so, am I reading that numbers stations are being used as the key for one-time ciphers? Interesting indeed. I just participated in my first cryptochallenge at a B-Sides event (and shockingly, my wife and I won!) and so this sort of stuff is a new interest to me.

This reminds me of the numbers man from phone phreaking folklore. In the 60's every now and then phone phreakers would bump into a loop which would have some guy rattling off numbers between 20 to 40 and a buzz. many also earwitnessed a rapid fire speech in an incomprehensible language, although many said it sounded vaguely spanish no one could understand any of it, and also many times people reported the message including someone shouting "wake up down there!".

There was a lot of talk about who or what this was and many of those who heard it begin to talk with others that heard it and tried to figure it out. Initial thoughts of it being a test loop for the phone companies was ruled out because it wasn't a recording and was nearly always different, and also it was out of hours for the workers at the phone companies. It was thought it was unlikely to be phone phreakers trolling as it was not like something any of them would get up to, plus it would need some commitment to carry it on for so long as a joke with no pay off.

The numbers man also apparently interrupted a phone call between two ladies, who had nothing to do with phreaking, and they could only continue to talk to each other after he had finished his spiel. This then happened again when the ladies called each other at the same time the next day. To add further to the mystery one of the phreakers who had been avidly trying to track down the numbers man and find out more was once woken up by a phone call, when he answered it turned out to be the numbers man giving one of his performances, this seemed very bizarre seeing as there is no way he could have got his number to call him.

People did try talking to the numbers man but got no response and to this day no one knows what it was all about but most suspect it must have been some form of code for someone, intelligence operators, spies and the like. quite the mystery.

I remember reading about this years ago...very odd indeed. Pretty mysterious

Relevant links for the interested:

That time UVB-76's broadcasting location was found.

The Conet Project (Recordings of different stations)

Shortwave Oddities Roundup

The Swedish Rhapsody Numbers Station

This happened on Jan 21, 2013. IIRC, that was the day of the presidential inauguration.

That's interesting. I can't imagine what such a station would be used for haha! I highly doubt it's dead man if they're playing Swan Lake on it.

I'm pretty sure I read somewhere that the dead man broadcast for the UK was (historically, at least) BBC Radio 4, so maybe some theories aren't as wild as this article imagines.

That was a great article. Scary, in a way, that numbers stations are still necessary.

There's a website that allows you to listen live to numbers stations. I can't recall the URL. There are lots of them