Signals Intelligence (SIGINT) – the basics

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Updated 2020-11-05 Signals intelligence (SIGINT) is the art of gathering information from an adversary by intercepting and analyzing radio and electronic signals that are being transmitted. There are usually in the form of radio signals. There are two main sub-sets of SIGINT, electronic intelligence (ELEINT) and communications intelligence (COMINT). COMINT COMINT is where the communications (phone, radio, digital, written, etc.) are intercepted and read/listened to. These are a few things that you need to understand in order to be able to obtain COMINT. Encryption Federal agencies are required to use encryption in all of their classified communications and use Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) level encryption in all of their radio transmissions. AES is approved by the National Institute of Standards and Technology certified by the FIPS 140-2 standard. AES encryption consists of up to 256 bits, so it is very difficult to break the encryption key. Encryption of any kind relies on a couple of key factors: the encryption key is kept securethe encryption key is never transmitted over any electronic meansthe key "bits" (the individual 256 characters) are not known to anyonethe key is changed frequentlythe end users must not have the ability to disable encryption (especially in...