic at all, how amazing!
June 14th, 2006 at 9:49 am
All the comedy is at the beginning of the show before the guests come on. Its very rare these days that there are interesting guests on Letterman and the musical guests are more often than not, total shite.
They do however, try and get ‘interesting’ acts on. Recently they had some Goth impersonators on…you know the group, the one that is a mix of New Order, Suicide and Bauahaus. Dreadful. But I digress.
It wasnt always this way, Captain Beefheart played Letterman, way back when, and there have been many other great music performances on the show. It makes the Johnathan Ross show (a poor man’s Letterman) look pretty poor. Not that that is a hard thing to do.
June 14th, 2006 at 10:51 am
Goth impersonators? Interpol? But they’re not that interesting… Yeah Yeah Yeahs? Not really goth…
Have you heard the Nitzer Ebb reissues / remixes? A friend has it, I will check it out this weekend. Also the new Black Dice is apparently more industrial (Throbbing Gristle/Einst
June 14th, 2006 at 11:20 am
It was two guys, one on keyboards and one on vocals, hence the Suicide angle. Truely dreadful garbage.
June 14th, 2006 at 1:00 pm
Truely dreadful garbage.
Is it pet shop boys?
June 14th, 2006 at 1:12 pm
MUCH worse; remember, PSB are againsd ID, so they have at least a single redeeming feature.
The name of the group is ‘She something something’ or ‘her something something’…maybey AT will know!
June 14th, 2006 at 7:19 pm
So you dislike PSB but like Ladytron? The plot tickens…
I can’t think of any bands that fit that description with a name like that. My Chemical Romance is as close as I get, but there’s more than two of them. Other two men groups like that I can think of are Cut Copy (shite) and Presets (better). They’re both Australian oddly.
June 14th, 2006 at 10:52 pm
…Ladytron?
You need to come here more often AT! :p
I FOUND the name of that abysmal group She Wants Revenge is their name.
She Wants Revenge….and so do I, for all the shitty music that has been pumped out over the last 15 years.
The only verdict is vengeance!
btw, I found the name by putting “she sells” into the search slot at LastFM. They rock so hard its not funny.
I have been listening to The Eagles again, and hearing alot of the things they did that are unfamilar to me. ‘On The Border’ from ‘On The Border’ is something you should check out, it sounds very odd, very fresh, very serious. The lyrics made me think that it was a modern piece, but it dates from 73. The production completely perfect; the sort of thing that was hated in the late 70’s but which now sounds really very beautiful.
The guitar playing is unnaturally perfect, clean, every note is considered, the placement of every instrument thought out. Amazing stuff.