8888 Messages

8888 messages — also called Quad 8s or octopus messages — are most likely not standard EAMs, and probably should not be broadcast on HFGCS. They are conspicuous: EAMs contain neither 0 nor 8, using a 32-character set (26 letters plus 9 digits, both 0 and 8 excluded — significant for encoding). A message opening 888800 is therefore immediately anomalous. Structure is consistent: the 888800 prefix, followed in most cases by a timestamp and a standard character sequence ending in 8888.

In 2023, NEET INTEL published a video cataloging only 11 documented instances of 8888 messages in nearly 20 years of records. The video discusses suspected huge gaps and deficiencies in monitoring, and some proposals to improve monitoring are advanced. Since then, the count has more than doubled. On VLF, 8888 messages appear fairly regularly; on HF, far less so, and most HF broadcasts of 8888s are disregarded. What they represent remains ambiguous. Since it seems reasonable to assume the operators who transmit them would recognize them if they were a mistake, unusual terminations like what was heard in the disregarded “oh I see” 8888 (2023.06.13) make it difficult to come to any particular conclusion.