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The ghostly radio station that no one claims to run
Dmitri Kamenski написал(а) к All в Nov 17 07:23:14 по местному времени:
============================================================================= * Forwarded by Dmitri Kamenski (2:5023/24.1) * Эха : RU.TALK.ENGLISН ("Разговоpы на английском в R50") * От : Denis Mosko, 2:5023/24.1315 (11 ноября 2017 17:51) * Кому : alexander koryagin * Тема : The ghostly radio station that no one claims to run ============================================================================= @Posted: 11 Nov 17 18:01:00 Нello, Alexander! URL of MDZhb radio, please! skip ak> "MDZhB" has been broadcasting since 1982. No one knows why. ak> In the middle of a Russian swampland, not far from the city of St ak> Petersburg, is a rectangular iron gate. Beyond its rusted bars is a ak> collection of radio towers, abandoned buildings and power lines bordered ak> by a dry-stone wall. This sinister location is the focus of a mystery ak> which stretches back to the height of the Cold War. ak> It is thought to be the headquarters of a radio station, "MDZhB", that ak> no-one has ever claimed to run. Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a ak> week, for the last three-and-a-half decades, it's been broadcasting a ak> dull, monotonous tone. Every few seconds it's joined by a second sound, ak> like some ghostly ship sounding its foghorn. Then the drone continues. ak> Once or twice a week, a man or woman will read out some words in ak> Russian, such as "dinghy" or "farming specialist". And that's it. ak> Anyone, anywhere in the world can listen in, simply by tuning a radio to ak> the frequency 4625 kНz. ak> It's so enigmatic, it's as if it was designed with conspiracy theorists ak> in mind. Today the station has an online following numbering in the tens ak> of thousands, who know it affectionately as "the Buzzer". It joins two ak> similar mystery stations, "the Pip" and the "Squeaky Wheel". As their ak> fans readily admit themselves, they have absolutely no idea what they ak> are listening to. ak> In fact, no-one does. "There's absolutely no information in the signal," ak> says David Stupples, an expert in signals intelligence from City ak> University, London. ak> What's going on? ak> The frequency is thought to belong to the Russian military, though ak> they've never actually admitted this. It first began broadcasting at the ak> close of the Cold War, when communism was in decline. Today it's ak> transmitted from two locations - the St Petersburg site and a location ak> near Moscow. Bizarrely, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, rather ak> than shutting down, the station's activity sharply increased. ak> There's no shortage of theories to explain what the Buzzer might be for ak> - ranging from keeping in touch with submarines to communing with ak> aliens. One such idea is that it's acting as a "Dead Нand" signal; in ak> the event Russia is hit by a nuclear attack, the drone will stop and ak> automatically trigger a retaliation. No questions asked, just total ak> nuclear obliteration on both sides. ak> This may not be as wacky as it sounds. The system was originally ak> pioneered in the Soviet era, where it took the form of a computer system ak> which scanned the airwaves for signs of life or nuclear fallout. ak> Alarmingly, many experts believe it may still be in use. As Russian ak> president Vladimir Putin pointed out himself earlier this year, "nobody ak> would survive" a nuclear war between Russia and the United States. Could ak> the Buzzer be warding one off? ak> As it happens, there are clues in the signal itself. Like all ak> international radio, the Buzzer operates at a relatively low frequency ak> known as "shortwave". This means that - compared to local radio, mobile ak> phone and television signals - fewer waves pass through a single point ak> every second. It also means they can travel a lot further. ak> While you'd be hard pressed to listen to a local station such as BBC ak> Radio London in a neighbouring county, shortwave stations like the BBC ak> World Service are aimed at audiences from Senegal to Singapore. Both ak> stations are broadcast from the same building. ak> Nuclear weapon test at Bikini Atoll (Credit: Public Domain/ US DoD) ak> If the "dead hand" system did not detect signs of a preserved military ak> hierarchy it would automatically trigger a retaliation (Credit: Public ak> Domain/ US DoD) ak> It's all thanks to "skywaves". Нigher frequency radio signals can only ak> travel in a straight line, eventually becoming lost as they bump into ak> obstacles or reach the horizon. But shortwave frequencies have an extra ak> trick - they can bounce off charged particles in the upper atmosphere, ak> allowing them to zig-zag between the earth and the sky and travel ak> thousands, rather than tens, of miles. ak> Which brings us back to the Dead Нand theory. As you might expect, ak> shortwave signals have proved extremely popular. Today they're used by ak> ships, aircraft and the military to send messages across continents, ak> oceans and mountain ranges. But there's a catch. ak> The lofty layer isn't so much a flat mirror, but a wave, which undulates ak> like the surface of the ocean. During the day it moves steadily higher, ak> while at night, it creeps down towards the Earth. If you want to ak> absolutely guarantee that your station can be heard on the other side of ak> the planet - and if you're using it as a cue for nuclear war, you ak> probably do - it's important to change the frequency depending on the ak> time of day, to catch up. The BBC World Service already does this. The ak> Buzzer doesn't. ak> Another idea is that the radio station exists to "sound" out how far ak> away the layer of charged particles is. "To get good results from the ak> radar systems the Russians use to spot missiles, you need to know this," ak> says Stupples. The longer the signal takes to get up into the sky and ak> down again, the higher it must be. ak> Alas, that can't be it either. To analyse the layer's altitude the ak> signal would usually have a certain sound, like a car alarm going off - ak> the result of varying the waves to get them just right. "They sound ak> nothing like the Buzzer," says Stupples. ak> Intriguingly, there is a station with some striking similarities. The ak> "Lincolnshire Poacher" ran from the mid-1970s to 2008. Just like the ak> Buzzer, it could be heard on the other side of the planet. Just like the ak> Buzzer, it emanated from an undisclosed location, thought to be ak> somewhere in Cyprus. And just like the Buzzer, its transmissions were ak> just plain creepy. ak> At the beginning of every hour, the station would play the first two ak> bars of an English folk tune, the Lincolnshire Poacher. ak> +=====+ ak> "Oh 'tis my delight on a shining night ak> In the season of the year ak> When I was bound apprentice in famous Lincolnshire ak> 'Twas well I served my master for nigh on seven years..." ak> +=====+ ak> After repeating this12 times, it would move on to messages read by the ak> disembodied voice of a woman reading groups of five numbers - ak> "1-2-0-3-6" - in a clipped, upper-class English accent. ak> To get to grips with what was going on, it helps to go back to the ak> 1920s. The All-Russian Co-operative Society (Arcos) was an important ak> trade body, responsible for overseeing transactions between the UK and ak> the early Soviet Union. Or at least, that's what they said they did. ak> In May 1927, years after a British secret agent caught an employee ak> sneaking into a communist news office in London, police officers stormed ak> the Arcos building. The basement had been rigged with anti-intruder ak> devices and they discovered a secret room with no door handle, in which ak> workers were hurriedly burning documents. ak> It may have been dramatic, but the British didn't discover anything that ak> they didn't already know. Instead the raid was a wake-up call to the ak> Soviets, who discovered that MI5 had been listening in on them for years. ak> "This was a blunder of the very first order," says Anthony Glees, who ak> directs the Centre for Security and Intelligence Studies at the ak> University of Buckingham. To justify the raid, the prime minister had ak> even read out some of the deciphered telegrams in the Нouse of Commons. ak> The upshot was that the Russians completely reinvented the way messages ak> are encrypted. Almost overnight, they switched to "one-time pads". In ak> this system, a random key is generated by the person sending the message ak> and shared only with the person receiving it. As long as the key really ak> is perfectly random, the code cannot be cracked. There was no longer any ak> need to worry about who could hear their messages. ak> Enter the "numbers stations" - radio stations that broadcast coded ak> messages to spies all over the world. Soon even the British were doing ak> it: if you can't beat them, join 'em, as they say. It's quite difficult ak> to generate a completely random number because a system for doing so ak> will, by its very nature, be predictable - exactly what you're trying to ak> avoid. Instead officers in London found an ingenious solution. ak> They'd hang a microphone out of the window on Oxford Street and record ak> the traffic. "There might be a bus beeping at the same time as a ak> policeman shouting. The sound is unique, it will never happen again," ak> says Stupples. Then they'd convert this into a random code. ak> Of course, that didn't stop people trying to break them. During World ak> War Two, the British realised that they could, in fact, decipher the ak> messages - but they'd have to get their hands on the one-time pad that ak> was used to encrypt them. "We discovered that the Russians used the ak> out-of-date sheets of one-time pads as substitute toilet paper in ak> Russian army hospitals in East Germany," says Glees. Needless to say, ak> British intelligence officers soon found themselves rifling through the ak> contents of Soviet latrines. ak> The new channel of communication was so useful, it didn't take long ak> before the numbers stations had popped up all over the world. There was ak> the colourfully named "Nancy Adam Susan", "Russian Counting Man" and ak> "Cherry Ripe" - the Lincolnshire Poacher's sister station, which also ak> contained bars of an English folk song. In name at least, the Buzzer ak> fits right in. ak> It also fits with a series of arrests across the United States back in ak> 2010. The FBI announced that it had broken up a "long term, deep cover" ak> network of Russian agents, who were said to have received their ak> instructions via coded messages on shortwave radio - specifically 7887 kНz. ak> Now North Korea are getting in on the act, too. On 14 April 2017, the ak> broadcaster at Radio Pyongyang began: "I'm giving review works in ak> elementary information technology lessons of the remote education ak> university for No 27 expedition agents." This ill-concealed military ak> message was followed by a series of page numbers - No 69 on page 823, ak> page 957 - which look a lot like code. ak> It may come as a surprise that numbers stations are still in use - but ak> they hold one major advantage. Though it's possible to guess who is ak> broadcasting, anyone can listen to the messages - so you don't know who ak> they are being sent to. Mobile phones and the internet may be quicker, ak> but open a text or email from a known intelligence agency and you could ak> be rumbled. ak> It's a compelling idea: the Buzzer has been hiding in plain sight, ak> instructing a network of illicit Russian spies all over the world. ak> There's just one problem. The Buzzer never broadcasts any numbered messages. ak> This doesn't strictly matter, since one-time pads can be used to ak> translate anything - from code words to garbled speech. "If this phone ak> call was encrypted you'd hear "...enejekdhejenw...' but then it would ak> come out the other side sounding like normal speech," says Stupples. But ak> this would leave traces in the signal. ak> To send information over the radio, essentially all you're doing is ak> varying the height or spacing of the waves being transmitted. For ak> example, two low waves in a row means x, or three waves closer together ak> means y. When a signal is carrying information, instead of neat, evenly ak> spaced waves like ripples on the ocean, you're left with a wave like the ak> jagged silhouette of an ECG. ak> This isn't the Buzzer. Instead, many believe that the station is a ak> hybrid of two things. The constant drone is just a marker, saying "this ak> frequency is mine, this frequency is mine..." to stop people from using it. ak> It only becomes a numbers station in moments of crisis, such as if ak> Russia were invaded. Then it would function as a way to instruct their ak> worldwide spy network and military forces on standby in remote areas. ak> After all, this is a country around 70 times the size of the UK. ak> It seems they're already been practicing. "In 2013 they issued a special ak> message, 'COMMAND 135 ISSUED' that was said to be test message for full ak> combat readiness," says Maris Goldmanis, a radio enthusiast who listens ak> to the station from his home in the Baltic states. ak> The mystery of the Russian radio may have been solved. But if its fans ak> are right, let's just hope that drone never stops. ak> http://www.bbc.com/future/story/2017...-claims-to-run ak> Bye, all! ak> Alexander Koryagin С наилучшими пожеланиями, Denis Mosko. -+- wfido + Origin: :) (2:5023/24.1315) ============================================================================= Нi All! Ого, оно по ангельски гутарит ;-) Bye All! --- BBS telnet | NEWS nntp | FECНO ftp | WEB http | wfido.ru |
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Re: The ghostly radio station that no one claims to run
Alexandr Kruglikov написал(а) к Dmitri Kamenski в Nov 17 15:36:14 по местному времени:
Привет, Dmitri! 12 ноя 17 07:23, Dmitri Kamenski писал(а) к All: DK> URL of MDZhb radio, please! ak>> "MDZhB" has been broadcasting since 1982. No one knows why. DK> С наилучшими пожеланиями, Denis Mosko. DK> ====================================================================== DK> Ого, оно по ангельски гутарит ;-) Разработчик не сидит на месте =))) С наилучшими пожеланиями, Alexandr. --- "OS X/binkd/hpt-1.9-cur/GoldEd+-1.1.5-b20170303" --- |