[ARCHIVED THREAD] - Numbers Station

Posted: 8/5/2006 11:05:10 PM EDT

A while back there was a discussion of some VOIP numbers published on Craig's List that appeared to be "numbers stations", a recording of someone reciting a list of numbers that are presumably a code. It's been revealed who did this: it was some people doing a social experiment to determine if they could foil traffic analysis.

www.homelandstupidity.us/2006/08/05/phone-numbers-stations-mystery-revealed-at-defcon/
www.defcon.org/html/defcon-14/dc-14-speakers.html#Carlson2

The presenters will demonstrate how they were able to create a publicly available communications channel and use thousands of unwitting participants to spread their encrypted messages. The presentation will also include speculations on how to create networks designed to foil traffic analysis attempts, and observations about the culture of the online cryptographic community, and the nature of collaborative problem solving.

"Traffic analysis" is the investigation of message flows without any understanding of the actual message contents. You might observe that a message goes from Moscow Central to Peoria, and as a result guess that a spy is receiving messages in Peoria. The numbers VOIP were an effort to get the message published widely on many places so that the recipient could avoid this sort of traffic analysis. So ARFCOM was unwittingly being used to repeat the message and foil traffic analysis.

The group admitted that all but one of the messages used a one-time pad and has provided solutions for several of the messages, but not all of them, for “reasons that will become clear shortly.”

The number station at 613-686-3106 decrypted to “Greetz 2 U hungover DEFCON attendees!!!1?
The number station at 806-224-0272 decrypted to “Captains Log: Stardate 200606.2 — Pwned by Ensign Crusher.” The group noted that this was a reference to Wil Wheaton, who figured out that the “Group” number seemed to refer to the area code where the next message would appear, prompting them to change their strategy. They then used numbers from Wheaton’s IP address.
The number station 407-956-4114 decrypted to “Spooks List — Apologies for leading you on; thanks for being good sports.”
The number station 414-386-1377 decrypted to “Shoutz to Homeland Stupidity and the cryptographic community. You are the ones who made this possible.”
The number station 954-622-9338 decrypted to “Dear Emmanuel: Glad to see creativity is alive and well over at 2600 magazine. If you ever need help, AGAIN, give us a call.”

They had an amusing technique for getting the voices used on the VOIP lines.

[ARCHIVED THREAD] - Numbers Station

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[ARCHIVED THREAD] - Numbers Station

[ARCHIVED THREAD] - Numbers Station