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200-Year-Old Cipher Finally Cracked
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."
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..."
the Voynich manuscript is a much more compelling and difficult mystery.
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.
"Hey Jefferson, you might want to try keeping it in your pants. I saw that slave girl today and she's starting to show. People will start asking questions."
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.
So, your suggesting security by obscurity?
What was the message after all??
"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..." Why even bother writing a code to tell someone that?
A Magic the Gathering Article and Forum Aggregator
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schneier's_Law
Did you mount a military-grade, variable-focus MASER on an unlicensed artificial intelligence?
All your base are belong to us!
My SIG is a P226
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!!!
greed@All_Evils:~#
That the code's creator, Patterson, " estimated that the potential combinations to solve the puzzle was "upwards of ninety millions of millions."
First of all, I take this to be 90 trillion. But I am wondering if he is correct. Any thoughts?
Dashboard Widgets
The message was: "Be sure to drink your Ovaltine."
If you didn't come to party don't bother knocking on my door. Prince '1999'
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?
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Even if the key to this exact code wasn't known, you'd think that all of the types of codes in use at that time would have been known and only a lack of interest kept this one from being cracked much earlier.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
... it's not going to do much good for President Jefferson at this point.
#DeleteChrome
It's just a waste of effort to use crypto, as this story supports. It's all one big waste of time, effort, and manpower.
... but they had to wait for the copyright to expire.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
He used a computer, he cheated. If he really wanted to work out it as a test of skill he should of used only tools people in that time had.
The message read: Just abolished the slave trade. With any luck, we'll soon have a black president...
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.
He wrote the entire draft. The only parts that changed were minute portions and the choice of language he used was replaced by less forceful language for fear of being too alienating to the common man. The WSJ cites him as a contributor. The author needs to read Jefferson's letters. It's right in there. I suppose Stephen King or any other author should be called a contributor to their work after an Editor comes in and helps modify it.
The only reason it's not been solved until now is because no serious cryptanalyst was working on it. As soon as I read the description of how it's done, I knew it would be highly vulnerable to a known-plaintext attack. (The guy who cracked it used frequency analysis of letter pairs, because there was no known plaintext available. But if someone were using the cipher on a regular basis, there would be.)
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
...I put all my net accessable ports in the upper 32k, not the lower.... ooops.
...muttering something about the DMCA.
Have gnu, will travel.
Don't forget to drink your Ovaltine!
"Society is intrinsically meaningless," says Lacan; however, according to Long[1] , it is not so much society that is intrinsically meaningless, but rather the failure of society. But if rationalism holds, we have to choose between textual postcultural theory and modern appropriation. The premise of postcapitalist materialism suggests that the task of the artist is significant form. However, any number of theories concerning not discourse, but subdiscourse may be found. The primary theme of Hamburger's[2] analysis of Derridaist reading is the role of the participant as observer.
But the subject is contextualised into a that includes narrativity as a reality. Lyotard suggests the use of postcapitalist materialism to analyse class.
Therefore, the fatal flaw, and eventually the rubicon, of rationalism prevalent in Rushdie's The Ground Beneath Her Feet is also evident in The Moor's Last Sigh.
However, the subject is interpolated into a that includes truth as a whole. Lyotard suggests the use of neocultural situationism to read and analyse language.
The article said he had this all figured out in 2007 - yet the details of this cypher are just now being published in July 2009. What took so long - the quest to gain ITAR compliance?
> It's just a waste of effort to use crypto, as this story supports.
> It's all one big waste of time, effort, and manpower.
Crypto is like a lock (not by coincidence the symbol frequently used to indicate use of crypto IS a lock). A lock is not a once-and-forever solution, but defined in physical security circles correctly as a "time-delay device". With other words, given enough time any lock will be circumvented...broken if you want. Likewise with crypto.
BUT, with a human lifespan somewhere around 80 years (YMMV), a lock that protects your secrets/valuables long enough for it not to matter anymore to you or even your next couple offspring-generations has, IMHO, more than fulfilled its purpose. Even governments likely would have little need for protecting secrets longer than that.
..."Thomas, thou art bereft of milk, I shall venture to thy mall and purchase more"
Even governments likely would have little need for protecting secrets longer than that.
I disagree. There are numerous crimes for which there is no statute of limitations, and in the court of public opinion, there is no such thing anyway; only those things which the public forgets.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
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 tollbooth!
Vulcanize society!
Make the pie higher!
Make the pie higher!
>> Even governments likely would have little need for protecting secrets longer than that.
> There are numerous crimes for which there is no statute of limitations,
> and in the court of public opinion, there is no such thing anyway
Of course any real democratic government shouldn't be using locks/crypto in the first place, to protect its dirty secrets from its own public that they represent and work for.
This story was published in (IIRC) American Scientist a month or two ago. Yep, here we go : A Cipher to Thomas Jefferson.
Loath though I am to send money to America, I do find myself strongly tempted to subscribing to that magazine. Seriously good brain-fodder.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"