What Is Happening To Cuba's Numbers Station?
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 4 ก.ย. 2023
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Cuba's shortwave numbers station 'The Cuban Lady' is acting strange lately, not just transmitting its secret broadcast.
What is going on at Cuba's Numbers Station? Is it being jammed? Is it sending more encrypted information? Or is it just a blunder?
Numbers Stations Playlist
Numbers Stations
• Numbers Stations
Everything You Should Know About Secret Numbers Stations & How To Listen
• Everything You Should ... - วิทยาศาสตร์และเทคโนโลยี
There is always the possibility that the "errors" are part of the message in some way. What appears as incompetence could be meaningful to the recipient.
Theres ALWAYS a possibility that information is being sent a new way😉
I wouldn't say that the windows xp error sound means anything
@@kreuner11 It means they're running Windows XP.
People in Cuba and Russia just got busted drafting Cubans to fight in the war on Russia's side.
There is no doubt in my mind that if not things like this that somehow they detected communications between them so it would be very interesting to find out how much of the operation to catch them actually DID involve techniques like using assumed errors to hide messaging in or even being part of the code.
🙄 Well, could be. Or it’s maybe possible that there aren’t any actual recipients. Without the any of the original patrons (Soviet Union or who ever.) I don’t really know what intelligence demand they would actually have. 🙄 It may just be for appearances.
I could always tell when they were about to start transmitting (or were actively transmitting) on their numbers stations from here in Texas because Radio Habana would stop transmitting. Pretty strong indication of shared equipment, that.
Well, yeah, and Arnie used to care for all that gear, and he's now a silent key ...
@@uploadJI've been gone from the radio crowd and haven't paid attention to anything radio related in a long time because I was caring for my wife who recently passed away from a rare cancer. There is audio out here by Keith Perron from a night when I alerted him to Arnie talking a lot of shit on the air about him. I'll have to find it.
@@danihensley Sorry to hear about the loss of your loved one ...
My guess is the operators who are playing the prerecorded transmissions don't realize that any other activities they do on the computer are also being transmitted.
I wonder what the inside of the room looks like....just a place with a simple Windows XP software ran computer?
spy operators listening to relaxation musix, guess they need some sleep 😴
Incompetence or not, there is something so incredibly disturbing and eerie about the audio coming from numbers stations like that.
I used a website to listen to a live broadcast once and I had to turn it off. I got too freaked out.
I came across a number station once (before I even knew what they were) in early 2007 at 3am. I was in the army doing guard duty in the middle of nowhere and there was a radio there that had shortwave abilities. I had never had SW radio before so I thought it would be cool to see what I could pick up, maybe some cool international radio station who knew?
So I'm playing around with the dial seeing what comes up and then suddenly I hear a dead robotic voice reciting random letters in NATO alphabet in a loop, over and over and over again. It freaked the hell out of me! lol
Dude this ain’t freaky. Every country does this shit and I know because I operated one of them here in the Western world. It is literally just an automated female voice reading numbers in Spanish. Don’t be a sally and miss an opportunity to catch cool stuff on the air waves.
@@rawhides Settle down. Just because it's normal for you doesn't mean others immediately see it that way. Plus I never said it wasn't cool.
I bet for the most part these are just tar pits for wasting time of analysts from foreign powers. I guess its also useful for emergencies if you stake claim to a particular frequency by using it continuously.
Think it's using 50s/60s era soviet vacuum tube equipment. Often under- or over- or not-at-all-modulated, self-jamming and a fair amount of hum. Very strong signal here.
(Edit: appearance of adult film audio = operator pornsurfing while transmitting - PC probably only has one sound card)
(Edit 2: please tell me one of your viewers caught that on tape and can share it with Lewis....:^)
Having designed and installed high-power MF/HF radio equipment throughout the world, I would say that it's simply the operator who gets bored during the night shift. Many older transmitters do not transmit automatically, and requires an operator.
We have had to block other programs from accessing the Windows mixer in our operator software for exactly this reason.
Weirdly enough, the problem with adult films is worst in the middle east.
prob frustrated due to the relgious restrictions in life
@@highpath4776 Guys will be guys, I guess.
Yeah, we see a similar problem one of our clients who has offices in the Middle East and Africa region. Employees are constantly trying to use the corporate network or virtual desktops to watch adult films or other nonsense.
Forbidden fruit is twice as sweet.
We used to get horny, bored Fijian and other south seas islands trying to fake their way onto the UK mil operator then ask for premium rate phone lines, back in the day. Was funny.
This channel has so much good information, it never fails to dissapoint. Thanks for all the hard work you put in.
The _blunder_ still isn't as bad as the time they played the number recording in reverse on a reel to reel. I have not heard about the adult film soundtrack, though.
The cuckoo clock one is hilarious. I imagine if you are a spy trying to listen to that it does not inspire confidence that you are part of a well-run operation.
You have to be not very bright to begin with if you agree to be a spy for the Cuban government tbh
FYI, the music at 6:17 with the birds overlaid is, fittingly, "Bird Song" by Yoko Kanno. Which could, itself, be a message. Sure, it's an even lower "bit rate" communications channel, but that could be as simple as a "skip ahead the predetermined key/one time pad pages" or "burn your current pads: new ones are available on the secure VPN" message for the actual encrypted digital payload. Same for any other "oddities".
Ah, you beat me to it! I was like, I KNOW THIS WHERE DO I KNOW THIS
Thanks for the ID on the flute and bird song audio!
The bird call song is extremely popular among Chinese alarm clock manufacturers. I have two with the EXACT song. Likely they used the timer trigger feature on the clock to trigger the station, but forgot to turn off the alarm volume, which can be muted.
Note to the DGI (Cuban version of the fmr DTI by any chance? 😉😉): When you send your staff to operate a numbers station, make sure they have another computer for their 'off-times', else what they are listening and watching will be transmitted for all the SWLs out there to hear. Also, there's Bird Songs......and 'Bird Songs' 😆😅🤣😂😁
I was really excited when I heard this station for the first time, as I had never heard a numbers station before. Female Spanish speaker with tones in between the sets was exactly what I heard. I suspected it was probably from Cuba, and am not supprised that it's the RHC transmitters sending it. I also hear RHC quite a bit from my location in Utah, USA.
These numbers stations always sound so creepy... like from a horror movie. Nice work Lewis!
I unironically love this birdsong music and numbers station crossover, and want to hear more of it ❤️
It's a vibe for sure
Not sure if it still exists but the website "You Are Listening To" used to have a numbers station option. The website took live dispatch radio from various cities and put background music to. It would just play old numbers stations recordings, not live, since there's not always a numbers station going.
background bird or other sounds make it harder for speech recognition software to receive this transmission correctly to be decoded when possible
The biggest mistake Ham Radio operators make happens when Windows changes your default system sounds output device. It is always a warning to FT8 and Winlink users. The worst is when WSJT-X users run JTAlert and get their voice alert announcements transmitted over the air. Cringe Worthy.
*if* there's any possibility that their systems are internet connected, it could well be someone just happening to find them in the wild and compromising them, and adding random things that are just as ominous in terms of background. After all, it's XP and legacy OSes have more holes than swiss cheese at this stage in their life!
Interesting none the less...
Man that bit at 5:33 that sounds awfully similar even exact to the bird song oddity on utwente that was happening in 2016-17
Thank you for covering this. Regarding your last point, Radio Habana and Radio Rebelde have been relaying the full audio of movies/tv shows the last couple weekends. On my channel I uploaded a couple that I caught. I haven't heard any "adult film" but the movie Misconduct (2016) played on radio rebelde the other weekend and I did hear what sounded like it was supposed to be a sex scene. It's interesting that they're having issues with the numbers stations at the same time this is all happening. Makes me wonder what is really going on down there haha.
They have figured out that many of their "secure" high tech devices are 100% comp'd. So they dumped the high tech stuff and have gone old school. But their personnel are no longer able to competently operate the legacy equipment.
It would be sad if it wasn't so funny.
@@SuperCulverin there must be some autistic intel behind that profile picture.
The birdsong track kind of sounds like a test track for their codec's error-correction capability, as it vaguely resembles the sorts of random interference a distant recipient might find coming in on the same band as their signal. Perhaps during the birdsong "test", they were switching between different codecs for the payload and seeing how much the birdsong track affected a recipient's ability to decode. (Guessing this was done right after the first time someone actually _did_ jam the station, which prompted them to actually look into taking their software out of the default settings.)
Radio Czechoslovakia International in the final years of the cold war played birdsong before each broadcast...
Great upload m8.
Numbers station's got me hooked to your channel. Then onto, amateur radio. 👍
Thank you for covering this more in depth. Very interesting video. I have yet to hear that with the birdsong in the background. Have a good weekend.
well the interesting thing is in the early morning CET there are spanish messages sent from vladivostok russia but with no digital modes......cuba is the biggest wholesaler of informations cliients iran, irak, pakistan related entre autre to nuclear stuff....vvery good video again love it !!!
If these are messages intended for operatives in US or elsewhere, you would think someone in Cuban Intelligence would be listening to make sure the transmissions were correct. Maybe this supervisor person went off on the sick, retired or was made redundant by some "Intelligence Value Manager"😅.
Artie Coro's illness and death is one theory as to why the shortwave and spy stations got shoddy. I don't know, I think it started well before.
Thank's for the video Lewis. I have heard this station here in Osloas well. The best to you all from LB1NH 🙂
GREAT video content and editing was very smooth. ❤ 😊 Always brings me back in time. Thanks 73 Leo. k
Incompetent? HMO1 is my favorite! I live on the American east coast. You can pick it up on a pocket radio. If you're a SDR user, the best reception is on a receiver in Cape Cod, Massachusetts. I find it interesting that it's easier to receive HMO1 in the northeast USA than it in south Florida, which is only 100 miles from Havana.
You referring to a WebSDR?
More than likely it's because it's signal is "skipping" over south Florida because of how it's bouncing off the ionosphere.
@@Pacmannion that was my next response. He said "SDR user" but I can only assume he means a web SDR. A SDR is a Software Defined Radio. A actual piece of hardware. I have 3. I am a SDR user but I don't listen to web SDRs.
@@PacmannionAnd Northeastern USA might be a target of these broadcasts anyways.
great work again buddy.
The birdsong and pan pipes is very pleasant to listen too.
Thanks for following what seems to be a lost topic! These are fascinating!
Lewis,
Thank you for another great video. Always good stuff. 73 my friend
Brilliant research and compelling narrative Lewis! I've heard this station many times, but never copied any anomalies. Great stuff. 73 Clint
When dealing with things like number stations it's hard to know what is a poorly run system and what's an intentional sigal that means something.
good content as always!!!
Great job! We will need to keep monitoring.
5:38 reminds me of the sort of thing The Orb used to play in their live shows
Good stuff as usual. 🙂
Perhaps the station operators spend too much partying at the Copacabana. The hottest spot north of Havana
North of Havana is the Florida Strait. There's a Copacabana hotel in Havana but it is most certainly not a party spot or any kind of hot spot.
In future when I hear “birdsong” I will think it’s some clandestine message 😮
Which it is. Nobody has decoded bird song yet 😂
I was driving to work at 5:00 UTC. I turned on my AM/FM/SW Sony in dash car radio. It was tuned to 9305 khz and there was a numbers station in Spanish. Before I had listened to a US broadcaster on that frequency.
Brilliant as usual 👌
Thanks for the video. I remember the old 196 calls. Oh, WBCQ may use 9330 khz. Cheers from the USA.
Excellent. Saved to watch again later. I'm in Jamaica. Going to dig out my SDR dongle tomorrow and figure out how to use it with my new Linux desktop (last time I used it was with M$, now history). The antenna is still on the roof.
Quote - "M$, now history"
Best decision you'll ever make.
Very interesting video and misteriously it make me feel really curious what really happen there
I recorded a couple segments of what sounded like an "adult movie" complete with swearing and panting but couldn't title the video with the word PORN due to the censors likely deleting it, we have to keep this family orientated you know!
Please share it!
Oh. I see. You already have done it. 🙏
How do you differentiate third party interference from the broadcast? When China blocks AM stations and I see the result in the UK, it’s pretty difficult to distinguish the difference if the frequency lines up perfectly
This is quite hilarious! It's like a pantomime numbers station. Or maybe Monty Python & the Meaning of Numbers Stations. If the 'public' face of their agency is that inept, I can only imagine what comedy must transpire internally. Cheers, Lewis!
Can’t be that bad, they only foiled the CIA assassinating Castro like 200 times?
I've been away from the radio for a couple weeks, but I've heard Radio Havana Cuba broadcast over HM01 before. That could partially explain the flute music. RHC often relays China Radio International, and they have reduced their programming services, but have still maintained their schedules. So for example they discontinued or at least reduced the Portuguese service but would spend that hour playing Chinese music like this, instead.
Indeed this is the best explaination. Always wondered why the RCI comrades can't help RHC and all related stations with the dire modulation problem they have.
@@warphammer Maintenance of equipment is a mystery in the shortwave world! I can remember Radio Cairo being a blowtorch into the SE USA when I was a kid in the 90's. But I cannot ever recall being able to understand a single word. The English service may as well have been Arabic for all it mattered.
What's with the Russian numbers on a Cuban station? How odd is that... Also, those images of the Communications Ministry with the red Lada parked out the front could be from any point over the last forty-odd years. It shows how, in spite of some modernisation, Cuba is still in a bit of a timewarp.
The Packard cars in Cuba tend to give it away, too.
Ladas are still made.
@@MerelyGiftedLots of those old Yank tanks have Soviet truck engines under the bonnet. The Cubans had to adapt and use whatever they had to keep those old beauties going. Resourceful is an understatement.
@@hvcomputechIndeed they are, but not that particular Fiat 124 based model any more. They finally stopped a few years back.
He has way too much information about this like what software they are running. Did they start giving out tours to TH-cam influencers? 😂 /teasing
More like that play the Windows XP startup sound over the air. Giving tours would be safer
@@stephen70edwards 😆
Well the redundant digital file transfer came from software developed in Brazil and used in HM01 it's well documented, it's not like it's a secret.
These are no " mistakes".
I'd rather not reply and may direct a inquiry into a more secure than TH-cam.
Sometimes just shutting a mouth in public use mediums is best for the USA
Ear to ear is better than eye to eye.
There was also what sounded like an interval signal, strangely, an electronically generated version of the Westminster chimes
I used to hear them fairly regularly a few years ago in the northeast US. But, I have not been able to catch them over the past few months. I can still receive radio Havana easily.
Does hm01 still transmit? I have been trying to listen to it for weeks via websdr according to the schedules on priyom but no luck so far.
Awesome video
I've been tracking this for a while on multiple frequencies, trying to find a code or a pattern. It's probably a waste of time, but nonetheless, I enjoy numbers stations. Thanks for sharing 👍
One possibility is the "accidents" advise which encryption is being used, or else provide a context for the messages known only to the recipients as a safeguard in case the encryption is broken... for example it could mean this message is a decoy, ignore it.
I've only heard a few recordings of V21, the Cuban Babbler, and immediately loved it. Such a shame *that* one is no longer broadcasting!
3:31 - Odin, dos, tri, quatro, pyat,' seis, sem' ..... 🤣 3:33 - That whooshing noise is fantastic!
4:27 - Someone had lotsa fun downloading weird sound files onto their work computer. Who could blame them? WIld how often it syncs up with the broadcasting voice.
5:40 - At least there isn't a narrator naming each bird as they sing!
Glad to see The Saint among your supporters. Always thought he was hip.
Thanks as always for yet another great video, *dearest* RM!
Most of the Amateur Radio operators from Cuba can be found now on Telegram. Most of them have told me they quit the hobby due to repression from the government.. There's always someone listening and the slightest criticism of the government gets you in deep trouble.
The background song can alter many things on the message itself besides defeating speech recognition software so it can have a double purpose, could be a indicator of importance level like Bird=info Cuckoo=Urgent etc. so you can "miss" some messages safely, maybe represent a specific recipent or group of recipents, maybe shifts the message itself as a added layer of obfuscation like bird=add+1 cuckoo=add+3, etc., even the clumsiness its a message itself i.e. the windows error sound means 'this part is very important' or something like that, with a narrow space for information, everything has a meaning, nothing is random.
In the Army, I had to listen to hours and hours of Russian number transmissions. Even today, when I hear Russian number chains, I hear it like it's my native tongue. Useless skill for the most part.
The Cuckoo Clock noise is great, it sounds like the recording is trying to keep her numbers cadence with it but can't hahaha
I've never heard the cuckoo sound on Windows XP before... Sounds more generic than Windows
03:32 to 04:00 ish, is in Russian.
Correct.
Any idea why? Some kind of holdover equipment/message from the Soviet days that gets interlaced into the intended message?
The melody at 6:20 here. I've heard it before. It's from the Escaflowne film's opening sequence. The track is called "First Vision" and if you search that on youtube, you'll hear this at 1:18 minus the birdsong.
I love the idea of the intended recipient hearing the background and being like "oh, I see we are going with the computer bird cipher variant this time" and the a film was another clever hidden surprise.
I think I recognize the second birdsong with flutes. I used to listen to it all the time to help me go to sleep. It was from a CD I think was called Native American Flutes. I bought it from the Natural Wonders store somewhere around 1994 or 1995.
"Something is always wrong at Radio Havana Cuba..."
I always assumed that the double signals were someone trying to jam it.
I haven’t looked for them lately, but HM01 absolutely booms into my QTH in NE Ohio.
i agree with your stance on the birdsong, though i'm also wondering if a hacker group had something to do with it, given the 'system' in place for it and the incident with the radio station 😜
I've always been fascinated with numbers stations, best times for them was during the cold War, listening to the Russian ones scared the crap out of me!!.
Most people are careful about what are they transmitting at what band etc meanwhile there are stations out there broadcasting windows xp and bird sounds. Makes me wonder if OFCOM is actually bothered at all. Personally I think not really unless there's money to be made.
The spoken numbers starting at 3:30 are being spoken in Russian. Interesting.
What model of Tecsun is that in the thumbnail?
Fantastic video as always, but precisely, the name is "HM zero one."
Wonder if I'd be able to pick that up with my PL660 here in Minnesota..
That bird song reminds me of a lot of Chinese tiktok ambient music. hmmm...
There’s an entire Call of Duty campaign centered around this 😂
On the AM Dial, 1180 AM comes in from Havana with a strong signal.
I listen to it in Baton Rouge Louisiana. As strong as that signal is, it seems like a local station. Around 6 am it disappears.
Omg the Escaflowne music at 6:16
ive heard hm01 a few times in the uk just depends on propagation
While the first birdsong was a looping stock sound effect it is still strange hearing it here, being ingrained in my mind from a point and click game i played at maybe age 7 or 8
@RingwayManchester >>> Great video...👍
The birds arent encrypted no but they are certainly an identifier possibly a key rotation identifier for the encryption of the data stream to come. We used to use invisible characters in emails to identify what pgp key was meant to open the attachments without saying whay pgp key was meant to be open the attachment.
Anyone recommend a good site for short wave radio stations?
I didn't even know they still have voice number stations. I only hear the hybrid digital one.
How are number stations not completely obsolete in the internet age?
i have the same question. The only thing that makes some sense to me is that in this way it is impossible to make a cyber attack to the source
Over which frequency can be received?
I just heard it at 0730 UTC on 9330mhz in Ohio.
No wonder I can hear it from Wisconsin. They have to be pushing at least a million watts of power or better. I have been interested in chasing down these oddities since subscribing to your channel and it can prove quite interesting indeed too.
FWIW: I wish I had known about this stuff when I was living in South Florida {1988-1995}.
How do you know its run on Windows XP ?
Are the birds to delete or shift a number?
It sounded like the number messages were in time with the cuckoo clock? Maybe this is so that overseas agents can verify it's the correct broadcast or time the messages with their one time pad?
At least we can know they like old anime. That Escaflowne reference stood up like a sore thumb.
Could their agents have devices with noise filtering in them?
The mixed voice headers and digital does something interesting. The numbers are initially in what sounds to be Russian, and then Spanish and then back to Russian. Nothing was said about this at all
there has been a few things with radio HC lately that makes me wonder...
I hear it loud and clear here in Florida.
I don’t know what’s going on lately but I can’t even hear HM01 anymore. I used to be able to hear the signal perfectly whenever they broadcasted during the night but whenever they are supposed to transmit, I never hear them anymore. It’s nothing but dead air when the top of the hour hits and it’s a shame really because I live in the United States and HM01 is the only number station I could pick up. All the rest of them are in Europe or Russia. Have they gone dark or are they just not targeting North America anymore? I can’t even hear them on a WebSDR. Doesn’t matter which one I use.