5072463
story
Comments: 141 +- News: 200-Year-Old Cipher Finally Cracked on Thursday July 02 2009, @02:46PM
background: url(//a.fsdn.com/sd/topics/topicencryption.gif); width:80px; height:63px;
encryption
background: url(//a.fsdn.com/sd/topics/topicsecurity.gif); width:59px; height:78px;
security
background: url(//a.fsdn.com/sd/topics/topicus.gif); width:80px; height:61px;
usa
Attila Dimedici writes "A code expert just cracked a code used by a friend of Thomas Jefferson in a letter written to Jefferson some 200 years ago. This code is fairly easy to crack using a computer, but extremely difficult without one. I think it would have been much harder if the author had not included an indication as to what code algorithm he used in the letter accompanying the coded message."
Related Stories
Some changes are so slow, you don't notice them. Others are so fast,
they don't notice you.
All trademarks and copyrights on this page are owned by their respective owners. Comments are owned by the Poster. The Rest © 1997-2010 Geeknet, Inc.
tl;dr (Score:5, Informative)
The message says:
"In Congress, July Fourth, one thousand seven hundred and seventy six. A declaration by the Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled. When in the course of human events..."
Re:tl;dr (Score:5, Funny)
FTFA:
Hey! That's the combination to my luggage!
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
A luggage combination that long? What exactly are you carrying around in your luggage?
lotto... (Score:2, Funny)
After about a week of working on the puzzle, the numerical key to Mr. Patterson's cipher emerged -- 13, 34, 57, 65, 22, 78, 49.
This week's lotto numbers, here I come!!!
Re: (Score:2)
It's everywhere!
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Given that these numbers have just come to light, in the incredible coincidence that they also happen to be this week's winning lottery numbers you'll win less money because you'll have to share your winnings with all the other wrong-headed people who think this increases their likelihood. (I am having strenuously to fight my intuition, which is telling me that they are now *less* likely to come up.)
Re: (Score:2)
In XXX, July XXX, one thousand seven hundred and seventy XXX. A XXX by the XXX of the United XXX of XXX in XXX assembled.
Re: (Score:2)
In a strikingly similar incident, the 43rd president, George W Bush, was apparently challenged while in office with an encrypted text by an unknown correspondent. Though the cipher remains unsolved, there are hints that the plaintext, like Jefferson's Declaration of Independence, encapsulates some of the President's profoundest thoughts. Former President Bush hopes that the science of cryptanalysis may one day advance to the point where future generations will be able to read the message. The full text is g
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Make the pie higher
I think we all agree, the past is over.
This is still a dangerous world.
It's a world of madmen
And uncertainty
And potential mental losses.
Rarely is the question asked
Is our children learning?
Will the highways of the internet
Become more few?
How many hands have I shaked?
They misunderestimate me.
I am a pitbull on the pantleg of opportunity.
I know that the human being and the fish
Can coexist.
Families is where our nation finds hope
Where our wings take dream.
Put food on your family!
Knock down the
Re:tl;dr (Score:4, Funny)
Phnglui mglwnafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgahnagl fhtagn!
Parent
Wake me when the Voynich is cracked (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Dude, the Voynich manuscript has been cracked.
It's a variation of the GNAA first post troll.
Sorry to burst your bubble.
Re:Wake me when the Voynich is cracked (Score:5, Insightful)
Perhaps, but there's no evidence that the Voynich manuscript is a cypher in the traditional sense. A natural language isn't normally "decyphered", since it was never encrypted in the first place.
Given that there are many hundreds of thousands of natural languages today for which there is no written form, it's entirely possible that this is a script invented for such a language. In WW2, natural native American languages were sometimes used in this way as an "unbreakable cypher" - who's to say that medieval Europeans hadn't done the same thing themselves?
If that is the case, then it isn't particularly compelling (we know of many extinct languages for which no known writing exists - and hundreds more go extinct yearly), and is not so much "difficult" as useless - the text could never be read.
The wikipedia article doesn't say anything about using techniques to detect writing that is no longer visible, so I must assume no such techniques have been used.
(It may be possible to establish some of the content of a missing page if the page after had been underneath at the time of writing. Non-destructive techniques for doing this formed a part of the case against the West Midland's serious crime squad in the 90s, where it could be shown pages of confessions had been altered after being signed. However, if no such analysis has taken place, the presence of such data is unknown.)
Regardless, there are many missing pages. From the articles, the page numbers seem to be relatively new compared to the text, so we don't know how many pages are actually missing, we only know how many went missing since being numbered. This makes understanding the text very difficult and even if the text could be translated, there's no guarantee we could even read it or understand it without those pages.
We know vastly more about Linear A than we do about the script on the Voynich manuscript, including the archaeology of the people writing Linear A, yet after all this time we've got no further than knowing the number system and a few of the numbers in it.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
It is more likely that the Voynich was wr
Re: (Score:2)
Possibly. It depends on the context in which the text is found. But it certainly wouldn't be easy without some clues to the nature of the grammar involved. Hieroglyphics were only figured out because of the Rosetta stone, while most of cuneiform is still incomprehensible.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Sumerian cannot be "completely" translated (whatever that means)
At least we can try from a different perspective [acronet.net]:
At the same time, we have to realize that in certain instances it is truly very difficult, or even impossible to read the written text well and find its true meaning, even if we do have the knowledge of the rules of this writing and reading and also use the only good key leading there, which is the Hungarian language in establishing the sound values. After all, we are dealing with the spiritual heritage of a world of 4-5000 years ago; the workings of the minds of the people then was completely different from ours. This difficulty can be bridged only if we become thoroughly familiar with the belief system, statesmanship of the ages BC. It is for this reason that when we do translate a text we must sometimes add lengthy explanations to a given sentence. The following examples will clarify this statement.
The Egyptian and Sumerian texts frequently use the following names of their Sungod: Égúr, Székúr, Kerek Úr, Napúr, Õsúr, Magúr, Útúr, Honúr, Szemúr, Égetõ Úr, Vörös Szemû and some at least twenty more expressions. Western scholars who are not familiar with the key-language understand only the Úr suffix of these words which they translate as God. They also believe that as many such words with Úr endings exist, that many gods were worshipped by the ancients. For them there is a God An, God Utu, God Sek and so on. Anyone familiar with the key-language and the ancients' religion will recognize these words as the names of the same Sungod; the ancients stressed one of the Sungod's characteristics and function by a given name. We may compare this practice to the Roman Catholic Church's practice to call God the Father in his creative capacity, the Son is his redemptive function and the Holy Spirit as his sanctifying function. We will fully understand the Sungod's many names if we are familiar with the concepts of the ancients concerning the Sungod. According to them, the sun, this heavenly body is God's visible picture. Since this picture appears round, they name him Kerek Úr (Round Lord). Since the Sun brightens everything and sees everything, like a giant eye another name of his is Szemúr (Occulate Lord). Since his eye is pairless, they call him Egyszemû (One Eyed), according to the sun's color Vörös Szemû (Red Eyed) and since the Sun resides in the sky they also called him Égi Szem or Égszem (Eye of Heavens). When they contemplated its immense heat they called him Égetõ Úr (Scorching Lord) and Sütõ Úr (Shining Lord). They also believed that he is the only Lord in his world so they called him Honúr (Lord of his Home) and Égi Király (King of Heavens). As they saw the apparent motion as he rises in the morning his name then was Ra-Kel (Ra rises), the rising on the eastern borders Kel-Út (The Road of Rising/East) where he sits down onto his chair: Szék-Úr (Lord of the Chair or the Seated/Settled Lord), later on he sits into his chariot and travels the shiny roads of the skies: Útúr (Lord of the Road) and when he finished his daily journey and reaches the west: Nyug-Út (Resting/Western Road) and as he sinks below the horizon: Esút, Este (The Falling/Evening Road, Evening). As we clarify this section of their belief everything becomes clearer and also realize that the ancients whose religion was connected with the Sun were never polytheistic, they only had one God.
Re:Wake me when the Voynich is cracked (Score:4, Interesting)
Even without that, it is easy to tell apart the complex ideograms and the syllabic characters, if only because of their frequency of appearance. There are some structures easy to spot : polite forms and declarative sentences end frquently by the same words, etc... There are many structures that are easy to spot. I suspect it is the case in any language. The Voynich doesn't appear to obey to any grammar structure. Such a problem ought to be easy : there is a whole book, presumably about plants, and we don't even manage to find a single common word in all these pages that could possibly mean "plant" ? Or "root" ? Or a single sentence structure common to many places ? My bet is on "nonsense written by someone who wished he could write and had an instability making him believe he could"
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I quite agree. And Japanese isn't even the worst. There is a writing style where you alternatively write right-to-left then left-to-right. The dead language of Easter Island, Rongo-Rongo, goes one worse and even requires you to turn the page upside-down on alternate lines. (That's the ONLY thing anyone can understand of it.)
The Wikipedia article states that some words are repeated three times, which strongly suggests that words can be modified not only by other words but by groups of other words. Quite a nu
Re:Wake me when the Voynich is cracked (Score:4, Insightful)
That is what makes it so compelling, the fact that it happened, not in a vaccum like the Aboriginal Amazon, not in ancient history like Linear A, not in Stone, or papyrus, or etched on tree bark, but that it happened inside of western society, using "modern methods" (for the day), and it is a language/code that can be verified as not being junk, but that nobody had seen before or since.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Like I said, the UN is showing the number of endangered languages today to number in the hundreds of thousands. One can only imagine what the number was like 500 years ago, when empires routinely extinguished native languages.
Linear A is indeed much, much older but we have the advantage of having many thousands of texts, the context, a better concordance and greater trust in the contents not having been altered.
We know that the page numbers and some of the images are newer than the actual text, so we know t
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Wake me when the Voynich is cracked (Score:4, Funny)
Lorem Ipsum dolor sit amet...
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
That is entirely possible, except that the frequency of character groupings and word groupings seem to match up with real-world natural languages.
Of course, we know from J.R.R. Tolkien's work on Elvish that it's possible to create a "natural language" that fits perfectly with known patterns and yet has no existence in the real world outside of its creation.
This would allow the script to both be nonsense and yet appear coherent to the sort of basic analysis that has been possible. It could even be done by so
Re: (Score:2)
Perhaps, but there's no evidence that the Voynich manuscript is a cypher in the traditional sense. A natural language isn't normally "decyphered", since it was never encrypted in the first place.
I ran the Voynich text through a strange old Apple ][ assembler program an old friend once wrote. The results don't make sense to me, either. It starts:
"Es Brillig war. Die schlichte toven warten und wimmelten in Waben. Alle mumsige war die Borgegoven, und die Momeraths ausgraben."
just cracked?? (Score:5, Informative)
A code expert just cracked a code
The article says "After unlocking its hidden message in 2007". This is hardly 'just'. The solution was more recently published though. Interesting article.
Re:just cracked?? (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:just cracked?? (Score:5, Funny)
A code expert just cracked a code
The article says "After unlocking its hidden message in 2007". This is hardly 'just'. The solution was more recently published though. Interesting article.
he's obviously using the same definition of "just" that I use when I tell my wife I just took out the garbage so get off my back
Parent
Contents of message (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Here I was expecting the message to read
"We apologize for the inconvenience."
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Biggest letdown ever (Score:2)
Re:Biggest letdown ever (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
You'll shoot your eye out kid...
This is a textbook example of Schneier's Law (Score:3, Insightful)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schneier's_Law [wikipedia.org]
The trick was finding the decoder ring (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Here, I'll save you a mouseclick and entirely too much reading to find the plaintext.
The actual plaintext was the text of the declaration of independence. The cryptologist who wrote the letter was just showing off his new cipher.
An interesting cypher system (Score:2)
It wasn't nearly as strong as the author thought, but was still strong enough to resist cryptographers for a long time. That's impressive.
I wonder, though. There's a certain level of indirectness and jitter in the system used, but not enough to raise the complexity even to the single millions, let alone the millions of millions. Would it be possible to increase the strength of the system and still have it memorizable and usable by any person in the field without book, computer or other aid?
Should Have Known Types of Codes in Use (Score:2)
Fine, but... (Score:4, Funny)
... it's not going to do much good for President Jefferson at this point.
Could have been done earlier (Score:5, Funny)
... but they had to wait for the copyright to expire.
He used a computer (Score:2, Interesting)
Zodiac Killer 360 (Score:5, Interesting)
The elusive Zodiac Killer's 360 character cipher was never cracked, either, and it's been decades since he mailed it to newspapers. That cipher also seems a bit grid-like, with spacing made deliberately in rows. I wonder if this method would help, at least in part, in cracking it?
If anything, would be nice to see something come up to ascertain his identity, and if alive, put him behind bars.
Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Security by obscurity (Score:5, Insightful)
In this case, unless you knew the key, it would have been extremely time consuming to discover the solution, even if you knew the algorithm used. Notice it took the guy a week to solve it, even with a computer, and modern cryptanalysis techniques.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
So you're saying, that when i changed my SSH port, the sudden halt in bots trying to login over SSH suddenly stopping was pure coincidence?
Obviously that doesn't do anything to protect me against directed attacks, but obscurity does a heck of a lot to protect against undirected attacks which are the majority of exploits these days.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
I don't know, port knocking starts to sound like a password to me.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Port knocking is a form of password in essence. I can know everything about the method of security, but without the actual sequence it does me no good.
Changing ports on the other hand, requires at the absolute most for me to brute force all ~32k ports, there are port mapping tools that will do it much more simply. Thus obscurity, since once I know what the method is, I can break it easily.