A Mysterious Code Is Being Broadcast on Shortwave Radio. Is It Iran?

[underpants]

The Atlantic. Gift link.

On February 28, the day that bombs started falling on the Islamic Republic, a man’s voice began broadcasting in Farsi on a shortwave-radio frequency. He announced himself—“Tavajjoh! Tavajjoh!” (Attention! Attention!)—and then read a string of seemingly random numbers. Anyone with a shortwave radio could hear him. But the announcer’s intended audience was likely no more than a handful of people using a centuries-old system to decipher his otherwise incoherent message.


The eerie and still-unattributed radio transmission came from a numbers station. You don’t hear them much anymore. But when the CIA and the KGB needed to communicate with their spies working undercover, such broadcasts were convenient and safe ways to send orders around the world. The intended recipient turns on their radio at a set time to a specific station and writes down the numbers they hear. Using a technique called a “one-time pad,” they convert each number into a letter, eventually revealing a message. The transmission is out in the open. But if only the sender and the recipient have the pad—which is written down and destroyed immediately after the message is sent—only they can understand the message.

The trackers reported that they heard the numbers clearly in their various locations across Europe and the Middle East. They tried different methods to locate the transmission’s origin, without success. We listened for ambient noises that might give us some hint as to who was reading. Some trackers thought they heard a fan blowing. Others said they heard the sound of a Microsoft Windows prompt. Not especially revealing clues, but ones that offered more information than we’d had about V32 when the broadcast started. After about 90 minutes, the reader stopped, and we heard only static.

We still don’t know who’s sending the messages, who they’re meant for, or what they mean. Even the jamming might be an unreliable clue. I found myself wondering if Iranian intelligence broadcast the message and then jammed it to make the Americans and the Israelis think it wasn’t them.


https://www.theatlantic.com/national-security/2026/03/asymmetric-warfare-iran-numbers-stations-cyber/686289/?gift=j8JiJIlliWfcdD_mDVMd9xKaluhLQaKRSCuVjEN8rG0