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Enigma 2000 Newsletter ENIGMA 2000 NEWSLETTER http://enigma2000group.org Long wire atop Tunisian Embassy London Why? Tunisia has no external radio service? SWL or something darker? ISSUE 96 September 2016 http://www.enigma2000.org.uk © All items within this newsletter remain the property1 of ENIGMA 2000 and are copyright. See last page also. Log information peculiar to this Issue: The time slot covered by this newsletter has been affected by the holiday period; we have attempted to bring a full coverage where able. Readers will note that some logs have the suffix [A] attached. This indicates automatic monitoring at a remote site and analysis at a later, more convenient point. FSK/M42nn operations: One area that has remained virtually untouched is that of the FSK/M42(n ) series. In a conversation with Daniel [aka Dannix of Priyom]concerning M42 I mentioned our lack of logs and someone to continue with Ian’s good work. As a result Daniel kindly offered to fill the gap and I’m sure the rest of you will welcome him as a member. The column appears after the Polytone section and the Schedule Chart in the Chart Section. Welcome Daniel …. For E07 and S06 PoSW notes observations worthy of a mention:- The Sunday + Wednesday 1700Z E07 came up with a two-message transmission on Sunday the 17th of July; I cannot remember the last time I heard one of these, must be years ago rather than months. This was about the same time as the attempted coup d'etat in Turkey, which may or not be significant. There must have been some reason to transmit two messages. The suggestion has been made that this event was staged managed by the Turkish government to give them the excuse to dismiss large numbers of army officers, teachers, university lecturers and journalists and to close down newspapers and broadcast outlets opposed to the ruling party, which duly happened. The lack of condemnation from governments in the European Union, of which Turkey is soon to be a member, was remarked upon in many quarters, together with the suggestion that many E.U. Governments would dearly love to do something like this if they thought they could get away with it. Whatever the case, this E07 was back to the usual “000 - no message” routine on Wednesday the 20th, as has been the case with the majority of E07 transmissions in July and August. The first + third Friday S06, call “761” transmitted a “full message” on the 5th of August, consisting of thirty-nine 5F groups, a bit out of the ordinary, making a change from the usual four minutes of “00000”. This schedule also did a shift by one hour in August, moving to 1900 UTC + 2000 UTC from the 2000 + 2100 of June and July. As is usual with a full message, there was a repeat on the following day, Saturday the 6th. Electronic Espionage, a new website.: Once in a while a book on the subject of SIGINT and the rather shady world of espionage is published. The last of real note was member Chris Boyd's 'Special Operator: the Rise and Fall of a Cut-price Spy ' available via Amazon and other eBook outlets. Going one step further Chris has opened his own Website: http://www.electronicspy.fr/ Definitely worth a visit by those with an interest in Number Stations, Radio Interceptions and signal/message analysis. This promises to be a site that is different to others, the owner having worked in the 'job' knows what is what and looks at the historical Y ops with insight. The site promises to come up with the goods and in good form draws the readers interest to the world of Number Stations. http://www.electronicspy.fr/ Interesting Snippet [PoSW] Nothing to do with number stations as such, but perhaps a very slight connection to the espionage trade; 5-Aug-16, Friday:- 2049 UTC, 3,700 kHz or thereabouts, a very strong amateur SSB station with the call sign “Golf Bravo Five Radio Caroline”, and GB5RC, operator's name Bill, was located on the Ross Revenge located in the River Blackwater estuary off the Essex coast. Those of us of a certain age will remember the offshore or “pirate” pop music stations of the 1960's, the most famous of which was Radio Caroline which started broadcasting over the Easter weekend of 1964, and one of the vessels used by this station over the several years of its existence was the one from which GB5RC was working many other amateur stations. And the connection with espionage? Well, the offshore pirate stations were supplied with fuel, food and other essential supplies from vessels operating out of ports in the south-east of England, much to the anger of the British government of the day, a Labour government headed by Prime Minister Harold Wilson, who, determined to put an end to this breaking of the BBC's monopoly, brought in a piece of legislation called the “Marine Offences Act”, of 1967 which made it illegal to supply Radio Caroline and the other offshore broadcasters from any UK port. Most of them closed down, including “Wonderful Radio London”, but Caroline carried on for some time afterwards being supplied from mainland Europe. And this same Harold Wilson was suspected by some high-ranking operatives of the British intelligence services of being a Soviet agent. Seems ridiculous, appeared to be based on Wilson's many visits to the Soviet Union before he became PM, explained by his involvement with the Department of Trade and being part of delegations trying to boost British exports to the Russians. M08a stop press: From our columnist in US ‘Today 2300z Tuesday 06/09 M08a returned as bold as brass and about as clear and consistent as I have ever heard it. Worth checking daily 2 North Korea Number transmissions: As we are all aware, N Korea has allegedly transmitted its usual style of Number transmission; too far for us to usually intercept via radio we have had contacts from persons with an interest in this station. The output from one person is shown after this news piece ………….. New Details of North Korean Spy Radio Messages Emerge [Note V15] Wendell Minnick, Defense News 6:56 a.m. EDT July 22, 2016 SKOREA-NKOREA-MILITARY-BORDER http://www.defensenews.com/story/defense/international/asia-pacific/2016/07/22/north-korea-spy-numbers-radio-message/87429280/ TAIPEI, Taiwan — A North Korean broadcast of numbers on June 24 ended a 16-year sojourn that is surprising many who thought Pyongyang had given up on the old spy trick. The practice was halted in 2000 after the first inter-Korea summit between North Korean President Kim Jong Il and South Korean President Kim Dae Jun. The 14-minute broadcast of two sets of numbers by a female voice appears to have been the work of the Voice of Korea (formerly Radio Pyongyang), a North Korean radio propaganda station that broadcasts accolades of the Kim family. A retired US National Security Agency source said the fact it was a 10-11 meter frequency band in the middle of the night, considering that North Korea does not have relay stations like many other shortwave stations, would make the target local to South Korea, Japan or northern China. “Sun Spot cycle is low to zero right now so would not expect it to be a DX [long distance] transmission," according to the NSA source. The station is using old Soviet transmitters that give it a distinctive humming sound when broadcasting, said Keith Perron, an expert on spy number stations who runs the international shortwave and FM station, PCJ Radio, which broadcasts news, entertainment and serves as a relay for other content. The hum is created due to the poor quality of transmitters and the fact that North Korea does not use microwaves to relay the message to the antennas but rather old telephone wires. Perron said that Voice of Korea has sometimes broadcast gibberish between news stories that are also designed as messages to spies. This was a common tactic by the BBC during World War II to alert the French Resistance. Number stations can be traced back to World War I and were made famous during the Cold War in Europe. At the end of the Cold War, number stations began shutting down and now are occasionally broadcast by Communist remnants, such as Cuba, China and North Korea, though Israel and Taiwan still use them. The method is simple: The broadcasts contain a set of four or five numbers that correspond to letters or words that are decipherable using a one-time pad by a deep cover spy listening to a shortwave radio. Messages are broadcast at schedules and frequencies assigned to the spy. Perron claims North Korean one-time pads have never been broken by counter-intelligence. There have been media reports out of South Korea that the North Koreans are using a more sophisticated method of sending secrets via steganography, a method of concealing a message within another file, image, or video, which makes the recent number broadcast by North Korea odd. http://www.defensenews.com/story/defense/international/asia-pacific/2016/07/22/north-korea-spy-numbers-radio-message/87429280/ How on earth the ‘Number Station Expert’ manages to say it’s a 10 or 11 metre band sending [27 to 30MHz] beats me. I was reliably informed it was sent out concurrently on 785, 819 and 1080kHz in the Medium Wave band and on 2850, 3220. 4270, 6290 and 6600kHz during Raio Pyongyang 0400 – 0500z schedule.
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