Spy communication activity or non-activity is obfuscated by keeping an unused station on air and on schedule. Deploying a station only as needed could be a clue to your adversaries.

‘You may have come across some weird broadcasts with no normal talking’ - Yes, that’s called ‘BBC Radio 1’

About four minutes into this video, you see a guy named Kendall Myers, convicted in 2009 of spying for Cuba. I knew him. In 1986 I had just gone to work for the U.S. State Department, and before my departure for Germany that spring, I took a class at the Foreign Service Institute called Western European Area Studies. Kendall Myers was our instructor. He worked for the State Department.

Transmissions coming from Bletchley Park and Guam: certainly we cannot know if UK or USA are involved, it could be anyone!

They're probably still around because your agent might be in a situation where they have no access to modern information technologies. You might get zero bars in the deepest jungle, but your short-wave radio will still get your orders from the numbers station. Or, a radio might raise a lot less questions than a sophisticated computer setup for an agent in a low-tech rural setting.

Imagine if a 80 year old sleeper agent who was just watching your video for fun got the message from the beginning to start protocol on the 50 year old mission.

Few years ago i arranged/compiled some of these CONET recordings to a soundscape piece because the whole topic of the Number Stations has such an eerie tone to it and in one way becomes really musical and the shortwave medium makes it feel like it's an organic creature trying to communicate.

I've had an obsession over these for many years and they still sound so creepy to hear. Swedish rhapsody is up there with the nightmare fodder.

in early 90's i was a radioelectronics enthusiast in Russia and it was pretty simple to receive very similar signals on a homemade radio. some of them were broadcasting in Morse code beeps that i havent deciphered. it did sound very mysterious and creepy, still don't know what they were for.

I used to love listening into numbers stations back in the 70's! I had loads of recordings of really weird stations on Shortwave. I wish I'd kept them. They were a goldmine of amazing samples! The Conet Project is the best archive of these weirdo stations.

When things go bad, the old tech may surpass the new one.

I found one of these stations when I was a kid playing with someone's shortwave radio. It sounded terrifying to an eight year old!

THE NUMBERS MASON, WHAT DO THEY MEAN!?!?

“It’s 11:59 on Radio Free America; this is Uncle Sam, with music, and the truth until dawn. Right now I’ve got a few words for some of our brothers and sisters in the occupied zone: “the chair is against the wall, the chair is against the wall”, “john has a long mustache, john has a long mustache”. It’s twelve o’clock, American, another day closer to victory. And for all of you out there, on, or behind the line, this is your song.”

Perfect!!! Number Stations are my FAVORITE part of spy shit, I love how it's all real, it's all clandestine, and it all had real impacts on real people in the real world. No bullshit arg's or creepypasta here, just really creepy reality.

This is one of my favorite topics. I love listening to number stations .

I remember listening to them when I was a kid with a shortwave radio, collecting QSL cards.

I managed to decode one of the messages: “ A M A N H A S F A L L E N I N T O T H E R I V E R I N L E G O C I T Y”

You’re Videos are the Most interesting on KZfaq. I find Your voice and style of commentary incredibly informative butso easy to follow.

When I was a boy, ( early 1970’s) I listened to these stations on my grand dad’s shortwave radio. These transmissions sounded so strange and erie. Thanks awfully old chap!

I remember this from the 1980's and it was all over the shortwave bands.

7:08 Damn, thought that was going to be a slick Nord VPN advertisement.

At first the shirt lacking color was concerning, but soon you realize the pattern is so intense you think its moving. A subtle start that only builds in energy. Very well done. Also, the number stations are always an interesting topic.

I remember listening to the (I think) East German number station on shortwave in the late 50s when I as a kid. I would sometimes write the numbers down but had no idea what the message was!

Back in 2001 I had a set of Labtec flat panel computer speakers that for whatever reason would randomly pick up similar signals. Pretty sure after watching this video some of it was military or government in nature. But one time out of the blue at 2am, in the background you could hear a pocket of static then for a brief second cleared up and a guy was saying something like "Hey Jim! I just got into town, thought I would let you know your pizza will be delivered soon!." then "Okay Brad thank you and just to let you know the Eagle is cleared for landing!!!". Then a bubble of static again then nothing. ALL WHILE THE SPEAKERS WERE TURNED OFF. To this day I still wonder wtf that was all about, and what made those speakers so special about picking up the signals.

Love this channel!

Fascinating stuff. I first came across numbers stations while playing with an old short wave receiver years ago, and had no idea what was going on. I’ve since learned, but your explanation is the best I’ve heard yet. Thanks!

Sensational upload @Curios Droid I new nothing of this matter. Great work.

I recently repaired an old tube radio for my parents, down in a suburb of Atlanta, GA. I took it to them, hooked up a random wire antenna and immediately found a numbers station on shortwave transmitting in spanish and coming in five by five. Likely those rascally Cubans again. Eerie, but cool though. Odds are that it wasn't a bluff.

"Mason! For the last time! Where - is - the numbers station!" "How many times - Steiner was there! We had to kill Steiner!" "We? _Viktor Reznov?"_

I think I suggested this to you as an idea for a video! Regardless of whether you saw my suggestion, I’m really pleased you made this!

The Mossad supposedly made frequent use of number stations. Supposedly they used two formats: message and action. The message format was similar to what was described in this excellent vid. The action format consisted of a (usually) female voice speaking the numerals 1234567890 followed by a three-digit number, repeating several times. The numbers could mean, "Retreat," "Meet you contact #1 at the usual place," "Operation cancelled," "Assassination authorized," etc. Or so they say....

dammit there go my lottery numbers,now i am "LOST"

I have to admit that it is the first time I heard about these number stations. Absolutely fascinating. Btw: thanks for the video. As always topnotch quality...

After 45 years of shortwave listening, the only numbers station I hear now is Cuba's hybrid-digital HM01. In the late 70's you could hear all kinds of professional number stations as well as ones that were incredibly amateur. Around 1979 I heard one guy speaking Spanish numbers with a push-to-talk transmitter. He'd read off one row and the transmitter would turn off. Then it would turn back on and he would read another row, over and over.

Your channel is like TV documentary level quality. Your voice is really soothing.

I love you talk about all unusual topics. I'm radio amateur.

Teheh, i grew up in Akrotiri, Cyprus where the Lincolnshire Poacher was broadcasted from.

Really interesting and innovative topic to talk about! Thanks!

Genuinely happy to see a new video about short wave number stations; it seems like KZfaq has forgotten shortwave

Ooh, I love all the mystery around numbers stations; love to see a Curious Droid on the subject! UVB-76 is probably the most interesting, in my opinion...

There are 2 errors in this video: 1. In the late 1990th and early 2000th several former GDR agents gave a detailed view on east germanys number stations like G03, the 'Gong Station'. So there is no 'myth' about them nowadays. 2. It is completely wrong short wave bands could not be tracked. I worked for german military signal intelligence in the 1990th and we recorded nearly the whole radio bands from the LF to the UHF bands 24/7. Back then we needed 3 barracks, a large data center and a giantic antenna field for this. Today this can be done with a few small USB SDR sticks and raspberry pies for under 1.000 dollars.

Thanks for explaining the encryption method also. While I had known about numbers stations I had never really understood how they actually sent the information to the agents in the field.

Great video as always. Suggestion for a future topic: The history of the English Electric Canberra. The world's first jet bomber in the 1940s, still flying today with NASA as the WB-57 to gather data on spacecraft re-entry, with many flight records some of which I think still stand. A unique and distinguished career of over 70 years and counting, and I for one would love to see it celebrated.

Regarding one time pad security: "It appears that the radio messages led to the detection of Kendall and Gwen Myers. The FBI affidavit in the case makes clear that *Cuban* *codes* *had* *been* *cracked* and messages to the Myerses and other Cuban spies in the US monitored so that scraps narrowing down identification could be gathered."

"On September 21, 2001, [Ana Montes] was arrested and subsequently charged with conspiracy to commit espionage for the government of Cuba. Montes eventually pleaded guilty to spying and in October 2002, was sentenced to a 25-year prison term followed by five years' probation. In their charging documents, [US] federal prosecutors stated: Montes communicated with the Cuban Intelligence Service through encrypted messages and received her instructions *through* *shortwave* *encrypted* *transmissions* from Cuba. In addition, Montes communicated by coded numeric pager messages with the Cuban Intelligence Service by public telephones located in the District of Columbia and Maryland. The codes included 'I received message' or 'danger.' The prosecutors further stated that all of the information was on water-soluble paper that could be rapidly destroyed.

Hi Paul, I love your interesting videos! Keep it up 👍

Thank you for this interesting video, Many Years ago I used to listen to short wave radio but I never was interested in those strange broadcasts which were undecipherable and weird, though I still have my German Grundig Satellit 3400 professional radio(who of you remember it?) stashed somewhere in my house. Thank you again to bring it up!..make me start to un-dust it(the truth is that is clean and like new, it came with a nice cover too-was optional-)!

Thank you Paul for introducing me to something I have never heard of.

For more on the use of one-time pads, and cryptography in general (fictionalized, but with reality-based explanation), read Neal Stephenson's "Cryptonomicon".

It's nice to see how old-tech can still be, not only still relevant, but better than the latest cutting-edge technology. I remember hearing about number stations back in the days (the 1970s-1980s) when I paid attention to shortwave and ham radio, but never could I find out what they were all about.

Awesome presentation and information!

5:36 Correctly-used one-time pads aren't just _considered_ to be unbreakable, they're _mathematically proven_ to be - the argument about a ciphertext being equally likely to stand for any message (which Paul gives in the video) is enough, and just has to be expressed more formally. Message length is the only thing that could even begin to leak any information, and that can be avoided by padding them out to always have the same length. (Which does waste precious key bits.)

Was just watching that Fringe episode with the numbers station, very strange things.

Awesome channel, awesome content and presentation.

Thanks Paul. You don't need a very powerful radio transmitter for global coverage. Amateur Radio signals of ten Watts have been used on a number of occasions, for voice communication between England and Australia, for example. Morse code signals of 100 milliwatts have been used for transatlantic communications, too. I've used simple, low power (3 Watts) equipment for talking to people a couple of thousand kilometres away, using an indoor home-made magnetic loop antenna, and that's far from being unusual.

This makes me think of “THE BUZZER” radio station.

Now THIS was very interesting..............................thank you.

Excellent rundown as always. Two other points. 1) In order to thwart monitors, some numbers stations are believed to have broadcast dummy data for much of the time and only the intended recipients with their OTPs and a pre-arranged instruction to listen at a particular fixed time could tell if there was a genuine message for them in the broadcast. 2) Current remaining western numbers stations are most likely aimed at countries with paranoid authoritarian regimes where even carrying innocuous IT (eg USB sticks) raises eyebrows and internet access is controlled, limited and monitored by more sinister agencies than Google et al. who just want to sell you stuff. I'm thinking mainly of North Korea here but if Russia's recent experimentation with an independent internet develops further... 3) The highest risk to agents in the field with this means of communication is probably the short-wave radio itself. You might have to smuggle it into the target country in the first place, if sale, ownership of such devices is banned or otherwise restricted. But having got your radio the risk still remains since in order to be ab;le to tune to more than one frequency (normally required as short-wave reception is highly variable) the radio will itself contain one or more mixing oscillators which can radiate weak but detectable signals in the local area - a similar and related process to the TV detector vans used in the UK to find TV licence evaders before the digital TV era. Rant: I used be a keen short wave listener until the advent of light-touch regulation of the use of radio waves which often makes short wave listening in urban areas impractical due to high noise levels from devices such as internet powerline adaptors, VDSL cabling and poorly made switch-mode power supplies.

A sudden reduction or increase in the number of transmissions can be used to notice something is up. A change in "noise" is still a change. When a message is encrypted for use with a one time pad, the message is also encrypted with a number the agent has remembered. This way you need the one time pad and the memorized number to decrypt.

I grew up in West Germany during the Cold War. My older sister had a world receiver radio. That thing was huge, and one afternoon I happened upon one of those stations. I was a Tom Clancy kid, and for days I'd write numbers down..... let's say I never scored a huge catch for our Bundesnachrichtendienst. :) Btw - Jack Ryan on Amazon is amazing, and I love tour channel.

"DRINK YOUR OVALTINE"

Great video, and very good description of how OTPs work. I do have a few comments. It's entirely possible, and likely, that numbers stations did not only use OTPs to encrypt messages. It is likely that they also had codes that the agents would have memorized that they could understand straightaway without requiring a OTP. Since a OTP was a physical object, the loss of it would have prevented them from receiving any messages at all. So undoubtedly there would be instructions they could follow directly, such as being recalled, going into sleeper mode, etc. Additionally with a OTP, the person decoding the message has to know precisely when to begin decoding the message. So messages would have to begin immediately after the music / tones ended and the numbers started, or again, there would have to be a known code in the numbers that indicated that a message was about to begin. Finally, it is possible to use the same OTP many times to encode different messages. However, each re-use makes it "easier" to break the code and determine the OTP by using things like letter / word frequency analysis, etc. Generally, a OTP could probably be used at least twice safely, especially if the text they encoded wasn't verbose plain language text (which is unlikely, because using verbose verbiage would require bigger OTPs, longer transmission and decoding time, etc so the text was undoubtedly highly abbreviated and possibly in yet another code the agent could memorize). And finally, and this wasn't clearly stated in the video, is that even when the number stations were in widespread use sending messages, it is likely that the vast majority of the numbers they broadcast were random, meaningless numbers.

Absolutely love this channel

Number stations might make a comeback if more and more countries make a habit of shutting down the internet when things get hot politically (or simply filter out everything they can't decrypt).

I would love to find out all about the recording session for the Lincolnshire poacher and the nicely-spoken numbers lady.

Always very insightful..

That Sangean ATS 909 receiver looks so similar in some ways to it's smaller brother the ATS 808 which I've owned for many years. Apart from the smaller size & all black case, the major differences was that the ATS 808 missed out on single-side-band (SSB) capability of the more expensive ATS 909.

I remember stumbling upon some of these in the 80's when I used to love scanning for world radio stations.

One of the greatest/coolest mysteries of shortwave listening. I've been poking around the airwaves since I was 13 (47 years ago)!

I played the sound from some of those recordings you left url to in description to a app on my phone called Spectroid. I can see numbers and letters show up as they speak. I already knew you can save sound from a image and play it back in this program thus recreating picture but I did not expect to see anything from these old recordings.

Thank you for making this video. :)

Reminds me of boards of Canada there has used the station in one of there tracks.

Key message could be absolutely anything at all. A KZfaq commet would do.

This is the ONLY REASON the BBC is still on the air ! This is your BEST one yet ! We have to keep a open mind about this. Peace

Because end to end encryption can be used to derive traffic analysis. Number stations can’t be traced to a receiver.

This is absolutely fascinating, especially from the vantage point of history.

It's just an international game of Numberwang.

Listened carefully. Fascinating an extremely interesting report. Thank you.

I advise all people who want to remain out of prison to NOT start speaking random numbers into a radio transmitter. Whatever your local authority is (For example the FCC in the US) it will track your transmitter down rapidly and they will prosecute. This stuff is no joke and the laws of many nations are virtually unanimous on this point. So yeah. Don't do that.

Then there were the jamming stations on short wave. A low loud buzz broadcast by the USSR and others to block foreign stations. They always sounded so sinister to me as I moved up and down the dial.

I heard these via my Uncle's organ amplifier picking up the signals one evening, it was the freakiest, freakiest thing ever.

Does anyone remember that German numbers station during the late 70's, near the top end of the 80 Meter amateur band? I can't remember the exact frequency, but it must have been about 3820 Khz. It was always a very strong AM signal, usually S9+ 50 dB on the S meter, with a female voice continually announcing numbers in German. I always tuned into that station each evening, and was quite fascinated by it. Some of the numbers that are still stuck in my mind are, eins drei sieben acht neun. She would say these numbers over and over again, I think vier was somewhere in there as well :)

I got a Zenith World Transistor Ocean1000 radio in1964 for my 10th birthday. It had I think 12 bands and the handle was the antenna. The length of the antenna fully extended was 8 feet I had to lay the floor to play this thing. It also had a map with all the shortwave bands of the world. I never used it with batteries because it would hold 8/D cells but it also used AC. I heard so much stuff sometimes freaked me out. Also a lot of key code. Nights were the best times to listen. Now I can watch this video. I remember hearing random very fast clicking noises. Tons of different languages being spoke

I never expected Curious Droid to cover this topic, wow.

I have always wondered about these transmissions, Over the horizon radar makes an unusual sound as well

Superb video!

Nice video,thank you!

I wonder why the Swedish Rhapsody is called that as it was spoken in german. I am swedish so i want to know.

@1:20 YSIYSI means 99 in finnish

One possible reason for the use still: you cannot send electronic messages without raising suspicion. Messages can and do get tracked. Oh, and you need quite a bit more in equipment, which all _can be found_ and also has to be secure. The fall of use could have a similar reason: depending on where you are, buying a shortwave radio could be seen as at least curious, if not suspicious.

As an Amateur Radio operator I've talked to a lot of Europe and Hawaii with a 100 watt transceiver, a motorcycle battery, and about 100 feet of wire I found on the dump hung from trees at about 25-30 feet up and that was SSB (voice). CW (Morris code) that same setup could communicate anywhere on the globe. That is all good proven stand alone fairly low tech stuff. If things really went bad they could still communicate with their agents using very little. Not to mention the 160 meter band is close enough to AM broadcast that you could use any AM radio for a receiver, even a crystal radio set made out of junk.

i used to often hear these on my side band radio years ago always thought they were transmitting for aircraft..

Nobody: mentions number stations Black Ops Fans: THE NUMBERS MASON

Always interesting to hear about these.

I have three questions about the ratio of gases in galaxies and the speed of rotation of galaxies Galaxy gases come from stellar winds and black holes, as well as gases from star explosions The first question, if gases are less, will the speed of the galaxy rotate be less or more? The second question, if the galaxy gases are more, will they rotate more quickly or less? The third question about the different shapes of galaxies Does the proportion of gases in galaxies affect the shape of galaxies? We hope you know the percentage of gases in galaxies and know the speed of rotation of different galaxies in gas quantities We also wish technicians to invent a device that detects the percentage of gases in galaxies and how quickly different galaxies rotate in shapes and raids. Please communicate the three questions as well as the proposals for the staff of the Space Research Center

Perhaps the one that lasted for over 30 minutes was yet ANOTHER 12" mix of 'Two Tribes" by Frankie Goes To Hollywood 😂😂😂😂

“The numbers mason, what do they mean!”

Steganography makes this topic a whole lot more interesting

I still LOVE my shortwave radios. To me it is still magical to listen live to another human on the other side of the planet with no wires or other connection between us. Internet radio is just not the same.