

Strange phone number: asks for Agent Code, gives encoded coordinates. - kateapalooza
http://pastebin.com/tP9ym0af

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david_shaw
In my opinion, there's no way that this is an actual intelligence or military
operated switch.

I'm not firm in this belief because of the open nature of a phone line like
this (that part seems fine), but because there is _no_ reason for a real
switch to use actual terminology like "agent" and "compromised."

This reminds me a lot of a Capture the Flag contest: you know you're not
_really_ hacking an intelligence agency, but sometimes it's fun to pretend.

~~~
charlieok
Oh, I don't know. Sometimes Capture the Flag gets to be a pretty big deal...

[http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/12/world/middleeast/anger-
ove...](http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/12/world/middleeast/anger-over-film-
fuels-anti-american-attacks-in-libya-and-egypt.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all)

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joe_bleau
After reading some of the speculation about it in the online forums, I thought
"Wouldn't it be fun to set up something like this as a prank?" It almost
sounds like something Woz would be into...

~~~
consultutah
It would be awesome and easy to set something like this up on twilio. I would
have chosen a 702 area code though and when posting about it speculated that
it had something to do with area 51. ;)

~~~
nomad2986
Just remember that there is a NSA location in Denver, Colorado.

~~~
fleitz
Just about any major city will have an intelligence office of some kind.

I'm pretty sure the NSA has better ciphers for phones than poorly coded ASCII.
Isn't there an art installation at the NSA that still hasn't been cracked
after 20 years?

~~~
Wingman4l7
You're thinking of the Kryptos sculpture, which is at CIA headquarters in
Langley, Virginia (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kryptos>); "of the four
messages, three have been solved"; it was installed in November 1990, so it's
been almost 22 years.

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verroq
Sounds like an ARG. Reminds me of that "this is my milwaukee" thing.

~~~
cheald
Yeah, I'm definitely going to go with ARG. I would be beyond shocked if actual
intelligence information were being transmitted over an unencrypted channel
like this.

~~~
objclxt
So I agree with you that's it's an ARG, but transmitting intelligence (or,
more typically, instructions for agents) over unencrypted channels has been
going on for _years_ \- the security of the channel itself is irrelevant if
the data you're sending is only usable by the intended recipient.

This is how numbers stations work: you send alpha-numeric codes over
shortwave, which assets in the field then decode using one time pads.

So generally speaking, transmitting intelligence over an unencrypted land-line
wouldn't shock me in and of itself.

~~~
dserodio
If you need an OTP to decode it, it's encrypted.

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justanother
I want to believe this isn't a clever marketing scheme for a movie, or shiny
gadget, or game.

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waterlesscloud
There was a time in my long ago youth when some friends and I came by access
to a voice mail host system.

We made use of many of the unused numbers, some as mysterious messages such at
this, others for less cryptic but no less entertaining fake organizations.
Then we'd place free ads in the various free weeklies that cover many cities
and college towns with the phone numbers we'd set up.

Ah, the olden days. If we'd had the web, we'd have been real trouble.

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fallingmeat
seems like an awful lot of trouble just to change someone's voice mail message

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junto
Reminds me of war dialling UK 0800 numbers back in the 90's. There were some
interesting ones out there (allegedly). I seem to remember, "Welcome to the
NASA Employee hotline. Please enter your access code". Other ones that just
gave cryptic greetings similar to this. Some that just repeated numbers over
and over in a loop.

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kateapalooza
I hope a government or corporation would be smart enough not to use such a
simplistic system to hide covert or confidential data. Then again most
military drones were not encrypting their video feeds until rather recently,
so who knows.

~~~
objclxt
Intelligence agencies are adept at transmitting information in plain sight. I
already mentioned numbers stations [1] in another comment, but they're a
perfect example of how intelligence data is broadcast through a easily
intercept-able channel but totally unusable to anyone except the recipient due
to the use of a one-time pad. The only way you can stop them is to jam them,
which is easier said than done.

Intelligence agencies use the simplest systems of transmitting data because
they're proven to work. Dead drops are another great example of what on the
surface seems horrifically insecure (you want me to leave my intelligence in a
public place _for anyone_ to find?) but that in practice work extremely well.

[1]: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numbers_station>

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kposehn
Looking through and mapping the coordinates is very interesting. The ship
groups are all in the bering sea and current OSI shows that no military trips
are in transit of the straights.

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jey
Sounds like a viral marketing stunt or alternate reality game.

~~~
gfosco
68 79 78 39 84 32 70 79 82 71 69 84 32 84 79 32 68 82 73 78 75 32 89 79 85 82
32 79 86 65 76 84 73 78 69

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macchina
Here is the "official video."

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GvXK29c20Ns>

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eranation
Nice marketing idea if this got to be 3rd on HN, my guess is a movie, or a
video game as well

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blakerson
Halo 4's coming out soon. I'm betting on ARG.

