Editing Numbers station (section)

=== Atención spy case ===
The "Atención" station of Cuba became the world's first numbers station to be officially and publicly accused of transmitting to spies. It was the centerpiece of a United States federal court espionage trial, following the arrest of the [[Wasp Network]] of Cuban spies in 1998. The U.S. prosecutors claimed the accused were writing down number codes received from Atención, using Sony hand-held shortwave receivers, and typing the numbers into [[laptop]] computers to decode spying instructions. The FBI testified that they had entered a spy's apartment in 1995, and copied the computer decryption program for the Atención numbers code. They used it to decode Atención spy messages, which the prosecutors unveiled in court.<ref name="MNT" />

The United States government's evidence included the following three examples of decoded Atención messages.<ref name="MNT" />
* "prioritize and continue to strengthen friendship with Joe and Dennis"
* "Under no circumstances should [agents] German nor Castor fly with BTTR or another organization on days 24, 25, 26 and 27." (BTTR is the anti-Castro airborne group [[Brothers to the Rescue]])
* "Congratulate all the female comrades for International Day of the Woman."

The moderator of an e-mail list for global numbers station hobbyists claimed that "Someone on the Spooks list had already cracked the code for a repeated transmission [from Havana to Miami] if it was received garbled." Such code-breaking may be possible if a [[one-time pad]] decoding key is used more than once.<ref name="MNT" /> If used properly, however, the code [[One-time pad#Perfect secrecy|cannot be broken]].