The mysterious Craigslist spy, or whoever it is, has returned.
On May 8, an unknown person posted a message to Craigslist addressed to “Mein Fraulein” with a telephone number to call in the message. When called, an automated message began reading off a sequence of numbers, similar to shortwave numbers stations which have been used since the Cold War by intelligence agencies to communicate with agents in the field.
On May 29 a second message appeared, and then on June 10, a third message.
On Tuesday, a fourth message appeared on Boston Craigslist:
For mein fraulein
Mein Fraulein,
Hope to see you this summer. Please call.
///617///848///1172///
For those of you trying to break the messages, this should provide further material to work with. Here’s a transcription of the message.
Group 215
01200 60110 18011 02500 90310
23018 02303 00230 34038 03003
80410 31048 03803 40430 39055
05605 70450 55047 04506 00520
62051 06106 50750 71072 08007
40640 69083 08608 70900 72093
08309 10910 80100 09010 41040
94101 09010 01040 98110 11710
11151 14
As with the previous three messages, I’ve captured a recording (MP3) of the message.
(Technical problems reported here earlier were a result of my equipment, rather than the remote end, and have since been fixed. The recording has been replaced with a clean recording.)
The telephone number belongs to Focal Communications, which recently purchased Broadwing, a VoIP provider.
I haven’t had much time to look at the message, but some of the patterns seen in the earlier messages are definitely gone, and this message, which was in Boston as Wil Wheaton predicted, and around the predicted time, seems more like the third message than the first two.
When I get more information, I’ll continue to post it.
Update June 22: Mike from the hacker radio show Off The Hook admitted (MP3) on the air Wednesday night to creating this number. “I had planned to make one of these stations, and now I’ve done so. It’s not that hard,” he said. “I took a recording of some of the old ones and chopped it up, and the recording was a bit overmodulated.”
“I wouldn’t go so far as to say there is a secret message, but I would advise our listeners to look for one,” he said. He wouldn’t admit that the message had anything to do with the upcoming Hackers On Planet Earth conference. However, the 2600 homepage now shows a flashing Bush icon, which means that a HOPE-related contest is underway.
Off The Hook host Emmanuel Goldstein said that a clue to solving this particular message was “Lose the 5.”
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Gardner Goldsmith teams up with Brett Veinotte, of the excellent School Sucks Project and the School Sucks podcast. Gard and Brett discuss the impetus of the series and project, and why public education must be stopped.
The end of a war, to most people, means all the troops come home, out of harm's way. It means we stop killing people and getting killed. It means we stop sending troops and armed personnel over and draining our treasury for military operations in that foreign land. But much like the infamous "mission accomplished" moment of the last administration, this "end" of the war also means none of those things.
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Fortyseven
Jun 21, 2006
Wow, that recording IS horrible. The music speeding up was disturbing. :D
Do you think the poor quality was caused by bad audio encoding on the part of the VoIP provider?
Michael Hampton
Jun 21, 2006
No, I just think there’s a whole bunch of people actually calling the number and overloading the bandwidth of the server serving the message. Or possibly overloading the CPU of the server. Hopefully it’ll settle down soon. I just tried it again and it still seems to be kind of overloaded.
someone
Jun 21, 2006
Now that this phone number phenomena is widely publicized, don’t you think that this fourth message could be someone different trying to throw people off track by making up some random string of numbers in the same format as the previous ones?
Fortyseven
Jun 21, 2006
That’s something I’m kinda concerned about. It’d be fairly trivial to just slice up the older clips to make new ones with the same style. :/
Robotron
Jun 21, 2006
this message does not ‘feel’ the same as the others. When split into threes the numbers start small and broadly rise up into the 100’s. Also there is no 000 break. All of the other messages cycle between numbers grouped 0-30 and 60-90
Michael Hampton
Jun 21, 2006
Hm, you’re right, there is such a pattern in the message. It’s pretty clear to me at this point that there isn’t much in the way of strong encryption here. Go break it.
By the way, I’ve uploaded a second recording of the number. It demonstrates pretty clearly the problems the remote server is having.
Michael Hampton
Jun 21, 2006
Hm, OK, I actually listened to the MP3 files again, and they’re playing much faster than the original recordings. That is NOT the way they came out, but seems to be an artifact of the transcoding. I’m going to see if I can fix it and get proper MP3 files up.
Michael Hampton
Jun 21, 2006
Well how strange. The original GSM recordings exhibit this strange effect, too. Between 5 and 15 seconds into the recording, they suddenly change pitch and speed up. This, of course, is not what I heard on the phone number; it sounded like the other three numbers.
I’m having technical difficulties, I guess. Not that it stopped me from getting the numbers out of the message…
Michael Hampton
Jun 21, 2006
Well, I kicked my box, and the recording comes out fine now. So does the telephone call. So all the problems were likely on my end all along. The clean recording has been uploaded, so you probably want to re-download it.
Q
Jun 21, 2006
it sounds like group 815, not 215.
Q
Jun 21, 2006
ok i double checked, craigslist blocks any post in that section with a phone number, so the slashes are there merely to fool the system into not blocking the post
the 2’s sound a lot like 8’s but the 8’s spound even more like 8’s. thats it for now.
Deezy
Jun 21, 2006
I work for AT&T and we pull up CSR (customer service records) from focal all the time. I just sent them an email requesting a CSR for the phone number above. I might get something back I might not the thing is there require a LOA (letter of authorization) in order to pull up a CSR but i’m trying anyway with out one, below is the email I sent
I’m having some trouble with this Btn, It’s ported to your company and was a prepaid voice over ip and were having trouble pulling information on it
Any information you could provide on 617-848-1172 would be appreciative
Thank you
Let’s see what they send back btw i’m at work right now so we will wait and see
CodeAc
Jun 21, 2006
Hopfully your Social Engineering skills will pay off. I’m really getting intrigued by all this as I’m sure many others are intrigued as well. I wonder what the folks over at 2600 will say tonight on Off The Hook. which leads me to the point talking about this initially on Off The Hook and Off The Wall makes for a great way to get listiners tuning in.
CodeAc
Jun 21, 2006
Hmmm. I just called the number actually expecting it to already be disconnected and to my surprise its still up. The Ads still on Creigslist as well
either the feds decoded the message and found it all to be a harmless prank so they are not pushing to keep it out of our hands. or they are just slow to block access to the number and twisting Craigs arm to take it off the board. I’m tending to believe its the former rather then the later.
No one
Jun 21, 2006
@CodeAc: We have no evidence what so ever that the Government blocked access to any of the phone numbers nor twisted the arm CraigsList to have the posts remove.
Stop polluting the waters.
Joe West
Jun 21, 2006
i hit my MI pal with the newest link. well see what if anything he can provide.
Joe West
Jun 21, 2006
BTW, searching for the group number once again brings up real estate/investment sites, and adding amnesty to it brings up amnesty international. this time, theres a meeting in room 215 in the UK.
MooglyGuy
Jun 21, 2006
This one’s frequency counts:
0-9 **
10-19 *****
20-29 ****
30-39 **********
40-49 ******
50-59 ******
60-69 ******
70-79 ****
80-89 ****
90-99 *******
100-109 *******
110-119 ****
Shutaro Highwind
Jun 21, 2006
I’d keep an eye on the philadelphia craigslist next. It’s pretty clear
that the group is a pointer to where the next message is going to
appear.
omglolz
Jun 21, 2006
This message sounds different to the others. I have listened to it both on the phone and with the MP3 and the sound quality is worse. It sounds like a bad tape copy of a CD. Not sure but I think this one is a fake that someone put together from the other real ones.
alwyz
Jun 21, 2006
so this 4th one is actually a copycat by the guys at off the hook. they just said so. the hint is “lose the 5″…. win hope tickets if you do so
CodeAc
Jun 21, 2006
“Lose The 5″ could mean what we’ve been doing all along. taking the 5 digit numbers and grouping them into 3 digit numbers
Jun 21, 2006
TitaniumHalo » Fourth Phone Numbers Post
tm
Jun 21, 2006
So the 2600 folks are behind this? I haven’t listened to Off the Hook in years.
I agree that the 4th message didn’t sound right (I dialed the # and heard it)… it sounded like it was 1st recorded off a phone onto a computer using a crappy mic. I recognize the poor quality from when when I recorded the 2nd message and left it as an anonymous voicemail message on my buddy’s office phone last week.
tm
Jun 21, 2006
Oh… they’re only behind the 4th one?
When are they going to post audio of the show? Here’s the link for their site:
http://www.2600.com/offthehook/2006/0606.html
GyroJet
Jun 21, 2006
Okay, who did this: http://formeinfraulein.ytmnd.com/ ?
Of all the places I’d expect to find this… That wasn’t it :)
tm
Jun 21, 2006
Nice find Gyro… it looks like it was posted by max_damage78
Does this mean the 415 number was also a fake?
tm
Jun 21, 2006
Check that… it was BODmax
http://ytmnd.com/users/BODmax/
jesus
Jun 22, 2006
Mein Fraulein, You didn’t call me from my previous message.
Time is of the essence. Please call me. 510 //// 790 //// 68900
Michael Hampton
Jun 22, 2006
Would you mind not posting junk? Thank you.
eri
Jun 22, 2006
Ok, now we have something we know can be broken, even if it isnt the solution for teh rest, lets do this. What could “lose the 5″ mean? it isnt:
1) subtract 5 from teh groupings of 3
2) remove the 5s, group by 3s
3) remove every 5th number then ascii
4) remove every 5th group of three
MooglyGuy
Jun 22, 2006
Or, y’know, it could just mean “lose the fifth article on homelandstupidity, because we’re behind the fourth one and not the others, so the fourth is a hoax”. But hey, I’ve been wrong before.
eri
Jun 22, 2006
it is also not:
1) split into pairs, add/subtract some constant
2) split into pairs, remove the 5th element, then add/subtract constant
3) remove 5’s, then pairs, add/subtract constant
johan louwers
Jun 22, 2006
Ok cool now we know message number 4 is ‘fake’, this message is the only one that is constructed by the guys from 2600. The other messages are not. This do’s not mean that they are real. I still have a strange feeling by message number 3.
However we do have a clue on this message number 4 how to solve it. I think we must be able to crack this one quite quickly. The hint is “lose the 5’. As already posted by eri the solution is not:
1)subtract 5 from teh groupings of 3
2) remove the 5s, group by 3s
3) remove every 5th number then ascii
4) remove every 5th group of three
5) split into pairs, add/subtract some constant
6) split into pairs, remove the 5th element, then add/subtract constant
7) remove 5’s, then pairs, add/subtract constant
Meaning it is puzzle time…. So I think I will spend some time this evening trying to solve this message. ;-) If I do so I will post it right away… only if…
CodeAc
Jun 22, 2006
I already have my Tickets To Hope so the contest really dosent apply to me but I
I don’t think this one will be particularly hard. but notice the group number refers to Philly. Home to Bernie S. Hmmmmm
eri
Jun 22, 2006
Also not:
1) checkerboard cipher with 3 rows, split into 2 or 3’s add/subtract a constant
eri
Jun 22, 2006
Also not:
1)numberwise bitwise xor by 2 or 1 alternating(lose the 5 means 215=21 is the code?)
2)triplet xor by 21 then ascii
3)couplet xor by 21 then ascii
CodeAc
Jun 22, 2006
could ‘Lose The 5′ mean the 5 in the group number that would leave 21
I’m wondering if the last number 14 and the 21 have something to do with the key.
Brad
Jun 22, 2006
Perhaps subtract 5 from every number group in this recording?
eri
Jun 22, 2006
already tried that Brad, check above:
Also not (this is a bit weird):
1)couplets mod 26;
2)triplets mod26
3)couplets mod26 +/-21,41
4)triplets mod26 +/- 21,41
5)couplets/triplets mod26 +/1 2,1 alternating
5)couplets/triplets mod26 +/1 4,1 alternating
CodeAc
Jun 22, 2006
I think the Lose the 5 simply means lose the original 5 digit groupings like we have been doing by grouping them into 3
somby
Jun 22, 2006
somebody posted something intersted at the bottom of the cryptanalysis page.. check it out
eri
Jun 22, 2006
Also not:
1) alternating adding/subtracting a constant (21-45)
Maybe it isnt encoded at all, the following area codes were valid, and the resulting numbers might be real:
205 found! AL 2051061065,
206 found! WA 2062051061, 208 found! ID 2080074064, 209 found! CA 2093083091, 250 found! BC 2500903102,
301 found! MD 3018023030, 303 found! CO 303002, 308 found! NE 3086087090, 309 found! IL 3091091080,
310 found! CA 3102301802, 340 found! — 3403803003, 380 found! OH 380300, 403 found! AB 4038030038,
404 found! GA 4043039055, 406 found! MT 406, 409 found! TX 4094101090, 410 found! MD 4103104803,
430 found! TX 4303905505, 450 found! QC 450550470, 470 found! GA 4704506005, 480 found! AZ 4803803404,
500 found! — 5009031023, 504 found! LA 5047045060, 505 found! NM 505605704, 506 found! NB 5060052062,
507 found! MN 507, 510 found! CA 5106106507, 511 found! — 5114, 520 found! AZ 5206205106,
570 found! PA 5704505504, 600 found! — 6005206205, 601 found! MS 6011018011, 605 found! SD 6057045055,
608 found! WI 6087090072, 610 found! PA 6106507507, 620 found! KS 6205106106, 650 found! CA 6507507107,
704 found! NC 704505504, 709 found! NF 7090072093, 710 found! — 7107208007, 720 found! CO 7208007406,
740 found! OH 7406406908, 800 found! — 8007406406, 801 found! UT 8011025009, 802 found! VT 8023030023,
803 found! SC 8030038041, 804 found! VA 8041031048, 811 found! — 8110117101, 830 found! TX 8308608709,
860 found! CT 8608709007, 870 found! AR 8709007209, 900 found! — 9007209308, 901 found! TN 9010410409,
903 found! TX 9031023018, 905 found! ON 9055056057, 908 found! NJ 9083086087, 910 found! NC 910,
941 found! FL 9410109010
CodeAc
Jun 22, 2006
I’m not sure what your are referring to are you refering to the Registrar info or just before it about the grouping of number 4 3 2 1
CodeAc
Jun 22, 2006
To Clearify My previous post was in response to Somby. eri thats interesting but where the message in all of it?? Its gotta be some sort of related thing to the Hope Con of 2600 I noticed how Emmanual started asking Mike on the show if it might be a Promo for Hope Number Six and Mike kinda got flustered and said something to the effect of he was giving too much of it away.
eri
Jun 22, 2006
I dont know, maybe the message is just to call one of em. I cant check them right this moment, but I think the probability of them being vaild randomly is rather low. Its just a weird idea i had. At least one is real:
J Yacowatz – (570) 450-5504 – Main St, Hazleton, PA 18201
I havent checked the rest though
CodeAc
Jun 22, 2006
I remember the last Contest they had for giving away Hope tickets was finding an E-Mail Address and responding to what the email address meant the e-mail address is something like iwtftfto@2600.com or something like that well the actual meaning of the email address was “I was The First to figure this out” so giving that sense of humor then i wonder if you call one of those number to get a recording saying you won.
somby
Jun 22, 2006
I was refering to the 4 3 2 1 thing
manus
Jun 22, 2006
Holy crap, I’m actually making progress, I found a method that looks promising so far, things are making sense, and a definite pattern is emerging in my analysis; now I just need to follow through.. will post after I solve.
-manus
Alex Carbon
Jun 22, 2006
Wow, 2600 used someone else’s idea to whore out their conference? Say it ain’t so!
That rag hasn’t published anything worthwhile in years. The underground isn’t dead, but Emmanuel sure as hell doesn’t represent it.
ha
Jun 22, 2006
SHARE manus SHARE!!!!!!!!!
erithid
Jun 22, 2006
I am just about out of ideas, I tried hard though. Bah, lotta confused people on the end of those phone numbers :-p I was hoping I would stumble onto something, I would totally travel from bos to go to the con.
manus
Jun 22, 2006
Got it!
I don’t know if I’d be disqualified for giving out the answer, so I’ll just verify one bit of the information about the hint — 36.(1) was *very* close to the Right Idea.
erithid
Jun 22, 2006
well glad i could help heh.
CodeAc
Jun 22, 2006
Actually that was funny cause as I was typing my response (37) eri posted his are you talking about taking the 5 out of the group 215?
CodeAc
Jun 22, 2006
hey I just checked www.2600.com and the flashing Bush (George Bush) is gone so someone must have solved it.
if you know the answer its safe to share i’m really curious now.
erithid
Jun 22, 2006
damn I was close. I really do want to see what i had done wrong. So please post how you got the answer. Also, please apply themethod to the other messages.
eri
Jun 22, 2006
Might as well finish off my list of what it wasnt. It wasnt phone number anagrams, anagarams +/- a constant(i believe I checked enough), bitwise xor with 12, bitwise xor with 215 alternating, and just 215, and the phone numbers seem wrong as well, after called a few and got info on some more of them.
alwyz
Jun 22, 2006
eri, what do you mean bitwise xor with 1 or two alternating? I get the xor part, nto the alternating
manus
Jun 22, 2006
You can verify if all 4 messages are from the same place or not
eri
Jun 22, 2006
012 006 011 018 011 025 009 031
i tried 012 xor 2, 006 xor 1; 0 xor 2, 1xor1; 012xor21, 006xor21; oxor21, 1xor21, 2xor21; etc basically every permuatation I could think of
not
Jun 22, 2006
sorry, that was written TO manus, not from
eri
Jun 22, 2006
manus, can you not tell us? and how can i verify?
CodeAc
Jun 22, 2006
Manus: If you got it please share as a newbie to crypt i’m really interested as to what you came up with and how it was done. I really took an interest into this whole cryptology thing by reading these threads and i would love to see how it was solved. (kinda like the big mystory shows where at the final minutes they tell you everything about the case.
dm
Jun 22, 2006
I dunno if anyone else has tried calling that number today. But I just tried it and got a message saying something along the lines of “we’re sorry the number you have dialed has been brutally murder by the teletubbies” then it continued on to play My Little Black Heart in it’s entirety. Personally judging from this I feel that this is in fact a joke.
Jun 22, 2006
HOPE Number Six » HOPE Numbers Station Mystery Solved
alwyz
Jun 22, 2006
dm, it *is* a joke – at least this 4th one is. it’s by the guys at off the hook, see above…
alwyz
Jun 22, 2006
spoiler…
since a solution has been published, i’ll post one here, which is a little different than the one i saw, but damn i feel like an idiot for not getting it sooner…
one answer key for this particular station. reminding that we “lose the 5″
Group 21. make a chart like this, subtract from all the 3 digit groupings in order, compare to a-z chart that makes a=0, b=1, c=2 and so on…, there’s your answer
start with 0. subtract from 012 = 012 = m
add 2 to 0=2. subtract from 006 = 004 = e
add 1 to 2=3. subtract from 011 = 008 = i
add 2 to 3=5. subtract from 018 = 013 = n
add 1 to 5=6. subtract from…. etc etc etc
mlc
Jun 22, 2006
Hey folks,
We’ve posted an explanation of sorts on the HOPE Number Six blog, if you’re interested.
Michael Hampton
Jun 22, 2006
Okay, time to turn our attention back to the other numbers stations, I guess. At this rate I’ll never get free tickets to HOPE!
manus
Jun 22, 2006
Sorry for the delay in explaining my method, but I was AFK since I left work. The posted solutions are good, though I kind of did it a backwards way which was a little harder and more reliant on educated guessing. I guessed that the plaintext would include the string “DOTCOM” (though I had also tried the same technique using other strings) and then looked at the differences between the consecutive numbers and compared them to the differences between consecutive character values in each string. After I discovered a pattern, remembering the hint just confirmed to me that I was on the right track, and the solution was found soon after. I knew there had to be a smarter way to do it, but at the time, I just wanted to chug through and get the answer.
-manus
4
Jun 23, 2006
ok great, but what about the other three messages???
CodeAc
Jun 23, 2006
has anyone tried that using the same method that the 2600 message used to decrypt the other 3 messages??
Buff Daddy
Jun 24, 2006
“There’s nothing more dangerous than a resourceful idiot.” – Scott Adams
“The easiest person in the world to scam is the person who foolishly believes that they can’t be scammed.” – Me!
I’m WAY to tired to write further, so I’ll just leave you all with the above quotes and this question/answer:
Q. What’s the advantage of giving thousands of cryptologists free access to their secret messages?
A. They’ll encrypt it for them.
Jul 12, 2006
SecondAgenda : For Mein Fraulein
Kevin
Jul 25, 2006
Has anyone considered that this could be more of that viral marketing that’s been gaining popularity? For example www.eon8.com or the billboards popping up about the cheating husband.
Michael Hampton
Jul 25, 2006
We know exactly what this one was; Mike went and told us. Now try to figure out the others.