So these messages are presumably encrypted with a one time pad, and some lookup book of what each message of just a few characters means?

And I assume there are also a high bandwidth comms channels, and this is just the backup which is presumably tested each day.

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rcxdude 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Some of the comms channels are even lower bandwidth: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extremely_low_frequency (Though, apparently the US no longer uses this)

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jacquesm 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I think this is the primary.

High bandwidth comms are likely a lot more fragile than this. At the same time: there will be many different transmission channels, and I would expect this one to be useless immediately if someone really did something nasty.

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notadev 5 hours ago | parent [-]

Back in my Navy days, we were taught HF is the less susceptible to jamming so is used for critical comms like these in serious situations. My ship performed in one exercise related to a doomsday scenario. We sat all day listening to an HR receiver until we heard these same messages, and we would then record the characters spoken. The message was repeated so we could make sure what we wrote was accurate. We never responded. Instead, we then repeated the same messages on an HF transmitter, presumably as part of some relay.

	▲	mijowi 2 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		I, too, was in the navy and supervised this very exercise on a ship. The exercise simulates a doomsday scenario that presumes satellite comms are out after a nuclear strike. Ships and other stations retransmit the messages over HF in order to eventually reach nuclear-armed subs for assured second strike capability. HF, with its semi-BLOS (beyond line of sight) range, is used to form a global communications network without satellites. The range of course depends on how much signal bounces off the atmosphere, which is why many stations are needed for redundancy. The whole exercise is Top Secret.
	▲	jacquesm 3 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Until someone decides the ionosphere needs to stop working for such relays. And there is only one way that I'm aware of to do that and that would be stupendously bad news.

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throwaway89864 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

You can probably just point Claude or ChatGPT to decrypt it, it would find that there's some silly and obvious cipher is used that survived from the 60ies, with a 56 bit private key. /this is a wild guess, I don't have any special clearance or access/

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jacquesm 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Not a chance. OTP for sure.

	▲	metabagel 6 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-time_pad
	▲	publlus_enigma 2 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		An OTP is secure only if the key is truly random. As we saw from eMudhra this week, people do stupid things.

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netsharc 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Sheesh, hopefully a governmental department that has the NSA nearby would've been warned about this...

Then again, it is the government...

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rvba 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I also dont know anything but Im sure AI / cloud / blockchain / mongoDB / (insert fad here) will solve it due to synergy and other buzzwords.