Comments on: Numbers stations on Twitter and other spook-y tweets

By: austinhamman

austinhamman — Wed, 13 Mar 2013 00:28:00 +0000

the trailing 0′s leads me to think this is actually 64 bit big-endian so 95a3ff0600000000 is really 00000006ff3fa395
it’s always a 0 or an 8 which corresponds to a 0 in the first spot or a 1 respectively. then there is always a 6
hmm using this i managed to break down the pattern as such:
hex:
06ffa395
8600b424
06ff9a14
06ffa313
067f2fc6
06ffa35b
067f2fee
8600994f
06ffa36f
067f2fa9
860059b0
8600b411
06ff9ab1

bin:
0 000011 0 1 1111111 10 10001110010101
1 000011 0 0 0000000 10 11010000100100
0 000011 0 1 1111111 10 01101000010100
0 000011 0 1 1111111 10 10001100010011
0 000011 0 0 1111111 00 10111111000110
0 000011 0 1 1111111 10 10001101011011
0 000011 0 0 1111111 00 10111111101110
1 000011 0 0 0000000 10 01100101001111
0 000011 0 1 1111111 10 10001101101111
0 000011 0 0 1111111 00 10111110101001
1 000011 0 0 0000000 01 01100110110000
1 000011 0 0 0000000 10 11010000010001
0 000011 0 1 1111111 10 01101010110001

the first bit seems significant followed by a series that ends with 11, then a 0 padding, something significant, either all 1′s or all 0′s til the next two bits which seems significant then(though it was 1 significant then a 0 padding, til i seen a 1 where a 0 should be) …the rest seems to be hard to follow.
and the significance of them also seems to elude me.

–edit–
might wanna paste that into something with monospace font since the font here seems to ruin the formatting.
–edit–
missed something

By: igor alcyon

igor alcyon — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 22:53:00 +0000

That would be a very nice Rabbithole into an alternate reality game. But of course, this is not a game.

By: CRX

CRX — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 19:36:00 +0000

Is the hexadecimal thing visible to everyone? Am I just stating the obvious? I want to make up a color chart and see what I get. @GooGuns_Staging might just be a Chuck Close painting. And maybe the 8600000 part is the row or location of the color.
edit, I was looking up the hexadecimal thing, @GooGuns_Prod twitter account also posts hexadecimals. in a very similar format.

By: Dennis Smith

Dennis Smith — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 19:15:00 +0000

The very act of sending a message at a predetermined time/date routine is in it’s self a message, If you stop or alter the routine then this too is a message. Spy messages are more often in plane sight than not. They are sent to either show someone is OK, but no message of importance need be sent. Having said this they still use diplomatic bags and drop boxes and SW radio to send messages or goods.

By: medusasdream

medusasdream — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 17:27:00 +0000

I used Twitter a few years ago as a blind machine to human communication system. The machine would post a coded tweet and a person, or persons, would review the tweet. These people know which codes were ‘good’ and which were ‘bad’ and the degree. The machine did not need to know who the recipients were. The people did not need to know what machine (or where) originated the message. The messages were coded to avoid casual eavesdropping and would appear as meaningless strings of about 20 characters. This is a classic definition of a numbers station although in this case it was entirely non-nefarious and was used simply for internal process monitoring.

By: Jason Baker

Jason Baker — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 16:12:00 +0000

The other thing about spies, is that just like in any other profession, some of them are terrible at their jobs.

By: raisenj

raisenj — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 15:28:00 +0000

By: Dlo Burns

Dlo Burns — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 13:52:00 +0000

The thing about spies is not all of them need to stay hidden, sometimes they need to play mindgames.

By: Dlo Burns

Dlo Burns — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 13:51:00 +0000

Maybe someone built a bot to do that as a weekend project.

By: rico

rico — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 12:38:00 +0000

This is what I was thinking, too. It’s not unheard of to do C&C over Twitter.

By: planettom

planettom — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 10:07:00 +0000

One time I wrote a tweet which referenced the 1973 movie THE WICKER MAN, and I got a reply from an account that seemed to be roleplaying as the Edward Woodward character (Sergeant Howie) from the movie. When I looked at the other output from that twitter account, it just seemed to be a half-dozen quotes that the character makes in the movie. Seemingly random, as long as someone mentions THE WICKER MAN in their tweet, they get an automated reply of a randomly selected (of about a half-dozen) quotes from the character Sergeant Howie in THE WICKER MAN.
Very odd. Why? Is it funny? Is it strange? Is it pointless? Is that what makes me funny? Because it’s strange and pointless?

By: goretsky

goretsky — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 09:03:00 +0000

Hello,

Just to take DewiMorgan’s idea a step further, perhaps some of these Twitter accounts are command and control (C&C) servers for bots. It would not be the first time Twitter has been used for this purpose.

Regards,

Aryeh Goretsky

By: Lolotehe

Lolotehe — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 06:22:00 +0000

I’m still wondering if number stations are just spitting out license codes or bitlocker pins.

By: DewiMorgan

DewiMorgan — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 05:25:00 +0000

I’d say the most common reason for these is automation systems.
Boss asks “How can we get system A to send instruction to system B?”
Coder says “Well, I could write something custom, but we’ve got this function to send twitters already in place. And system B has a twitter-parser, so we can hook into that.”

Then either it works, and carries on for years; or it fails but becomes a fossil because it’s badly documented.

Then some are spammers posting random garbage because they are spammers and think it gets them noticed in some good way.

And some are businesses running competitions, contests and puzzles for their customers.

Are some spies? Probably not. Why the hell would spies want to communicate in such an obviously wacky way? Funzies, I guess. But generally speaking, looking normal is a much much better plan.

By: Kenmrph

Kenmrph — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 04:51:00 +0000

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

By: lovelystrangeness

lovelystrangeness — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 04:41:00 +0000

Here ya go: http://www.wonderweasels.org/yearzero/guide/guide.html

By: LinkMan

LinkMan — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 04:10:00 +0000

And Tuscan whole milk doesn’t deliver well.

By: Jorpho

Jorpho — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 04:05:00 +0000

I keep waiting for the day when an enormous conspiracy will come to light whose members communicated exclusively through a complex system of message board postings, product reviews, and/or blog comments.

The monkeys are restless and my dog has fleas.

By: Kwolfbrooks

Kwolfbrooks — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 02:11:00 +0000

r39h65fa22000000

By: Kenmrph

Kenmrph — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 00:53:00 +0000

This is the stuff of horror flicks. Will something horrible happen to me if I follow @googuns_staging? We’ll find out.