Lost Codes: When You Don’t Have Good Radio Discipline, by GuerrillaLogistician

 

@glogistician on X.com

Reference – 3F


Storage facility 87 miles away from the enemy Tactical Operation Center (TOC)
T- 8 days from initial transmission

“I know it may not be possible, but I really don’t want to burn alive”, Houston said.  Houston was an older gentleman with a receding hairline and sun-touched skin.  A life of hard work had him hunched over a bit, and his hands showed the signs of a working man’s life.  “You also make sure my kin are taken care of”, he added as he looked at the fellow compatriots.  All of them were dressed in working clothes of various brands, showing off grease stains and hard use like a badge of honor.

“They will absolutely be taken care of as long as we are alive and fighting, and I promise you if I can help it, you won’t feel even the faintest lick of flames”, the gruff, military age man in his 30s with a long beard and shaggy hair said in response. “You know you don’t have to go through with this, you don’t necessarily have to stay”, he added.

“Yeah, I know, but I have a bone to pick with these guys, and knowing that I’m there and probably won’t suffer any longer from this unyielding pain will be a blissful transition to heaven.”, Houston offered up as a gentle rebuttal to the out the man had given him. “Besides, I won’t be the one going to hell for committing suicide, and I’ll be able to watch some monsters go where they belong”, he tacked on, confirming his urge to seek justice and possibly a bit of vengeance. “God only knows how I will be judged for these actions, but I wanna make sure these bastards don’t hurt anyone else and I’m not ashamed to say the little sin of vengeance is mixed in with my thoughts as well”, he finished.

Smiling, the man nodded back to him as he handed the radio equipment in a small, unmarked civilian bag similar to that of a backpack for school, with a subdued Gray color. “I know you know how to operate radios, but let’s go through this one more time and this setup, and then let’s discuss a few locations since you know the area better than we do”, the shaggy-haired man replied. For the next couple of hours, training, map reviewing, and planning continued as portions of his team were already in the process of hunting down signals and tracking them back to the sources clandestinely.

 

Alliance of American Diversity, Security, and Unification Tactical Operations Center
T+20:00 after initial transmission interception

Bree was a fierce, independent woman with a belly full of rage.  Her anger for generations of oppression of minorities, and all the misgendering, was about to conclude with the joy of shooting a bunch of white men who were trying to stop the needed change the US had to go through.  Bree had been open about her lifestyle since 2016, serving in the Space Force as a technology development expert.  She was not stupid, and it took very little time for her engineering skills and knowledge to turn into a whole operation.  Hell, she was an O-6 before she was booted out with Trump’s orders over Transgender prohibition signed into law by that bigoted asshole.  It wouldn’t fix the US killing these bastards, but it was a fine step. She knew under her capable leadership she had built an amazing allyship that would defeat the modern NAZI holdouts.  This was just another step toward a more inclusive and equitable world.

Weeks earlier, Bree and her team, along with an intelligence branch, had engaged in some intel gathering and SIGINT to make this little project work.  The enemy had been lazy, and with her beautiful group of warriors and radio enthusiasts, they had set up many listening posts over the region.  It had taken a few days, but patterns emerged, locations were identified, and then the big breakthrough came.  Someone had obtained a copy of the enemy’s Trigram, which they hadn’t changed, even though the One-Time Pad being used was also unbreakable. The goal was to hunt these MAGAts down and ambush them before they had time to destroy their OTPs.

Although the military did fracture over the Transgender Argument, Bree found support from people connected to the Socialist Rifle Association.  This included a few marines who trained up her crack hunting team.  Contrary to the belief of most of the MAGAts, her community of progressive ideals had a lot of warriors who were skilled from GWOT to freedom fighters who operated in Ukraine and Syria.  Several months earlier, they had captured a small reconnaissance team using radio direction-finding techniques.  They had easily identified the ground waves of the HF team and, using terrain analysis, as well as some possible targeting analysis, had set them up for success.  Not only was that team operating HF, they had a security team on 2 meters, which had a radio that was intermittently transmitting.  It took her team of warriors no time to hunt down the group right as they consolidated.  The major break was the OTPs the team had on them that weren’t burned.

Sitting in her TOC in some rich person’s mansion on a hill, she watched as her integrated team connected with a mesh network of Frequency Hopping Spread Spectrum technology, allowing her to remain constantly involved.  Today had been especially amazing with a low noise floor on the radio, meaning things came in crystal clear.  Almost all the usual chatter had been quiet today as well, making things easier for the SIGINT team. This was likely due to it being a new holiday associated with the rebranding of the old United States into the new Democratic Socialist Alliance of America.  Bree wasn’t religious at all, but she thought that if there was a God, or maybe even a Goddess, was guiding this whole operation.  The HF transmission was repeated three times in a row before a confirmation message was transmitted back.

Then, more luck struck as her enemy continued to send random signals on the 80-meter band.  Most likely the radio had some issue and was dumping out random signals.  Add to that the operator was probably in one place, either waiting for a reply or maybe someone else with more information to send out.  Bree just waited with bated breath, watching the teams moving in on their prey, and hoping they would at least capture the radio operator and possibly even more people.  With the holiday going on and her team working through it this would be such a morale boost for everyone involved.

65 miles west of AADSU TOC
T+46:00 after initial transmission interception

Houston McCoy sat in his impromptu hide, waiting patiently for his quarry to arrive. Several months before, a small group of freedom fighters in the area had been destroyed by a regime that was trying to force Marxist ideals on the people. Houston knew one of the men who had died trying to deliver information to the network of resistance fighters over HF. Unfortunately, the man wasn’t very competent or skilled in the craft, even if he meant well.  Sure, Billy could run a radio like any other HAM operator, but he didn’t really understand how to hide properly.  Houston told him to go to a class or two like Historian’s HF class or Wyoming Survival’s courses. Sadly though for years, the guy had not gone to classes and had spent more time on booze and buying firearms than he did on actually learning anything, which had been a significant problem in general for the resistance. Now that things had gone to hell, people were clamoring to learn things clandestinely that they could have been training for years in the open safely. While Houston knew every loss hurt their cause, he also relied on the fact that sometimes people sacrifice themselves by not being very skilled and would do anything to stop the atrocities going on, even if it got them killed.  Mind you, no one remembered these people because they would die a fruitless death, even if it were a righteous one.

All he knew was people would remember what he was about to do and that his sacrifice wasn’t going to be in some useless manner strung up and tortured for information, or outright executed in public on a stage for others to see. He found it very sickly hypocritical that the same group of people who had been screaming about detention facilities being concentration camps during the Trump administration were now sending people to “re-education camps,” not to mention actually killing people. This time, however, he was going to do something that he never thought he would do until he was diagnosed with cancer. For his whole life, he had known something like this would need someone with a steel conviction to pull off something amazing.  Up until his cancer diagnosis, Houston didn’t think he would have been willing to be such a person, but with the clarity of a terminal illness, he saw the path God had laid out for him. His family was safe, with his friends, and he had said his goodbyes, but his last act on this planet wasn’t going to be dying in a bed with no air conditioning or even worse, in some camp. After teaching his replacement everything he knew, he and a few buddies had hatched an interesting plan to get some retaliation on the menace that was soon to spread out into his community.

Up the tree was an 80-meter antenna with his little QRPP transmitter attached; he was randomly making noise over the airwaves as if his radio had an issue. All the while, he was watching with a pair of cheap binoculars and drinking from a flask filled with Diplomático. He’d been stone-cold sober until his transmission started, and he knew if he had done things correctly, it wouldn’t matter if he was sober or not for the rest of this. So, he was going to make damn sure no one went home with even a partial flask as he sat there for what seemed like an eternity until he heard the sounds of crunching leaves. The embankment he was on against precluded anyone from really sneaking up on him, and the flat terrain ahead of him gave him not only a good vantage point but also excellent propagation of his signal. He picked up his binoculars again and was scanning as he caught sight of movement.

He quietly waited as the small force moved through the sparse woods, one of the individuals randomly holding up a device and pivoting ever so slowly. He felt like it took those people forever to find his hideout, but when they did, shouting and firearms were pointed at him, which didn’t scare him anymore. He knew that with all his sins forgiven in the past, and deep in his heart, he knew who had sacrificed for those sins. Even now, the minor sin of vengeance was going to be forgiven because of Jesus. God knew that Houston was never going to be a perfect man, but God also knew precisely what was in his heart. Houston had more than a desire for vengeance; he truly wanted to stop these monsters in any way he could, and Houston was exhausted from the large amount of pain and lack of medication available nowadays. Forcefully, the small team rolled Houston onto his belly and zip-tied his arms as they rummaged through his meager kit, confiscating his internally broken pistol as they started to take photos of everything around them. The small team moved out and looked for anyone else, but did not find any signs of other individuals.

AADSU TOC T+49:30 after initial transmission interception

Back at the TOC, Bree smiled as her hunters had not only acquired another copy of a trigram, but they also had gotten a few OTP’s in the field. With all this juicy Intel, not only was the field team decrypting and preparing to bring back an actual live insurgent, but they had also used the fancy technology Bree had set up to transmit photos back to the TOC. The man in custody was so stupid that he didn’t even take the time to destroy the OTP he used. Within moments, they had gone through the trigram and were decoding and decrypting the message. She thought about going into the decryption section and watching as the code broke, but she knew it was best to give them the victory of breaking the code and bringing it to her in her beautiful office.

It was late in the day, and the sun beamed into her office, bathing the large desk made for a millionaire. Bree felt it suited her and her team’s victory if she was surrounded by the bright sunlight washing away the evil of the nation’s past.  Whenever she had to wait for something, she could just sit and marvel at the beauty behind her, overlooking the rolling hills.  Add to that the blazing ball of fire shining through and warming the cool building, and the grand office full of war trophies made Bree feel even more in command of her world.  She figured with a few more operations like this, she could move up to a bigger and even more suitable job in the new administration.

One of her newly minted lieutenants who loved puzzles burst into the office with a startled look on their face.  They had been working in the decryption section that they had set up and were responsible for a significant portion of the new computer software, which provided them with easy access to SIGINT and data.  Bree was very proud of Zanda’s skills, but they had never barged into her office like this before.

“General, I don’t think something is right here”, Zandra offered as a reply to Bree’s confused and almost angered look.

“What do you mean?” Bree replied, waving her to a chair. But Zandra came straight up and put a note on the table.

“This is what I just decoded, but it isn’t operational in nature”, placing a printed sheet with the unencrypted transmission down. “I even verified this with the signal intercept we got, and all three messages were the same”, Zandra finished.

Puzzled now, Bree pulled the sheet to her and began to read the paper.  If she had balls anymore, they would have shrunk up into her body in fear. “Go warn the Hunter team to leave that place right now”, she ordered as she stood up.

Lying on the table, the message simply said, “FUUFA KEDIK EWITH NODIC KCANC ERISK ILLIN GMEBU TIGET 2KUXX”

65 miles west
T+56:45 after initial transmission interception

A text on the mesh network buzzed, and the RTO looked at his small screen, then up at his Sergeant.  One of the former marines had stopped another one of the hunters from kicking the old man on the ground. Reassuring both the hunter and this Houston guy that punishment would be doled out back at the compound after questions were answered, the Marine Sergeant continued to supervise the collection of all the information and evidence. Confused with the message that had just come over the mesh network, the young RTO walked over to the Sergeant and cleared his throat. Nervously, he watched as the Sergeant turned his head towards him.

“Sergeant, I don’t know what this is all about, but do you know anyone who would be sending us Bible verses?” the RTO said with a confused expression on his face. “I thought basically everybody was an atheist at this point.” Handing the little mesh networked device over to the Sergeant, he stood there watching as the Sergeant read aloud.

“Luke 23:40-42 40 But the other criminal protested, “Don’t you fear God even when you have been sentenced to die? 41 We deserve to die for our crimes, but this man hasn’t done anything wrong.” 42 Then he said, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your Kingdom.” The Sergeant spoke out loud, with a perplexed look on his face. “I don’t think anyone would be involved with this that believed this bullshit”, he added just as he heard Huston say something face down nearby. “What did you say you piece of shit?”, the older Marine Sergeant said in his DI voice.

Chuckling as his breath forced dust in little pillow puffs away from his face, Houston rolled his head towards the two, “I said, Sergeant, that I hope you repented because I know where I’m going.”

“The only place you’re fucking going is in a small cell until I’m done getting all the information, I want out of you”, the Marine replied just as Houston’s head exploded in a pink mist. The crack of the supersonic round bouncing around the sparse trees reverberated as bits of bone and brain splattered the RTO and Sergeant.  The two didn’t have any time to process the Jackson Pollock horror show, the round made of them.  As everyone crouched from the shot, the RTO and Sergeant only had moments of confusion as it dawned on them their prisoner had been shot, confusing them even more.

But as both of them realized something was extremely wrong with this situation, with the fading sun dimming on the horizon, the bright light of both realization in fire erupted around the hunters.  The odd smell of petroleum and the sickening heat of unnatural fire scratched their skin as they hit the deck and looked for any place of refuge from the inferno they had been placed in.  The fiery trap Huston and his friends laid out engulfed the area in a hellscape. The only shots that rang out were wounding shots, crippling the hunter team just enough to prevent escape but leaving them in a temporary fiery pit of hell, until they were judged and went onto a more severe punishment.

65 miles from AADSU TOC
T+57:00 after initial transmission interception

Bree had the same Lieutenant Zandra rush in again, saying that they could not get hold of the hunters, as if most of the mesh network had just gone down spontaneously.  They both stood on the side of the desk facing Bree’s monitor, looking at the signals intelligence information. They both were trying to make sense of the original message and now downed network reviewing that day’s SIGINT data. With neither one of them looking at the large windows facing the sunset behind them, the only thing that warned them something was wrong was the crashing of windows they could hear throughout the building. As windows randomly broke in the building, the final one came from behind them. With the crash, neither had the time to turn as a burst of fiery heat and explosive overpressure struck the two against the wall, spontaneously igniting all the papers and plastics in the room.

Don’t use compromised or possibly compromised encryption software.

I’m going to start by probably offending a lot of people. Do not use software or technology built by people whose purpose is to control you.  I am not a font of knowledge when it comes to apps and data encryption. What I do know is that many people have fallen into the same trap that has been going on for as long as people have been hiding messages.  During World War II, the British and the SOE were determined to use a code known as a poem code, which can be seen in the link below. The problem with poem codes didn’t just come from the fact that the poems were not of an original design, but most people couldn’t even remember their own poems. As a compromise, many of the operatives ended up using preexisting poems, which meant that it was very easy for the Germans to figure out these codes by just trying common poems.

While we have the Internet at our disposal and the ability to research numerous topics on a simple computer, it isn’t surprising that a poem written in a book and widely published would be easy to decipher.  You’re probably reading this off a computer or phone that has more processing power than Turing’s mechanical computer by orders of magnitude.  You are also currently connected to a literal repository of knowledge at your fingertips. Back then, there was a lot more manual labor. This meant people had to have enough manpower to figure this out, and still, this code was routinely broken.

https://chris-intel-corner.blogspot.com/2013/02/soe-codes-and-referat-vauck_2.html

This is where I’m going to hurt the feelings I was talking about, and I’m going to specifically point to apps like Signal and software like ATAK or civ-TAK for most of you.  Signal has the ability to be very secure if you do your job right as an operator of the device. Let’s face it, most of us look at our cell phones and realize that they are not safe and can be easily hacked by any state actor, and many civilians as well. Unfortunately, most of us can’t even dive into the software and figure out if there’s anything amiss. Yet we still rely on these products way too often to secure our messages, and this has exposed people and even led to several people’s deaths. Case in point, we have seen our government use signals to chat with one another, and this has exposed relatively private communications to the world.  Likewise, I think the socialists and antifa who operate on CIV-TAK tend to misjudge their security. While the Democrats may not look into antifa’s doings during their administration, that doesn’t mean that the US government doesn’t backdoor an Air Force-based software.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_government_group_chat_leaks

Moreover, we shouldn’t trust anything from China’s software industry, as it may have backdoors as well.  This means keeping standalone products on laptops and tablets that have not been connected to the Internet in a meaningful way and being as secure as we can with the software we migrate to those computers. Also, we need to make sure that those computers do not have cell phone-based technology in them because that’s easily tracked.  Let’s say you have a completely secure system and know who’s in your signal group, are you still safe? Let’s look at an Internet Society study of the signal.

In July 2016, the Internet Society published a user study that assessed the ability of Signal users to detect and deter man-in-the-middle attacks.[25] The study concluded that 21 out of 28 participants failed to correctly compare public key fingerprints in order to verify the identity of other Signal users, and that most of these users believed they had succeeded, while they had actually failed.[25] Four months later, Signal’s user interface was updated to make verifying the identity of other Signal users simpler.[147]]

As you can see, most people, even with the capability of having pretty good encryption, generally don’t follow the procedures to make themselves safe in the first place. It doesn’t matter if it’s a poem code or running the Signal App, you need to have a better way to secure your messages than others work.  I do use Signal as a whiteside communication feature, not as something that I feel secure in, only using it for chatting with a friend on NON-sensitive topics. Can you secure things on Signal? Sure, there are ways to manually encrypt a message and send it to somebody else, not relying on the encryption of Signal, but that doesn’t mean that that communication isn’t run through a server that could be blocked. Realistically, anything on the Internet can be stopped fairly easily by malicious actors or even government entities like China. While the US and the Air Force might not do anything nefarious on ATAK, it doesn’t mean other countries aren’t finding compromises in the system and also exploiting it for their own security purposes. Our country might not be involved in this, but you might be reading this from a foreign nation, such as Syria, which could have Chinese-backed intelligence assets. We know many of the secure systems that multiple nations have relied on have been compromised by intelligence agencies like Mossad, which means other nations are capable of doing the same thing.

Why PACE, why care?

Anyone who has read any of the Brushbeater books absolutely knows the importance of a PACE plan, but may not always recognize why. They also don’t acknowledge the fact that you need to secure this just like you would an OTP.  For the purpose of not writing another story, I’ll give you the answer up front. If our communication is set for 02:30 and you contact me, with a regular report at 05:00, I will be highly concerned. Above in my story Bree and Zandra should have realized something was off about the whole thing.  Especially with a message being repeated over and over. That said, hubris and multiple people working on the same task sometimes prevent the forest from being seen through the trees, so to speak.  This phenomenon occurred on both sides during WWII and wasn’t exclusive to the British or German experience.

So not only will I be highly concerned you missed our comms window, but I might also not even be listening for you at that particular time unless I’m doing signals intelligence. If I tell you in a war zone to meet me at a location at a specific time, and you don’t arrive, I would be concerned.  If you weren’t concerned that something had happened you would be absolutely nuts, and if you took to much time a Quick Reaction Force would be sent.  Likewise, communication should be treated the same way, but for some reason, even today with technology, people don’t treat the loss of contact as a problem.

This was not uncommon for the SOE of World War II; not only did the Abwehr do an amazing job of turning British operatives, but they also managed to acquire all their codes and information. Still worse, some of those SOE agents who made common errors during training and in the field magically produced perfect messages which actually alarmed some in the SOE. That said, many things weren’t corrected, and false information was considered fact at the time due to political influences within Britain and the intelligence agencies, which ultimately led to more operatives being captured. One of the signs that an operative may be compromised is that they miss a specific number of communication windows. It’s relatively easy to determine nowadays whether the sun is causing issues with the ionosphere and making HF communication almost unusable. Still, during World War II, we didn’t have access to all that information.

When things don’t go as planned, which will inevitably happen during any conflict, you must establish certain policies and procedures for those in the field. Including that these operatives may have to deal with the enemy voting on if they get a transmission off at a particular time. If they were to be compromised, any information they send to you may be false. If they’ve missed a window marginally or even massively, it is a sign that there are troubles, regardless of whether they are currently captured or not. Those on the receiving end of the message should pay attention to this and scrutinize it more closely than usual. As I’ve delved into the history of World War II, I’ve discovered that many of the intelligence operations we’ve been led to believe were massively successful weren’t as impressive as we’re told in books written by those involved. HUMINT or human intelligence was spotty at best. What it did was confirm things that we found out in other places, like SIGINT, and could give us details we may not have.

That said, many of the operations that were done to gather intelligence on both sides involving spies seemed lackluster at best, with only a few notable exceptions. At the same time, other aspects, such as reconnaissance units reporting back data, were far more effective. Lastly, I will say that there will always be a window of a specific number of minutes during which you should be able to transmit and receive. It might be a little early, or a little late, but it will fall within a spectrum that should be limited in nature. This allows for some errors in setting up or technical difficulties without showing a significant issue has occurred. While everyone currently has the same clock running at the same time, provided they are connected to the Internet or can access GPS, this may not be the case in every location or with every piece of equipment. There are many names for it, like Comms window, jiggle, or acceptable variance. Whatever you use, practice will allow you to understand how much time you should give people, and this is done through consistent training.

As a side note, this is also one of the reasons why I have a big issue with ATAK and mesh networks. Because everybody wants their information immediately, it allows for compromises in your PACE plan, and not only that, capturing devices, among others, could also lead to a vital compromise of information. Much like many people don’t check the public key fingerprints in Signal, many people don’t set up the mesh network securely enough, allowing someone to hijack your insecure node and read your messages. Due to the confidence in 256-bit encryption on these devices, many people also refrain from using standard encryption methods like trigrams and OTPs. Without a PACE plan, if I capture you with your device and it is unlocked, I can send any message I want to your friends and family. I could set up an ambush and wait for your response, using help to send you misleading information.

Additionally, most groups will not compartmentalize the network; instead, they will enhance its reliability by having every node communicate with one another. That allows many of the issues above to be more probable than someone snagging a VHF radio off a dead body.  There are ways around this but comfort and perceived situational awareness make things like ATAK so highly sought after. Regardless, though, one can prove their safety and security by not only following a PACE plan but also using techniques that draw on our past. However, these older techniques have there own shelf life of security.

DRYAD and BATCO 1980s -2010ish encoding vs encryption

Let’s discuss the paper-based encryption technology used by allied forces up until 2010 as a backup.  What you need to know is that encoding a message isn’t encryption. Encoding does one of two things: it either allows you to shorten messages or makes plain text a more straightforward way to communicate.  This is why digital modes are available and not considered encryption by the Ham community. This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t treat encoding any less securely than encryption.  For instance, Morse code (CW) is a type of encoding.  This is why a Trigram isn’t safe over time, because it is an encoding measure that both shortens messages and makes the message more simplistic to send. Additionally, if you plan to use a numeric OTP, you will need to convert letters into numbers, which may make things more difficult. However, without the OTP, it is still relatively easy to break.

Can Trigrams be used to encrypt? Sure, if the Trigrams aren’t compromised and aren’t used more than a few times in a limited time.  For instance, before 256-bit encryption really took hold, the US military used a system called DRYAD, and the British used a system called BATCO with the Clansman radio system.  After about 2010, both were gone, and it seems this technique died out after the Gulf War.  These systems were in a Cryptoperiod, averaging about 6 hours, because with time and repeated use, this system was breakable.  What kept messages secure was the fact that the encryption key changed often enough to make it difficult to crack.  For those of you who have read Guerrilla’s Guide to the Baofeng Radio, you might notice a similar concept with the PACE plan, and in fact, this is why that exists.  So why not just use DRYAD/BATCO in short operational time frames?

The US during the Gulf War used it for authentication (similar to a SARNEG in GG2BR). They also used it to encrypt coordinates on a map.  You can use it for full messages, but whatever you transmit in time could be figured out.  OTPs, on the other hand, provide the TX station and RX station with absolutely secure messages, provided the OTP is never intercepted.  Here are two key things to remember: your OTP must be equal to or shorter than the message, and you can’t use it again in any portion.  This is why we use Trigrams to shorten the message and then encrypt it in a secure manner. Shortening the message also reduces your SIGINT signature, which you can learn about in the Guerrilla’s guide to Signals Intelligence.

As modern technology has advanced over time, many people remember the codebreakers of Bletchley Park.  Because it is now so easy for someone with a laptop to break something as complicated as the Enigma in World War II, we often forget that most of the time these messages weren’t broken in real-time. Many of the broken messages came from laziness and a heap of human errors. Germany had specific procedures for a significant portion of its decryption, which made it somewhat easier to decrypt. However, each branch employed a different technique, and some of the decryption methods were rendered extremely difficult, if not impossible, due to this.

Just as above, when you change your techniques and procedures for different crypto periods, it becomes very difficult to perform real-time decryption of information. Many of the issues associated with Germany’s encryption were mitigated by the fact that the Poles had obtained civilian-marketed ENIGMA machines, which provided a basis for understanding the militarized version.  Sometimes things can be broken just by acquiring these items, which was one of the reasons why a German U-boat, U-505, was captured in the Atlantic off of Africa. The crew was held without allowing them access to the Red Cross, which meant they weren’t allowed to talk to the men or transfer letters home.  All the crew but one (who had died) were returned home to Germany in 1947.

So, what procedures can we establish to protect us from releasing vital information to an enemy force? First, secure your OTPs, Trigrams, and PACE plans.  Compartmentalize your PACE plans, OTPs, and Trigrams between groups of differing regions or operational tasks.  One of the reasons the British didn’t break all of the Germans’ traffic was different techniques for various branches of the military and governmental networks.  When you compartmentalize things, it doesn’t prevent your organization from operating; however, what it does is prevent one team from compromising the whole organization. For instance, if everyone had the same encryption protocols and the same OTP, and I acquired a set, every transmission would then be compromised by every group. If I’m getting contradictory information from two groups, I can then start to mitigate possible false intelligence.

This seems like a simple plan, but the realistic problem here is that many people are lazy and fail to do this, which can cause serious issues down the line.  I am a huge supporter of what AMMRON does, an organization for preppers. The one thing I will say is that they do publish all their information online and in books. This is a great training and uniformity procedure for those communities, but it also sacrifices some of the security that you should be looking at. Mind you, anyone in that organization who has met face-to-face could have been given a secure OTP, and these could be compartmentalized in various ways, which still mitigates the release of a message. With that said, their tactics and procedures enable me to determine who trained them, which is a component of intelligence and SIGINT.

Destroy the paperwork

https://x.com/GLogistician/status/1936922693498175794

We reviewed the compartmentalization of our encryption and other vital information, along with keeping it secure from outside sources. What is the last step that we need to worry about while in the field? That is an easy way to destroy the paperwork that we have on hand from enemies. Modern technology and encryption have a way of doing this; there’s generally a button that will remove all of the encrypted keys from modern military radios. We don’t have that luxury, and while poem codes were designed to be something that could be memorized, preventing them from being released even under torture, this never happened to be the case. Not only could agents not remember their own unique poem codes, but the stalwart operatives from Britain were also broken by the Germans.

This is why OTP, even during World War 2, was used consistently and hasn’t lost fashion; it’s a more secure technique than even AES 256. Hypothetically, even quantum computers and AI will not be able to break an OTP because any message can be held within 250 characters. Additionally, when you abbreviate a message with a trigram, the possibilities expand. The failing of this technique, though, is when one side or the other loses control of that OTP. Because an OTP or multiple OTPs cannot be memorized, they have to be carried along with the agent. During World War II, these were printed on silk, which allowed an OTP to be cut out and burned easily, or the whole lot to be destroyed at once. There are many ways to destroy your OTP, including printing them on destroyable materials, such as flash paper or silk. You will need to determine which technique you prefer and how to safeguard it from premature destruction. This may include printing and vacuum sealing your OTPs and Trigrams on special paper.

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About the Author: Patriotman

Patriotman currently ekes out a survivalist lifestyle in a suburban northeastern state as best as he can. He has varied experience in political science, public policy, biological sciences, and higher education. Proudly Catholic and an Eagle Scout, he has no military experience and thus offers a relatable perspective for the average suburban prepper who is preparing for troubled times on the horizon with less than ideal teams and in less than ideal locations. Brushbeater Store Page: http://bit.ly/BrushbeaterStore

2 Comments

  1. Historian July 10, 2025 at 20:14

    Well done, sir. You clearly paid attention in class, and have thoroughly digested the lessons of “between Silk and Cyanide.” Great article!

    • Rafus July 11, 2025 at 12:19

      Patriotman probably took a lesson or two form Historian as well.
      ;-)

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