DIT-8

The White Wolves DIT-8, or Data in Tones, is a shortwave radio station that broadcasts on the frequency 5253 kHz.

Transmission
DIT-8 transmits using the White Wolves Legacy Transmission Standard, which uses the octal value for alphanumerical characters to produce tones lasting five hundred milliseconds each. These transmissions are designed to be received and read by a compatible computer, which originally utilised early iterations of IRIS.

Encryption, and the safety, of a message relies not on complex algorithms, but on external listeners not understanding the method of data translation. Since the transmission requires the processing speed and analytical accuracy of a computer, the amateur radio enthusiasts at the time were simply unable to discern any intelligible data from the streams, with other nations and militaries not fairing much better.

Location and Function
DIT-8 sits on a secret island somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean, believed to be within sailing distance of Ascension Island. However, neither this supposed island, nor the transmission tower, which must be at least 50 feet tall, have been found.

It was established to produce a hidden channel of communication between White Wolves mission control and agents in the field.

These field agents would be supplied with radio-decrypter systems, which ran the prototype version of OSIRIS Portable. Although these systems could receive the data from DIT-8, they could not send their own back. The RDS could only tune to a small range centred about 5253 kHz, meaning no time was wasted tuning the radio during active combat.

Unlike other military radio and "number stations" of the time, it is not made for individuals to read, since the deviations between two letters are often nigh-on impossible for a human to distinguish.

History
DIT-8 started broadcasting for the White Wolves in 1982, it was only discovered by other militaries in 1983 and by amateurs in 1985.

In 1996, the system was indefinitely shut down, since the new fully encrypted radio system had been introduced, featuring a new version of IRIS and highly advanced security.

In 1997, during the Motherbase invasion, the station went silent. The station would not be heard from again for nine years.

In 2006, radio enthusiasts who had stayed with the station in the fervent wish it would return, noticed it had begun broadcasting again. At 12:00 AM (GMT +11) each day, a message can be heard. This message reads "ABIGAIL" and is sent to Motherbase, awaiting a response, this is a test to ensure the system is still fully functional.

De-cyphering the Messages
During the early years in which DIT-8 was in consistent use by the White Wolves, various nations and intelligence agencies attempted the decipher the data, though none managed, since nobody considered the use of octal numerals, despite the fact the system was by no means new.

Early attempts proposed the idea that audio steganography was being used to hide text, only visible through a spectrograph. However, when multiple data streams were analysed, the audio was as simple as it sounded.

Later attempts looked towards a cipher key, where each tone resembled a character, similar to the tones on a keypad, however, with no context of what the messages regarded, this theory was extremely difficult to prove, or even disprove.

The closest theory was devised by the Federal Intelligence Service of Germany (Bundesnachrichtendienst), who looked to the Polybius square, a simple cipher which replaces letters with numbers depending on their position within the Polybius square. However, after testing recent samples of DIT-8, they found the answers to be as useless as the raw tones.

Among the agencies tasked with breaking the code, or finding the source, were the CIA, MI5, FIS and Mossad.