[Cryptography] N. Korean radio broadcasts string of random numbers

Bill Frantz frantz at pwpconsult.com
Tue Aug 30 21:16:04 EDT 2016


On 8/30/16 at 4:47 PM, waywardgeek at gmail.com (Bill Cox) wrote:

>On Tue, Aug 30, 2016 at 3:14 PM, Ray Dillinger <bear at sonic.net> wrote:
>
>>I could pick up an amateur radio tomorrow and read the output
>>of a CPRNG out loud into a microphone.  Would that cause an
>>international incident?  Would I wind up talking to the guys with
>>the expensive sunglasses and cheap shoes again?
>>
>
>If by amateur radio, you mean ham radio, then I strongly recommend you do
>not do that.  The FCC will be there in short order, though some hams I know
>say they don't show up soon enough.

I think the FCC would want to know about your coded 
transmissions, which along with transmitting music are not 
permitted on ham radio.

I think the coded transmission restriction is a sop to the 
national security professional paranoids, but it was much more 
useful in the 1920-1990 time frame than it is now, given how 
easy international communication is via the Internet. The music 
limitation is to protect radio hobbyists from having to compete 
with wanna-be-broadcasters.

There are some exceptions to the coded transmission restriction 
including control of amateur radio satellites and protocols that 
support authentication without secrecy. The latter makes me 
occasionally think about all those authentication only protocols 
I didn't discuss during the crypto wars of the 1990s.

73 Bill AE6JV

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