UVB-76

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UVB-76

by tintinnabula • 6 years ago

195 50 6 years ago

en.wikipedia.org

A couple months ago I got really interested in SDR (software-defined radio) for a brief period. I made a write-up on my site about my experiences (includes The Buzzer, number stations, and some other neat things): https://www.justus.ws/tech/sdr-adventures-in-shortwave/

tunnuz• 6 years ago

This is great! Thanks.

mrwoggle• 6 years ago

Thanks for this write-up!

aftbit2• 6 years ago

UVB-76/The Buzzer (4625Khz) LIVE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LegzZZRIqj4

bayindirh5• 6 years ago

Listening to The Buzzer and other number stations (especially The Conet Project recordings) for a long time send chills down my spine.

alibarber• 6 years ago

The story of Amateur Radio operators organising in order to clear their frequencies of the Soviet 'Woodpecker' (OTH RADAR System) always makes me smile: https://www.qsl.net/n1irz/woodpeck.html

aftbit2• 6 years ago

More about the Duga radars. At least some of the antennas were located in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duga_radar

anamexis• 6 years ago

I appreciate that someone took the time to closed caption the audio recording of the woodpecker. But it's in Polish, so I can't understand it.

codezero• 6 years ago

The “buzzer log book” that urban explorers claimed to have found in the previous location is neat, but probably an intentional distraction or hoax.

http://www.numbers-stations.com/media/sample-uvb76-logbook.p...

mhh__• 6 years ago

I'm curious if the spooks even bother with numbers station on radio any more, I commented on some reddit spam the other day that the string of words in the comment was so low-entropy it could literally have been used as a numbers station.

It's almost more suspicious to be listening to a radio at all these days, so unless you needed coverage of areas without internet access it would make sense to just dump the numbers onto a .onion or similar.

gspr• 6 years ago

Hard to beat the resilience of analog radio in the event of a disaster, though. Reddit, not so much.

bayindirh5• 6 years ago

Some of the number stations also start to embed digital sub-bands to their normal voice transmissions. So, the communication can carry more data and carry it between autonomous systems now.

Also, while number stations broadcast over the air, the signal might not terminate at a radio receiver. It might be picked up by another system and forwarded in a different form.

A similar model is used by Chinese FireDrake jammer. There are numerous broadcast stations for FireDrake and all are fed by the same satellite radio channel (one of the audio channels of the minority radio stations) which play extremely high intensity chinese classical music which loops perfectly and lasts 60:00 minutes sharp.

When they spot a transmission they don't like, they tune the ground station to it and blast with the music. Intensity of the music drowns out the other transmission. Interesting stuff.

Also, low tech stuff is extremely resilient to outside effects. Modern IP telephony will collapse if something bad occurs. POTS, won't sneeze at it probably.

eznzt• 6 years ago

I commented on some reddit spam the other day that the string of words in the comment was so low-entropy it could literally have been used as a numbers station

You should've seen Terry Davis...

xxpor• 6 years ago

For the more "I don't believe most conspiracy theories but that's some coincidence" among us, I do find it extremely interesting there was a big uptick in voice chatter in October 2016.

sbelskie• 6 years ago

Would that really be a “conspiracy”?

crispyporkbites• 6 years ago

Yes literally everything in Russia is related to trump. It’s well known that everyone in Russia and the rest of the world is obsessed with American elections and trump. It’s all anyone ever talks or thinks about. This station was started on 1973 when trump was a young man in America. Coincidence? I think not

dilyevsky• 6 years ago

That was around the time russian consulates etc were being booted off and other political turmoil due to changes in the white house residents. Don’t need conspiracy theory to explain this

learnstats2• 6 years ago

Wikipedia article makes it clear was an uptick in observed/known voice chatter.

That the public might be likely to observe more thoroughly makes it less of a coincidence.

TedDoesntTalk• 6 years ago

If you’re interested in this topic, be sure to read (and listen to) The Conet Project. I have all the original CDs, although they are available as mp3s free online.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Conet_Project

LeoPanthera• 6 years ago

It's also on Spotify, perhaps surprisingly.

ljf• 6 years ago

Cheers for the tip - that is some awesome background noise but occasionally fills me with dread and fear... Still listening though, amazing bit of history.

fld• 6 years ago

Another recommendation is the The BBC Radio 4 Broadcast of "Tracking The Lincolnshire Poacher", which also includes a short interview with the creator of The Conet Project:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wvr6o7fBcTY

digitalice• 6 years ago

I believe it is just a channel marker. There is further information on this site: https://priyom.org/military-stations/russia/the-buzzer

They also tracked the signal using TDoA: https://priyom.org/blog/real-buzzer-site-found!

dang• 6 years ago

If curious see also

two threads from 2010: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1632488

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1407383

jcims• 6 years ago

If you want to listen yourself, websdr, kiwisdr, sdrconsole and sdrsharp all provide some mechanism to listen to HF frequencies over the internet.

danirod• 6 years ago

A cool alternative for getting into SDR without purchasing a real device is WebSDR, a webapp to tune and listen to SDR devices that some people have connected online, such as this one (beware, autoplays) [1].

Tune in to 4625 kHZ, and there it usually is, UVB-76, buzzing on all of its glory.

[1] http://websdr.ewi.utwente.nl:8901/

ckocagil• 6 years ago

The next step is installing Fldigi, routing the WebSDR browser audio into it and decoding various modulations.

sciurus• 6 years ago

Also, you can find a list of more public web sdrs at http://kiwisdr.com/public/

mopsi• 6 years ago

In Russian-speaking world, the function of UVB-76 is known and scans of expired codebooks have been posted online. Long story short: it's a military communications system that uses one-time pads. Military units monitor transmissions and use unique decoding sheets to translate random numbers and keywords into messages such as "readiness level 1" or "execute action 5". It's mainly a backup system intended for use when everything else fails, because even off-the-shelf hand-cranked consumer radios would enough to receive messages, given the right decoding sheets. The amount of radio traffic on the station has usually seen an uptick during major military exercises.

laretluval• 6 years ago

It could be a numbers station but (1) the known numerical messages are very short and (2) that wouldn’t explain why there is a buzzer.

conscion• 6 years ago

My guess would be that the buzzer is so that the listeners know the station is still "up" and hasn't been destroyed

bamboozled2• 6 years ago

Why are there sometimes strange artifacts heard on the channel?

Is that a hoax, interference or something else?

mike_d• 6 years ago

Backup communication systems like this are often implemented with the most basic of components to increase reliability and ease of use in stressful situations.

The trade off is sometimes human error happens. It isn't really a big deal since the messages themselves are encrypted inside of a secure facility then transmitted to a non-secure area that handles the actual broadcast (since it would be stupid to put a massive transmitter in the room with your super secrets).

protoman3000• 6 years ago

Every time I read about numbers stations and their cryptic message history I get reminded back to this intense creepy, spooky and shocked feeling I experienced at the end of the pilot episode of a very famous older show.

shard• 6 years ago

Please share!

suspcbl• 6 years ago

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0411008/

sitzkrieg• 6 years ago

its ham radio, not HAM or an acronym darnit

jcun4128• 6 years ago

wow that dead hand idea is wild... wonder if that's spoofable/jammed to what extent would they trust it before it actually launched missiles.

gfaure• 6 years ago

The occurrence of images of Pokémon and Spongebob do sound out of character for the station -- is it plausible that someone with a very strong transmitter is toying with the operators?

rootw0rm• 6 years ago

it literally says so right on the page. i'm fairly certain the operators don't care what the spectrogram looks like.

as far as how powerful the transmitter was, obviously the rogue transmission would be stronger for those closest to it.

mpalfrey• 6 years ago

Good ol' UVB-76. The Buzzer has been around for an age.

I got _very_ into number stations a few years ago. Still have a vague interest in them these days but there's not so much traffic now. Scared the crap out of myself when I first found them though!

There's all sorts of interesting/creepy stuff out there on the airwaves.

adwi• 6 years ago

A strange event occurred from 20:29 UTC to 21:33 UTC on the same day, slightly above the end of the buzzer's frequency, where there were transmissions that contained spectrogram imagery of animals, Pokémon characters, and SpongeBob characters, as well as some Latin and Cyrillic characters and phrases on the radio's waterfall. Other spectrogram imagery was also broadcast during the night and before the station stopped transmitting, indicated "73 de N." on the waterfall.

UVB-76

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