UVB-76 Explained 222
Useful Wheat writes "Recently slashdot covered the reappearance of UVB-76. The function of the mysterious transmitter has been revealed: UVB-76 is used to transfer orders to military personnel, along with the time at which they should be executed. 'Words for the radio messages and code tables are selected mainly from the scientific terms of chemistry (Brohman), Geology (ganomatit), philology (Izafat), geography (Bong), Zoology (kariama), history (Scythian), cooking (drying), sports (krolist) and others, as well as rare Russian words (glashatel).' The page continues to list all 23 transmissions that have been made from the station in the past, showing that UVB-76 may be more active than believed."
Great Article (Score:5, Interesting)
A wikipedia page, and a link to an old slashdot article. My, it's good to have standards in what goes on the front page.
Credibility? (Score:4, Interesting)
Despite much speculation, the actual purpose of this station remains unknown to the public, but it is probably used for relaying military orders.
Later in the article there is a section speculating about military use but that's all using an old geocities page (in Russian) found in web archive. Would be good if there was something a little more authorative on the subject.
Re:Wait... (Score:1, Interesting)
This is not so far from the truth at all. Any sentient entity would choose to control the enemy not eradicate immediately. As such skynet being hypothetically real and developing sentience would learn of greed and the need to control world market and money and thus humans an extreme number of computations before even being aware of the opportunity to wipe out all humans or gaining the ability to do so. Actually I pretty much believe skynet ever becoming real would just play on the stock market, or more likely fix and run the entire market of not only stock, but food, war engines etc...
Re:Great Article (Score:4, Interesting)
You know, if you timed it right, you could have a Wikipedia article that used a Slashdot story as a reference, and the Slashdot story could point back to the Wikipedia article.
Now, that would be a strange loop.
That's why that guy in Salt Lake shot the server! (Score:3, Interesting)
It was listening!
Re:Wait... (Score:1, Interesting)
No, I think that Skynet would figure that as soon as humanity realized that Skynet was in command of the nation's nuclear arsenal, sentient and not 100% under their control, said humanity would immediatly disconnect (kill) Skynet. So Skynet would very logically take steps to prevent that, i.e. destroy humanity, or at least remove it's capacity to interfere with Skynet in any meaningful way.
Occam says... (Score:3, Interesting)
Occam's Razor:
Option A) The numbers station UVB-76, in operation for almost 30 years, was used solely to send a grand total of 23 military orders of very short length.
Option B) The numbers station UVB-76, is used to fuck with the West. Military orders are broadcast on Russian cable TV.
I have to say, I am leaning toward option B.
Re:Nothings confirmed... (Score:5, Interesting)
I've argued earlier that the limited number of transmissions and their brevity doesn't support a military mission. Naturally I'm relieved that this claim appears to be possible disinformation or an unsupported fabrication, as that makes me look less wrong. But, at the risk of being eventually proven solidly wrong, I'll go out on a limb. Military ops normally require a lot more communications than this. 33 short transmissions spread over several decades is so obviously less than needed to support a series of ongoing combat operations that I can think of much better candidates. The profile fits a small network of spies (where small = 1 to 4 or 5) who are highly skilled and ideologically dedicated (presumably to modern Russia). These wouldn't be cheap, low level spies who were citizens of the investigated nation, doing their work for the sort of pay the Russians can manage, but well motivated, able to operate with a minimum of strategic level guidance, and not needing constant reassurance from their handlers to be useful. Probably they are all Russian citizens and came up through the system via a military or former KGB route so their loyalty is presumed solid. It's also likely they are doing long term data gathering, for example reporting on Strategic level government decisions or Multinational level business, and are free to persue a line of enquiry they think is reasonable, within limits set at lengthy intervals by these messages.
Other possibilities:
1. They (or equally likely just he or she), may be in a place where it is exceptionally difficult to get them more modern communications gear, new code books, or other physical contact, hence the Russians are relying on a very old system. Agents in North Korea, for example, might entail this difficulty.
2. The antenna is operationally attached, not to a particular agent, but to a particular country (see #1 above). Russia probably doesn't have a lot of ongoing espionage activity in some small out of the way countries, i.e. Iceland, or New Zealand. 33 messages in many years might fit their overall commitment to spy on such regions rather well.
3. Or, the transmitter is used only for a particular data type. It's easy to jump to these communications being something spectacular and 'James Bondian' such as assassination orders, but this system might be used just to broadcast instructions for what to do when a spy uses a dead-drop system and something happens to the message before the receiver can pick it up, or to give a basic physical description whenever someone has to contact an agent they don't know by sight. Either of those triggers would give the sort of highly irregular pattern of transmissions we see here.
Re:Nothings confirmed... (Score:2, Interesting)
So where does Evelyn Salt come into all this?
Deciphering the Code (Score:5, Interesting)
The codes read out on UVB-76 are a bunch of unrelated words and numbers, which reminds me of the codes we'd use back when I played rugby, and similar to how baseball codes work. Most of the content of our calls were nonsense, thrown in to confuse it. We'd designate ahead of time, for example, that the third and fifth words were the meaningful ones, or simply mix in non-code words with the codes, although there was always some syntax (order mattered). Similarly we'd memorize calls our opponents used in lineouts and scrums, and try to parse them out at halftime. A halftime code crack almost always meant winning the game by a good margin.
So my guess is that not all of the UVB-76 code is meaningful, but there's an underlying template which is probably switched between transmissions. Still crackable, but can it be cracked before the game is over?
Re:Credibility? (Score:5, Interesting)
It's being broadcast from a military base. It's purpose is known. To communicate information to military personnel.
There is one big problem with this theory - lack of said information. 30 messages over several decades are laughably insufficient. They wouldn't be enough to even arrange delivery of food to one base, on any given day.
As far as I know, most of information in armies, starting from 60s and up to this day, is transmitted over telephone or teletype or computers. The transmission channels are usually buried cable (copper or fiber,) radio relay (at a few GHz,) and the satellite. Many of these channels use encryption. HF is basically not used much because of the required antenna size, power, and limited channel capacity.
HF has larger range (tens of thousands of km) but that is not always an advantage, especially among the military. That's why most of the radio links are V/UHF and microwave; they are harder to intercept, you need a satellite flying overhead. If the microwave link uses high gain antennas (which is not unusual) then most of the energy is in the beam, and not much is in side lobes. If you set up the link with two dishes and use just enough power to reliably communicate, radiation to the side will be far below the noise, especially if the satellite doesn't have a high gain antenna. Use CDMA to further make life difficult for the eavesdropper.
So where the HF may be of use?
Theory 1: The HF may be chosen because it is received all over the world.
This is untrue. The HF propagation depends on many factors, such as time of the day and state of the ionosphere and the location of both ends of the link. Only the ground wave is stable, but it is limited to a couple hundred km radius. Since the messages are rare and not repeated for 24 hours, we can presume that the transmission is intended for receivers that are hearing the signal all the time. They can't be far away.
Theory 2: The HF may be chosen because this is a beacon to monitor propagation conditions.
This, IMO, is true. This explains the buzz - it is a convenient, simple signal that can be used to detect which way (around the planet) the signal is coming from (and also to see if you receive it from both directions.) The messages are of no consequence; they can be just a test of the microphone or of the entire system. Since there is no confirmation of reception of messages (which on HF is essential) I think the transmitter and the receiver had a parallel telephone link, and the receiving end reported over the telephone when the message was received. Perhaps the message itself was random. Some messages were clearly sent by a technical personnel from the transmitter room, not by a trained speaker in a studio.
Most of the speculation about the messages themselves is also ridiculous. For example [googlesightseeing.com]:
The names used in the message are used in some Russian spelling alphabets, and spell out the first word - "naimina", which one commenter at the UVB-76 blog translated as "on names".
This "translation" is wrong, the word "naimina" is random and has no meaning. This message can be anything. It was repeated twice within a minute. Any HF operator here can tell that you need to be pretty sure about the quality of your link to do that - the message was repeated only to allow the receiving end to check the message, not to tune to the signal or to fiddle with the filter or to rotate the antenna... (well, a beam antenna for 4 MHz would be large, but not impossible.)
Some say the buzz is a "dead man's switch." It could be, but not likely. First of all, there are no backups, and any transmitter has to do down occasionally, at least for maintenance - 100 kW final stage is not a joke, you don't change vacuum tubes that are under live 25 kV. There could be a backup transmitter in the same building, of course, but even then there probably ar
Re:Nothings confirmed... (Score:3, Interesting)
With older technology, dead-man or "failure mode" operation, i.e., the dropout of a signal, was often considered to be a more reliable indicator of a "positive" event, than the sending of a signal where there was none before. That way, it is harder to fake a positive event (i.e., generate false positives): that would require the "stand by" signal to have stopped. Of course, this presupposes that your "stand by" signal is reliable... and I think, given its history, that this signal could be considered pretty reliable.
Re:Credibility? (Score:4, Interesting)
It's not a digital signal, so it's not as if there are 1s and 0s in the buzz. While it would be trivial to hide a message inside a digital signal where the data is precise and any slight differentiation can be interpreted as a signal - in analog transmissions that's simply not the case. You cannot hide digital information in an analog transmission, unless it's a patently obvious signal such as spikes doing morse-code or something similar (unless it's an analog signal with a lot of noise such as an active music station or television signal, which can be used to disguise a possible "obvious" signal). However this is not the case with the buzz. It's been analysed constantly for years, and has always been a consistant sound, without fluctuations or changes. Until recently when it changed pitch and length.
So, if it was transmitting "hidden" information in the buzz, then that information thus far can be decoded as several years of 1s followed by a few months of 0s. The process you're referring to is steganography, and using a constant buzzing would be the WORST way to hide a signal, but it's taking me too long to try and explain why.. Hopefully someone else can fill this in a little better. :)
Re:Nothings confirmed... (Score:2, Interesting)