Spy games: a technical aspect

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Of course, espionage with the help of technical means exists as much as there is espionage and equipment in general. That is, from the time of the ancient, immemorial.
The end of the 20th century and the first decade of the 21st century put at the disposal of intelligence and counterintelligence a huge arsenal of technology.
It would seem that there is plenty of open information on this topic. In Russia and abroad, exhibitions of “spy stuff” are constantly being held - listening and spying devices, all kinds of “bugs” and “bookmarks”, encryption and decryption machines, security systems, etc. Often these cute little things are elegant, wittyly conceived, skillfully made and, in theory, suitable for all types of espionage, from domestic to military.
Nevertheless, truly significant innovations by no means always become exhibits, and counterintelligence agents of all countries rarely share emotions with the population about the discovery of another intricate “gift” from abroad.
In 1991, a book was published by Candidate of Military Sciences, Lieutenant General Nikolai Aleksandrovich Brusnitsyn, "Openness and Espionage." Although almost twenty years have passed since the publication, much of what is said in the book has not lost its relevance. And, of course, it, like the work of the same author, “Information War and Security” (published in 2001), should be read to anyone who is interested in the history of intelligence and counterintelligence.
Brusnitsyn gave a detailed description of some of the technical devices with which foreign intelligence operated in our country at the turn of the 80s – 90s. These years, as most readers remember, were difficult from all points of view. The Iron Curtain fell, the Cold War ended, which marked a breakthrough in international relations and provided many opportunities for cooperation in various fields. It is absurd and even criminal to wish for a return to the past. However, humanity, unfortunately, is still imperfect, and not all of its representatives were capable of sincere friendship.
It was then, in the early 90s, recalls Brusnitsyn, USNewsandWorldReport magazine reported that US President George W. Bush reproached the CIA for passivity in one of its speeches and urged US intelligence to make more active use of the “favorable environment” in the USSR.
Well, this is a general rule - turning periods open the way for both the good and the bad.
Now the times have changed. But it’s too early for the counter-intelligence aces to go on vacation.

"Flounder"

The electronic data acquisition device described by Brusnitsyn from underwater armored cable communication lines manufactured in the USA resembled, rather, not a fish, but a giant thick worm. It was designed for decades - a long service was provided by a powerful nuclear (plutonium) power source. “Flounder” was a steel cylinder with a length of about 5 m and a diameter of about 1 m 20 cm. The impressive building was stuffed with several tons of weighing equipment for receiving, amplifying and demodulating high-frequency signals. In the early 90's, eavesdropped conversations were recorded on 60 tape recorders, which automatically turned on when they arrived and turned off when the signal in the cable stopped. The film in one tape recorder lasted for 150 hours. When it ended, a man entered the business: the underwater swimmer found the Flounder, focusing on the sonar beacon installed on the container, removed the induction pick-up sensor and preliminary antenna amplifier of the captured signals from the cable and delivered the listening device to a specially equipped submarine, where the tape recorders changed . Soon, the device returned to the communication line. For this operation, the swimmer needed to possess not only agility, caution and breathing skills, but also remarkable physical strength: even in water, the load weighed more than 100 kg.
Neither ordinary insulation, nor double armor made of steel tape and wire, tightly wrapped around the cable, protected it from the Flounder sensor. And the development, and creation, and installation of this espionage "toy" was clearly not cheap. Moreover, in addition to it, a boat was required, equipped with a device for searching for submarine cables at great depths, and highly sensitive sensors located outside it were also attached to the boat.

"Mole"

To eavesdrop on land, a device called the Mole was intended. The principle of action of "Flounder" and "Mole" in general terms is similar. Signals from underground communication lines "Mole" read out thanks to a sensor attached to the cable. There were tricks here: to install the "spy", wells were used through which the cable passed, and in order to make the sensor more difficult to detect, it was pushed into the pipe that led the cable to the well. The signals received from the cable were recorded on a special tape recorder - on the disk, which was replaced with a clean one as it filled.
So that the agent, changing the disks and controlling the operation of the device, could find it as soon as possible, “Mole” was equipped with a signal radio station mounted in its body. Agent agents were equipped with portable radio transmitters. Having appeared not far from the place of installation of the device, the agent found out if everything was in order and whether the unwanted guests had visited Krota. If the response signal indicated that the device was operating normally, the used disk was replaced with a new one. “Mole” could take signals from 60 telephone channels simultaneously; The tape drive provided 115 hours of continuous recording.
Further, the information came under the jurisdiction of special services based in the buildings of local embassies, for processing demodulation and listening instruments. If there were none in the region, the records were sent straight to the US National Security Agency.
The "mole family" by the end of the 80s was quite numerous and diverse. To remove information from the underground cables of each type, a kind of listening device was developed. Signals from high-frequency cables were read out by devices with induction sensors, from coaxial and low-frequency cables - by technical means with systems for direct switching and removal of a small part of energy for interception. For cables inside which increased air pressure was maintained, experts from the NSA provided devices that excluded the possibility of lowering the pressure, otherwise an alarm could have been triggered. The radio station in some types of devices, in contrast to the one described a little earlier, broadcast eavesdropped conversations directly to the processing center.
Brusnitsyn writes that a few months before he finished his book, counterintelligence officers found the “Mole” on the cable line that ran along one of the highways leading to Moscow. And in Syria, at the request of the competent people there, Soviet experts discovered and neutralized more than a dozen such devices. Our compatriots got a difficult and dangerous task: the devices found in Syria were skillfully camouflaged for the environment and mined; some of them exploded during dismantling.

"Electron"

A reconnaissance device that eavesdropped and recorded signals emanating from military equipment and military-industrial facilities was found at one of these sites by Soviet counterintelligence agents. The discovered instance of Electron was disguised as a stump, but inside this hemp was a complex microelectronic system built on the basis of large integrated circuits. The device could work according to the program or by radio commands from space, from an airplane, from a car. The information accumulated in the device’s memory was transmitted either through an artificial Earth satellite (AES) to the processing center, or was processed by devices in an airplane or car. In this case, one and the other should have been within sight of Electron: an airplane - at a distance of up to 500 km, a car - up to 10 km. The device, weighing about 5 kg, was powered by a solar panel built on top. How many such devices were located in the late 80s - early 90s on the territory of our country (it is likely that "hemps with filling" exist now) is not exactly known, but the presence of a control system through the satellite made it possible to think about fairly large numbers.

"Bitch"

This spy automatic device “pretended” to be a dry tree bitch and was discovered in the area of one of the Soviet military airfields. The “Bitch” had a highly specialized purpose: it looked out the parameters of optoelectronic weapon control systems and laser sights used in military aviation. The scattered radiation received by the optoelectronic sensor from tracking objects was converted into a digital code and entered into the device memory. Then, on a command from a satellite, airplane or car, the accumulated information, as in the case of Electron, was transmitted via radio channels either through a satellite to the center or to a “traveling laboratory” flying or moving on wheels, where it was recorded on magnetic tape.
The ability to control the device from a satellite here also leads to bold and disappointing assumptions about how many trees grew (or maybe grow) near our military facilities with dry but poisonous branches.
Devices that Brusnitsyn described in his book are extremely expensive, and some of them are also very bulky. Nevertheless, since they are quite effective and designed for long-term use, there are good reasons to believe that the use of them (or similar devices) is still practiced by foreign intelligence services. Of course, over the past years, technical means have improved and are now working on the basis of modern scientific achievements. So, of course, it is unlikely that a device will now be found that records information on a magnetic tape in the old fashion - it was replaced long ago by digital storage devices.

Gemstone

Of the “spy scandals” of the last few years, most of all I remember the one that erupted in Moscow in January 2006. On January 22, the “Special Correspondent” program was broadcast on the Rossiya TV channel. It showed the footage of the operational shooting, which during the previous year was conducted by FSB officers who were tracking a group of English spies. Almost everyone who was indicted turned out to be diplomats. The second secretary of the British embassy in our capital, Mark Dow, two secretary archivists - Christopher Peart and Andrew Fleming - and an assistant to the official representative of the British intelligence service MI-6 (the organization where James worked Bond) Paul Cronton. A Russian citizen, recruited by British intelligence, also participated in the “case”.
The device laid in the square, with the help of which secret information was transmitted, looked like an ordinary cobblestone. “At first we thought it was a regular classic cache - a container camouflaged like a stone. However, later, when our experts conducted a study of this subject, it turned out that the stone contained an electronic device, ”an FSB operative shared with viewers. The “cobblestone”, which differed from its neighbors only in its unusually light weight, contained a whole reconnaissance base in miniature. The batteries and electronic boards tightly fitted to each other were protected by special sealant from dirt and bad weather.
Through this device, British intelligence maintained contact with their agent, our recruited compatriot. The action algorithm was very simple. At the agreed time, an agent (our recruited compatriot) passed by the "stone". In his hands he held a handheld computer, from which the sensors of the spy device read information. A few days later, one of the English diplomats appeared in the park - with the same handheld, who was reading, in turn, the information left by the agent with the device. Also, only in reverse order, instructions for the agent were transmitted. For counterintelligence, the difficulty was that the transfer of information from the handheld to the “stone” and vice versa using the radio signal was very fast - within one to two seconds, from a distance of 20 meters.
Colonel Sergei Ignatchenko, head of the FSB Public Relations Center, who made comments to reporters the day after the TV show, said that there were actually two “stones”. The search for the second - the one presented to the public -
started after the discovery of the first, but the counterintelligence officers did not, alas, have time to capture it: the British spies recovered the “precious stone” No. 1 before the necessary evidence was collected.
The words “diplomat” and “spy” were always and everywhere written with a comma. It is often unfair, but often not without reason. So this sad story cannot be called characteristic for the present time. She is the next round in an old game, which technological progress makes even more sophisticated and dangerous.

[DLMURL] https://www.razvedinfo.ru/node/440 [/DLMURL]

 

[Матушкин Андрей Николаевич]

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