If imitation is the most sincere form of flattery, then numbers station operators
must be very flattered indeed. Yet another pirate radio station has done an imitation of
numbers stations.
WBNY, the voice of the rodent revolution, joins the Mexican food station,
Attention 69, and the Roman numerals station in parodies of spook activity. WBNY has
recently featured Commander Bunny passing messages to agents (presumably furry with
floppy ears) in the field.
The major difference between WBNY and the others is that this station has sent
messages that have actually been decoded. The messages consisted of numbers which
have corresponded to letters of the alphabet, such as 1=A, 2=B, and so on. Once the
messages have been copied and transposed from numbers to letters, a simple letter-
substitution cipher is used to get the plaintext from the message.
The first message was heard on 7 August 2002 at 0006 UTC. It decoded to the
following: AL FANSOME IS A GOOD HUMAN HE WILL FEED YOU EAT THE
SPECIAL CARROTS WE GOT FROM GANIA THAT IS ALL BUNNY OUT. Al
Fansome is a pirate DX'er who for some reason in the past has been the target of
Commander Bunny's animosity, and GANIA probably is supposed to be GANJA, a
reference to Captain Ganja, a pirate well-known for marijuana advocacy. We can
probably assume that the "special carrots" contain a higher than normal amount of THC.
Another message copied by Pat Murphy on 1 September at around 2235 on 6950
AM was translated to the following: WOODY PARR MUST DIE HERE IS HOUSE,
then Commander Bunny said the words "Special instructions" twice, then passed the
coded message which decoded as LAT 34.5710 LON 83.4824 . Woody Parr is an
amateur radio operator who allegedly was jamming repeaters in Georgia, although there is
no mention of him on the FCC's or ARRL's websites. The coordinates given appear to be
that of Mr. Parr, according to his license information. This makes one wonder if WBNY
is related to the unidentified Morse pirate who in the past has been heard repeating the
message WOODY PARR WE KNOW WHO YOU ARE. It also makes one wonder if
Commander Bunny, in an amateur radio incarnation, was jammed by Mr. Parr or someone
he believes to be Mr. Parr.
Two other messages have been sent by Commander Bunny to his furry agents, and
the undeciphered text of which is on Chris Smolinski's website at
http://www.spynumbers.com/WBNY.html Chris also provides some analysis of the
WBNY messages. I will leave it up to the reader to decipher these texts. I won't spoil all
the fun.
Commander Bunny posted a message to the FRN grapevines before the server
hosting the site crashed. The full text can be found at Chris' website mentioned above, but
basically Commander Bunny claims to be sending messages to millions of rodents in order
to further the cause of the rodent revolution. The rabbits are gnawing away at fiber optic
cables all over the country. He also states that any attempts to decode the secret
transmissions sent by WBNY will only lead to more confusion on your part.
WBNY's numbers messages have been a breath of fresh air in the numbers
monitoring community. Continuing to log stations is interesting in itself, but a pirate
sending messages that can actually be decoded provides a fun opportunity to enjoy the
hobby by testing our skills in traffic analysis and cryptography. I only hope they send
more.