by Chris Barrus
I haven’t been to a LA 2600 meeting since the late 1990s, but in retrospect I’m not entirely surprised that they were behind the “Mein Fraulien” numbers-station-via-phone that was getting everyone’s attention back in June.
I think my favorite hidden easter egg was the order in which the stations were released.
New York
San Francisco
Atlanta
Little Rock
Ottawa
Lubbock
Orlando
Milwaukee
Fort Lauderdale
Gulfport
I’ve been interested in numbers stations for awhile now (and yes I still listen to the Conet Project set), but the whole numbers/spy station saga has taken an unusual, but perhaps not unexpected direction.
A numbers station has been found, only by telephone. Quoting from this thread on the Spooks list…
Anyway, what I found sounds like a numbers station, only it’s by phone. I ran across it on craigslist of all places (actually, a friend of mine found it and passed it on to me). Can anyone verify what this is? The post in question is at
http://newyork.craigslist.org/mnh/mis/158815074.html ; I’ll reproduce the text below in case it gets pulled.Subject: For mein fraulein
Message: Mein Fraulein, I haven't heard from you in a while. Won't you
call me? 212 //// 796 //// 0735The message at that number runs for around seven minutes and I’m at work so can’t grab audio of it; it starts and ends with music and reads off a bunch of numbers in groups. The voices reading the numbers sound like – well, imagine the stereotypical ransom note cut out from letters in the newspaper glued together. Anyway, if someone could check it out and let me know what they think (or point me to somewhere to ask the question) I’d appreciate it.
Later on in the thread, a poster caught the entire message.
Grp 415, male, non-accented english, recorded
01305 60510 17079 04606 50100 93000 08203 90130 94069 01207 81080 17028 07906 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 86Same lead-in music, both as an intro and out-tro
Would be interesting to watch the number for a series of days and see if the message changes any…
One thing I notice in the message is that every 5FG has a zero in it…
A mp3 of the call can be found here and here. Like Homeland Stupidity, I was tipped off to the number via 2600’s Off The Hook and the resulting army of telco hackers and phreakers tracked down the number to a pre-paid VoIP account from RNK Telecom (which has now been drained). The hacker army has also tracked down a second numbers phone, this time in the 415 area code.
It’s not surprising that the logistically awkward and noticeable combination of shortwave transmission can be superseded by a low cost short-term Craigslist/prepaid phone account combo. It’s a damn site easier to set-up, especially with easy internet access and availably of stolen information.
Watch it be a promotional scam for The DaVinci Code or something.
Chief cypherpunk John Gilmore tells it like it is:
The US government’s moves to impose totalitarian control in the last year (secret trials, enemies lists, massive domestic surveillance) are what some of the more paranoid among us have been expecting for years.
I was particularly amused by last week’s comments from the Administration that it’ll be too hard to retrain the moral FBI agents
who are so careful of our civil rights — so we’ll need a new
domestic-spying agency that will have no compunctions about violating
our civil rights and wasting our money by spying on innocent people.While there’s plenty of fodder for argument among the details, the
overall thrust of the effort seems pretty clear.Now’s a great time to deploy good working encryption, everywhere you
can. Next month or next year may be too late. And even honest ISPs,
banks, airlines (hah), etc, may be forced by law or by secret pressure
to act as government spies. Make your security work end-to-end.Got STARTTLS?
Got IPSEC?
Got SSH?Use it or lose it.