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tokai 2 hours ago

Yeah its not a number station at all.

Analemma_ 2 hours ago | parent [-]

I disagree? The point of a numbers station is that it broadcasts in the clear and anyone with a receiver can get it, but only people with the appropriate decryption key can make any use of it. Since it's broadcasting all the time, there's no need for steganography or covert transmission. That's exactly what a numbers station is.

Where the article loses me is the implication that this is somehow sinister or beyond the pale: it's just piggybacking on a global transmitter network that exists anyway, why not?

anigbrowl an hour ago | parent | next [-]

This implication is purely in your head. The article and the scientist whose work it describes are just pointing out the identification of some data that's been transmitted across a public channel for years without anyne noticing.

thaumasiotes an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> Since it's broadcasting all the time, there's no need for steganography or covert transmission.

Well, you could look at it that way, or you could say that the fact that it's broadcasting all the time is the steganography. That constant transmission of nonsense that nobody wants is what makes it fail to be suspicious when you send a message that somebody does want.

tokai 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Its all comes down to what we buy as the definition for a number station. For me a number station needs sends a message to be a number station, not a key.

sgjohnson an hour ago | parent | next [-]

>For me a number station needs sends a message to be a number station, not a key.

We don't know that it's a key that's being sent. For all we know, it could be just random data. Obviously it's most likely not random data, but ciphertext. Either way, we have no idea what the message is.

robotresearcher 38 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

A data payload you didn't already know is a message. This message contains a key.

sieabahlpark an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

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