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Mafia Boss Using Crook Crypto Captured

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the never-heard-of-pgp-and-email dept.

boggis writes "Discovery is running a story on Bernardo Provenzano, the recently arrested 'boss of bosses' of the Sicilian Mafia. He apparently wrote notes to his henchmen using a modified form of the Caesar Cipher, which was easily cracked by the police and resulted in further arrests of collaborators. Discovery's cryptography expert describes it as a code that 'will keep your kid sister out'."

7 of 378 comments (clear)

  1. If only.. by Ckwop · · Score: 5, Interesting

    You see, now if you want to do secure pencil and paper ciphers here's how you do it.

    Self-shrinking generators are broken but the best attack requires an insane amount of plain-text. Far, far, more than you could ever generate by hand. If Mr Mafia had used this instead of a crappy cipher from two thousand years ago then he might not have been caught.

    Throughout history lives have literally depended on the strength of the cryptography people have deployed. I find it exciting that these times are still with us and are not mearly confined to the history books.

    Simon

    1. Re:If only.. by Redwin · · Score: 5, Informative

      Considering ancient cyphers, if I remember correctly the ancient Chinese used to write messages Ceaser cypher style messages on fabric that had to be wrapped around a pole. The pole had to be the exact length and thickness or the text wouldn't align up and the decyphering process couldn't be started. If anyone was stopped, they could hand over the fabric covered in text and it would be meaningless without knowing what kind of pole was used to algin everything up.

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    2. Re:If only.. by David+Mazzotta · · Score: 5, Funny

      I'm just trying to imagine the look on Paulie Walnuts' face as you explain that.

    3. Re:If only.. by anotherone · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Trivial to break. Wrapping the cloth around a pole is just an easier way of looking at every x letters. It'd take about 2 minutes to brute force the value for x manually, a program with a dictionary could do it in milliseconds.

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  2. OK , he doesn't know cryptography... by Viol8 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    ... but it still took the police almost 50 years to catch him
    so he must've been doing something right. I imagine the ceaser
    code was simply to prevent other knuckle dragging criminals from
    understanding the message, not a load of top crypto crackers
    at police HQ.

  3. Crude, maybe, but dumb, no way by FishandChips · · Score: 5, Interesting

    We cannot be sure that Provenzano's crude attempts at a code were intended to foil the police. Why should he care? By now, several hundred Mafia informers (the pentiti) have already told the police just about everything you could think of. Besides, pencil and paper have turned out to be quite a good system, probably yielding a fraction of the information that electronic eavesdropping would.

    The coded notes are more likely have been intended to prevent his fellow mafiosi from getting too close and knowing too much. There was nothing dumb about this man's rule as a godfather. He evaded capture for forty years, rebuilt the organization after the disasters of the Riina years, retained power by remaining as invisible to his fellow mobsters as he was to the authorities, and simply survived into his 70s in a "profession" in which many are lucky to reach their thirties.

    Yes, it's good news that another gruesome killer is behind bars. But the more worrying question is why the godfather found it unnecessary to take more stringent precautions, suggesting that clearing out the Mafia-infested lands of Western Sicily and the corruption-prone "public works" economy still has a very long way to go. It's going to take more than a few smart remarks about cryptography to do that.

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  4. Re:Wouldn't have helped in this case anyways... by TubeSteak · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I think an appropriately shuffled deck of cards would be somewhat innocuous.

    If the police aren't looking for something like a deck-of-cards-as-key, then they won't find the key, all they'll find is a deck of cards.

    I only say this because I recall reading an article some years back about drug dealers storing their business information on USB thumbdrives & wearing them as necklaces or on keychains. The police would arrest the dealer, but since the police didn't know what they had, the thumbdrive was treated as any other possesion & sealed up till the dealer was released.

    You're still hiding your 'key', you're just hiding it in plain site & hoping no one sees it for what it is.

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