[Spooks] Spooks Digest, Vol 78, Issue 26

[Gene Marlin]

The FBI complaint, as hosted by the New York Times, is here:

http://documents.nytimes.com/criminal-complaints-from-the-justice-department#document/p30

On page 30 (in the NYT document reader) the FBI claims that their audio
surveillance of the Yonkers house in 2003 yielded, on "at least five
occasions", "irregular electronic clicking sounds associated with the
receipt of coded radio transmissions."

I don't know how radio transmissions are supposed to "click", that sounds
like 19th century telegraphy, but if it's Morse it makes me think that they
were decoding either M08a. Since another Cuban station, V02a, has been
implicated in a Federal case against Cuban spies, it doesn't seem
unreasonable that the same transmitter might be contracting for Russia as
the M08a format.

So, does the new Cuban format, SK01, displace the schedules of M08, V02a, or
both? If it's one or the other that's evidence for my hypothesis, if both,
then it's evidence against.

But shortwave doesn't seem to have been an important form of communications
for them, the FBI complaint only mentions it in passing. Mostly they were
using ad-hoc wireless networks between laptops and steganography--encoding
text files in images on the Internet.

Gene



On Tue, Jul 27, 2010 at 8:56 AM, The Doctor <drwho at virtadpt.net> wrote:

> Visit http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/spooks to unsubscribe from
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>
> Andy wrote:
>
> > The only problem is that, the moment the handlers learned of the arrests,
> > they would change the one-time pads, making the old ones useless.
>
> That brings another problem: distributing the new 'pads to field
> operatives.  That means additional risk, at the very least of connecting
> handlers to operatives.
>
> > It would be interesting to note if there was more traffic on the Russian
> > numbers stations in the days following the arrests, notifying other
> agents
> > not caught in the net of the changes......
>
> That could potentially leak more information to a traffic analysis
> attack (stimulus-response).  One might think that they would avoid
> tipping their hand in such a way.
>
> The compromise of field operatives seems like it would be a contingency
> covered during planning, with a specialized message already worked out
> and ready to go ("PRIMARY TEAM CAPTURED GO TO GROUND STOP", or "If you
> ever see this sequence of numbers don't decode it, it means that we've
> lost field agents.  Sit tight until you see this sequence of numbers and
> then start decrypting messages again starting with the next one.")
>
> - --
>
> The Doctor [412/724/301/703]
>
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