A numbers station is a shortwave radio station characterized by broadcasts of formatted numbers, which are believed to be addressed to intelligence officers operating in foreign countries. Most identified stations use speech synthesis to vocalize numbers, although digital modes such as phase-shift keying and frequency-shift keying, as well as Morse code transmissions, are not uncommon. Most stations have set time schedules, or schedule patterns; however, some appear to have no discernible pattern and broadcast at random times. Stations may have set frequencies in the high-frequency band.
Numbers stations have been reported since at least the start of World War I and continue to be in-use today. Amongst amateur radio enthusiasts there is an interest in monitoring and classifying numbers stations with many being given nicknames to represent their quirks or origins.
History
According to the notes of The Conet Project, which has compiled recordings of these transmissions, numbers stations have been reported since with the numbers transmitted in Morse code. It is reported that Archduke Anton of Austria in his youth during World War I used to listen in to their transmissions, writing them down and passing them on to the Austrian military intelligence.
Numbers stations were most abundant during the Cold War era. According to an internal Cold War-era report of the Polish Ministry of the Interior, numbers stations DCF37 (3.370 MHz) and DFD21 (4.010 MHz) transmitted from West Germany beginning in the early 1950s.
Many stations from this era continue to broadcast and some long-time stations may have been taken over by different operators. The Czech Ministry of the Interior and the Swedish Security Service have both acknowledged the use of numbers stations by Czechoslovakia for espionage, with declassified documents proving the same. Few QSL responses have been received from numbers stations by shortwave listeners who sent reception reports to stations that identified themselves or to entities the listeners believed responsible for the broadcasts, which is the expected behaviour of a non-clandestine station.
One well-known numbers station was the E03 "Lincolnshire Poacher", which is thought to have been run by the British Secret Intelligence Service. It was first broadcast from Bletchley Park in the mid-1970s but later was broadcast from RAF Akrotiri in Cyprus. It ceased broadcasting in 2008. In 2001, the United States tried the Cuban Five on the charge of spying for Cuba. The group had received and decoded messages that had been broadcast from the "Atención" number station in Cuba.
Atención spy case
The "Atención" station of Cuba became the world's first numbers station to be officially and publicly accused of transmitting to spies. It was the centerpiece of a United States federal court espionage trial, following the arrest of the Wasp Network of Cuban spies in 1998. The U.S. prosecutors claimed the accused were writing down number codes received from Atención, using Sony hand-held shortwave receivers, and typing the numbers into laptop computers to decode spying instructions. The FBI testified that they had entered a spy's apartment in 1995, and copied the computer decryption program for the Atención numbers code. They used it to decode Atención spy messages, which the prosecutors unveiled in court.
The United States government's evidence included the following three examples of decoded Atención messages.
"prioritize and continue to strengthen friendship with Joe and Dennis" "Under no circumstances should [agents] German nor Castor fly with BTTR or another organization on days 24, 25, 26 and 27." (BTTR is the anti-Castro airborne group Brothers to the Rescue) "Congratulate all the female comrades for International Day of the Woman."
The moderator of an e-mail list for global numbers station hobbyists claimed that "Someone on the Spooks list had already cracked the code for a repeated transmission [from Havana to Miami] if it was received garbled." Such code-breaking may be possible if a one-time pad decoding key is used more than once. If used properly, however, the code cannot be broken.
Recent cases
In 2001, Ana Belén Montes, a senior US Defense Intelligence Agency analyst, was arrested and charged with espionage. The federal prosecutors alleged that Montes was able to communicate with the Cuban Intelligence Directorate through encoded messages, with instructions being received through "encrypted shortwave transmissions from Cuba".