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FBI Wants You To Solve Encrypted Notes From Murder
coondoggie writes "The FBI is seeking the public's help in breaking the encrypted code found in two notes discovered on the body of a murdered man in 1999. The FBI says that officers in St. Louis, Missouri discovered the body of 41-year-old Ricky McCormick on June 30, 1999 in a field and the clues regarding the homicide were two encrypted notes found in the victim's pants pockets."
The first note just looks a list of IP addresses associated with Twitter accounts communicating with a "Julian_Assange" and the second note appears to be in Arabic (which I can't read).
I don't understand what either of those have to do with a 1999 murder in Missouri though.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Here is a link to the notes:
http://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/2011/march/cryptanalysis_032911/image/gallery
Of course, what I got out of it was:
"You are a stupid square idiot bald git aren't you? eh? I'm pointing at you, I'm pointing at you, but I'm not actually addressing you, I'm addressing the one prat in the country who has bothered to get a hold of this recording, turn it round and actually work out the rubbish that I'm saying. What a poor sad life he's got! Frankly your acts crap, anyway anybody could've done it, I hate the lot of you, bollocks to you!"
The World is Yours.
Be sure to drink your ovaltine.
DRINKYOUROVALTINE
Proverbs 21:19
There are a lot of nested parens in those notes. It's clearly Lisp code. They should bring Alan Turing in for questioning.
When the foot seeks the place of the head, the line is crossed. Know your place. Keep your place. Be a shoe.
Here
you must be a suspect
Nullius in verba
Talk about stubborn. They sure waited long enough to ask for help.
Keep the Classic Slashdot.
Pssshhh, Nathan Fillion could've solved this in 45 minutes plus commercial breaks.
Sorry guys, I know my writing's not the best, but no need to put the FBI on the case sheesh!
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0056197/quotes?qt=qt0285056
Arthur Leigh Allen.
But he died. How old was the body when found?
As long as Jake Gyllenback-Mountain doesn't ruin this one with a B list movie I think we could solve what the FBI's been slacking off on for a decade or so.
It's like the mind going AWOL, it's there somewhere
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Say you crack the code. Would you divulge the key?
Am I the only one who thinks that they've already cracked it and are simply looking for people to hire?
Rolf this is crazy xD
The notes look like Burma-Shave ads! Tell the FBI to round up any clean-shaven folks!
"Throat-wobbler-mangrove!"
"Burma-Shave!"
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
I can't violate the DMCA. Sorry.
It's just a lot of Windows serial numbers!
Ugh. Goatse.
NSFW. Asshole (poster and picture, both).
Probably not even encrypted but just gibberish. FBI wastes 100000000000000000000000000000 man-hours trying to decrypt it. Please send the FBI to change the oil on my car. Money better spent.
Verin Mathwin?
Who knew!
Just wait for the hour of his death!
Oh wait.
Is it me, or does the writing suggest that he wrote every other letter spaced out, then went back in and wrote every other letter in the blanks?
Perhaps the parentheses indicate sets of letters where he did this...?
If you want to be seen, stand up. If you want to be heard, speak up. If you want to be respected, sit down and shut up.
Please ban this user posting GOATSE without marking it as NSFW.
If I can not smoke in heaven, then I shall not go. -- Mark Twain
Weird. There are enough patterns and repetitions to make it look like it's just something simple, like a substitution cipher or similar. The sequence 'NCBE' appears enough times to be statistically meaningful, I'd wager.
The article says the encrypted notes were written by the victim, not the murderer.
Sounds like a job for Jacob Barnett.
Typos... that's just how I role.
The pirated Windows 98 key I used back then in the second pic.
No sig for you!!
Bake the hall in the candle of her brain.
What makes them think that these notes have any clue as to the perpetrator of the murder? They could be shopping lists that the victim made in code for his own amusement; apparently he had been doing so his whole life.
Cases of murder are cracked daily without needing a note from the victim, coded or not; the FBI should pursue this case the same way. More than likely, the code is a red herring that's tying up resources and focus.
--
$tar -xvf
Please post better scans. At least 2000 pixels on a side. And in the lossless "PNG" format. Thank you.
Looks like LISP code to me.
GNU/Stallman strikes again!
don't do it!
just load it into google docs and you'll have an answer before your tea's done
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
I remember 90 seconds ago I RTFA and it said the victim had kept such coded notes himself since childhood. His mom "recognized the mental wavelength" already, so now how does this help?
They've been on the case for 11 years. At some point asking for help just makes... oh, I didn't see who made the post. Never mind.
Pathetic cower behind ;select name from systables
The notes belonged to the victim.
I did it!
Your's
Obama.
tl;dr
GW Bush
How do you know it is a one time pad?
or he is a secret genius with proteins.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Message begins
Murdering you was "too, Too, TOO EASY - just '2EZ'" ... lol!
APK
With sincere Regards,
Mrs. McCormick
P.S.=>. Do not worry little poppet, your HOSTS file will be looked after! apk
Message ends
...are pretty clear: http://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/2011/march/cryptanalysis_032911/image/gallery
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
I can read it, sort of but it doesn't make sense. It looks like instructions and dates. It would be nice to know if he were a drug dealer or whatever.
Hold it back and just let the nearest words pop into your head
The ()'s could be different notes like when I put boxes around my notes from class.
high school dropout guys. I"m guessing he is not mentally encoded 128 bit RSA encryption here.
it's Welsh!
It says "drink more ovaltine"
So much for the taxpayer funded NSA (No Scrutiny Allowed) or the drug funded CIA (Criminals In Action)
The mind conceives, the body achieves, the spirit manifests.
They were found in his pockets. He has been known to use such notes since he was a boy. How is wasting their time by solving these going to further the investigation? I imagine had he the time to encrypt them naming his killer in such a way, then he would have just written out a description of the killer, assuming he didn't know the killer. Which he probably did. Most likely it was some suspected illicit activity and they are hoping that he has information for something else in these messages.
I'd bet it's little more than a sub cypher of some type, given his education and the recurrence of letter patterns in the first note.
Perhaps backwards?
I am Bennett Haselton! I am Bennett Haselton!
I've retyped the code of the first note (to as good an extent as I can given the 600x600 resolution). Here's the results, and don't shoot me if there's a mistake:
(mndmknearse-n-d-ta-knare)
qtfrnenptnsenpbsercbbnsenprseinc
prsenmrsedprehlduldncbe(tfxlftcxlnlbe)
al-prppitxlyppiyncbemekseincdrcbrnseprse
wldrcbrnsentsgnentxse-crsle-citrsewldncde
alwlpncbetsmelrserlsevrglsneasnwldncbe
(nopfsenlsrencbe)ntegddmnsencurercbrne
(tenetfrnencbrtsencbeinq)
(firsepqseonde71ncbe)
(cdnseprsednsde74ncbe)
(prtseprseonrede75ncbe)
(tfnqcmspsolemrdelusetotewldnwldncbe)
(194wld'sncbe)(trfxl)
Actually all uppercase, but the fitler wouldn't allow me.
These -ARE- encrypted.
It is a combination of several Diablo CD-Keys
In the first one he mentions slippy and kobe. Was he a lakers fan? Not enough time to play with this more, but I wonder if he was a gambler from some of the other stuff.
Just find an autistic kid, problem solved!
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120749/plotsummary
Correct me if I'm wrong, but if he was using a one time pad, won't this be impossible to crack? Seems like the simplest way to encrypt something like this anyhow.
McCormick had used such encrypted notes since he was a boy
and all we get are two examples? Lame.
Why doesn't the FBI provide some of the research they've already done? Collaborate instead of simply asking someone to do your work! For example, higher quality scans, unique symbols, symbol frequency, symbol distance matrices, other known writings of the victim. Can we get some more environmental clues? victim's known proper nouns, background, travels, language(s) exposed to, favorite pop culture topics, etc. This all seems like a lot more detective work should be done. Solve the murder, not the puzzle.
And they use a snail mail address for contact? Is this article from the 1950's?
One thought I had was this is a form of short hand cross with a minor cipher. Meaning that it's not intended to be a message for anybody else to understand, but to jog the memory of the victim. Meaning that it's more like an asymmetric encryption system than what the FBI is considering. Which would make it more or less impossible to solve because most of the information was destroyed when the person was killed.
I'm not familiar enough with the case to know, but it seems rather unlikely that this is the only evidence if the killer wasn't methodical and yet it happens to be left at the crime scene. Sure it could happen, but it seems a bit convenient that it was not known about.
Suggesting of course that the killer didn't know about it and that more likely than not there isn't any information that any living person would understand.
Just give it to Angela on "Bones." She'll just happen to have recently finished writing some program that will figure it out in under an hour based on a grainy picture of the note.
This space for rent...
It's already known that the victim wrote the notes and devised the code, any possible information that isn't known would be contained in the text. I'm betting that it's never deciphered. Just because it's more likely that it's a key to something locked in the victims brain.
I hope they're not still listening to those snake-oil profilers after a decades long track record on par with dowsing rods.
Don't get fooled, it's just a plot from the Hoover boys to find new suspects
It says "Youmadbro?"
For Microsoft Office suite of products That is what they look like to me.
If it ain't broke, DON'T fix it.
...unless he wrote the notes while being murdered.
Murderer: "Whatever are writing, Ricky?"
Ricky: "Your descrip.... I mean a screenplay I'm finishing up. Almost done, just a few more minutes. How much do you weigh, out of curiosity."
Murderer: "200lbs, I work out, at that gym down the street. OK, hurry up then, I'm late for dinner."
They are using it as nice way of asking "We can't crack this encryption, but are very curious about it, so help us please. Oh yeah and some guy was murdered..."
Nice try, FBI. I'm not revealing my leet skills to you that easily.
First you make a list of who can crack your uber-encryption, then you round us up.
- For the complete works of Shakespeare: cat
The thing isn't too complex. He's using it to write long notes, so you don't want to do a lot of work encrypting your text.
If he's using it since he was 9 the essence is probably not too difficult. Let's say a variation of pig Latin. (-be -se)
He might have made some refinements over the years, but the concept probably stayed the same.
Then there are the groups of 4 and 5 letters. No idea about that.
Privacy is terrorism.
My Grandfather was friends with one of the people who cracked Enigma without the aid of a captured machine. He died in 2005.
Pitty they couldn't have gotten this out, say, seven years ago.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
This is all a test by the F.B.I. to find some new cryptographers.
FCKGW-RHQQ2-YXRKT-8TG6W-2B7Q8
For handwritten notes to be writeable and readable quickly for anyone even with a great mind, you have to have "a method".
You can't memorize an encryption algorithm and execute translation both ways so you can use it when writing on paper. You need to be able to "visualize" the results both ways quickly to be usable.
Hence, I would like to know what phrases the man commonly used and whether other handwritten English text documents from him are in existence to use as do comparisons with? What types of activities and people did he associate with, and their names? All it takes is a reused phrase to be recognized to often break these types of codes.
Seems like the family and/or the FBI could be helpful by also showing other encrypted writing and plenty of samples of his unencrypted writing. I'm sure (at least I hope) the FBI has *much* more to work with than these two notes.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
How to serve man!
tewe definition
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=tewe
TfrNE definition
http://books.google.com/books?id=Gja7l4jg5V4C&pg=PA603&lpg=PA603&dq=TfrNE+definition&source=bl&ots=8wsxmplyip&sig=s-4nYXuipwdSFIJVkDXZD9ABNEI&hl=en&ei=aWKSTaPVLOS_0QH2y6DNBw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2&ved=0CBwQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q&f=false
It is actually the lyrics to the Kingsmen version
of the song Louie, Louie. Verse 3 mentions a
"grassy knoll" and something about @!&ABo((~`={{vb
3:42xyzzyZnorFFoo
NO CARRIER
It's just a dump of Hans Reiser's filesystem...
42
Does that make sense to anyone?
#include <sig.h>
It was the Albino
Nearly every letter ends in E. Many even in SE or TE. CBE and BE are also not rare in the first one.
There is also a distinct shortage of certain letters for most of the text.
Numbers are generally unencrypted. There’s even a ½ in there.
I can not imagine why a simple statistical analysis (or even better: generic parallel pattern recognition, like with a neural net that’s big enough) wouldn’t render something useful for this text. It’s full of patterns.
But remember: There are mental diseases, which make you think you say or write something that makes sense, while actually it doesn’t. Like those people using only normal words, and even grammar, but constructing sentences that make absolutely no sense.
And you know what they say: If you interpret long enough, you will always come up with something that makes the sense you want. :)
I must be some kind of leader... Since Slashdot is following me to the grave.
...with the Voynich Manuscript.
Funny enough, the decrypted doesn't make any more sense:
#include
typedef unsigned int uint;
char ctb[512]="33733b2663236b763e7e362b6e2e667bd393db0643034b96de9ed60b4e0e4\
69b57175f82c787cf125a1a528fca8ac21fd999d10049094190d898d001480840913d7d35246\
d2d65743c7c34256c2c6475dd9dd5044d0d4594dc9cd4054c0c449559195180c989c11058185\
081c888c011d797df0247074f92da9ad20f4a0a429f53135b86c383cb165e1e568bce8ec61bb\
3f3bba6e3a3ebf6befeb6abeeaee6fb37773f2267276f723a7a322f6a2a627fb9f9b1a0e9a9e\
1f0b8f8b0a1e8a8e0f15d1d5584cd8dc5145c1c5485cc8cc415bdfdb5a4edade5f4bcfcb4a5e\
cace4f539793120692961703878302168286071b7f7bfa2e7a7eff2bafab2afeaaae2ff";
typedef unsigned char uchar;uint tb0[11]={5,0,1,2,3,4,0,1,2,3,4};uchar* F=NULL;
uint lf0,lf1,out;void ReadKey(uchar* key){int i;char hst[3]; hst[2]=0;if(F==\
NULL){F=malloc(256);for(i=0;i>2)^(lf0>>16))b=((lf1\
>>12)^(lf1>>20)^(lf1>>21)^(lf1>>24))lf0=(lf0>1)\
|(a>1)|(b>8)+x+y;} void \
CSSdescramble(uchar *sec,uchar *key){uint i;uchar *end=sec+0x800;uchar KEY[5];
for(i=0;i=0;\
i--)key[tb0[i+1]]=k[tb0[i+1]]^F[key[tb0[i+1]]]^key[tb0[i]];}void CSStitlekey2\
(uchar *key,uchar *im){uchar k[5];int i;ReadKey(im);for(i=0;i=0;i--)key[tb0[i+1]]=k[tb0[i+1]]^F[key[tb0[i+1]]]^key\
[tb0[i]];}void CSSdecrypttitlekey(uchar *tkey,uchar *dkey){int i;uchar im1[6];
uchar im2[6]={0x51,0x67,0x67,0xc5,0xe0,0x00};for(i=0;i6;i++)im1[i]=dkey[i];
CSStitlekey1(im1,im2);CSStitlekey2(tkey,im1);}
It's just part of the script that Charlie Sheen wrote for his violent torpedo of truth concert.
Nullius in verba
Make sure you drink your ovaltine.
Another site ponted out that the numbers are Interstate roads. Follow on down the 71. Continue on the 74. Bear right on the 75.
I'm swinging a guess, but to me it looks like it's been encrypted twice. Blocked after running through a Vignere or a similar cipher. I don't think it's a code because the repetition doesn't match with any standard frequency analysis, I just did it, and codes in English have serious weaknesses there. It looks as if he used a paper based key and transcribed as he went because of the corrections. I suppose he could have memorized the pad he used but the corrections indicate he didn't know it well enough to avoid mistakes. He didn't spend a great deal of time making it "right" before committing it to paper. It looks blocked 5-4-3 or maybe 5-4-3-2. There are no single characters so either the messages were fixed length, it's salted with characters to make it fit the fixed length (most likely imho) or he was way careless in spacing. The latter doesn't seem right because he went through the trouble to encipher the message... seems like a lot of work to end up being careless unless he was in a hurry which makes even less sense.
So that's my seven minute analysis... now I have something to do tonight!
I'll create a GUI interface in Visual Basic, see if I can decrypt this
Announcing anything productive makes you an instant "person of interest." What guarantees does the FBI have you won't turn your m4d skillz against the Homeland?
Has anyone considered that maybe these notes ARE the one time pad for decrypting another message that hasn't been discovered yet?
I just found Barrack Obama's birth certificate from another country and I plan to go public with the fact he can't run for the senate in Ill.
frequently occurring filler?
I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed or numbered. My life is my own.
On page one there's the (ACSM) up in the corner ... maybe written down to remind the guy what the key is or how to translate it? What if each letter in the message is offset by some sort of repeating pattern based on those four letters?
DaveyJJ
I stumbled across even larger versions of the images, which don't seem to be linked to from the FBI site: note1_large.jpg, note2_large.jpg
As I read through the notes, I noticed what looks to be many misspelled words with their second letters (especially vowels) missing combined with initialisms only the author or his close friends would understand. As an example: gd dmn is "God Damn."
I suspect the author had a form of dyslexia.
Anyone else notice that most of the words end in E? That seems likely to mean something.
According to the biographical details, the guy was "street smart" but lacked formal education. Based on his very white-sounding name, it's a good bet that he didn't speak any exotic foreign languages, or have access to the mathematical techniques that cryptanalysts are trained to look for. Seems like pretty good rationale for releasing it to the public—clever people with no formal training might actually be better at solving this kind of thing.
Of course, it could all be in some crazy, made-up language that existed only in the guy's head. And even if it's not, it could just as easily be a grocery list. But there's enough numeric data in there that if I were tasked with solving this case, I'd be intrigued, too. Hell, I'm intrigued anyway.
Hey, it compiles without error. It crashes when run. I'm thinking this has to be Windows code. Where was Gates in 1999?
Place nail here >+
Its the serial key for Windows 8
I typed KLSE-LRSTE-TRSE-TRSE-MKSEN-MRSE into my Windows 7 install and... Kaboom! It turned into Ubuntu 10.10 with Unlimited FREE-FOR-LIFE Amazon EC2 account! Hurry, try it! It says 2 accounts left!
He's using a sequence of letters to correspond to a single letter. Repeating patterns such as ncbe actually equate to 1 letter.
Have gnu, will travel.
I think a good place to start would be to analyze the man who created these codes. Since he is a highschool drop out we may conclude that he probably isn't a genius. My guess is that he doesn't know much about the new age crypto algs, like those you would need a computer to create. Since he has been doing this since he was a child, we can further that assumption by saying that he probably did not use a powerful computing device to create the code. Since the FBI has likely already poured over these codes, we can assume that standard crypto algs have already been considered, such as the affine/vigenere cyphers (since they would have been relatively easy to crack).
Based on these assumptions, I would say that he very likely created some type of one-time pad cypher or perhaps a substitution cypher, or perhaps some hybrid of the two. In this case, we may assume that in order to create the code he used some very popular or familiar source [text] in order to generate the code letters. While it may be possible to crack the original code without knowing what this original pad source is, it would certainly benefit the effort to have more information on the murderer's life style both as a child, and as recent as the murder, so that more probable information can be ascertained about the encoding.
In short, more information about the case/man may be helpful, even if it does not seem immediately relevant.
I guess they shouldnt have said so many uncharitable things about the NSA after 9-11.
In "The Last Starfighter"
They're a bunch of Windows ME product keys...
Really? They've just asked thousands of people for help but want them to mail in their results? No email address? Either they're stupid or need the solver's handwriting - implying anyone who can decrypt it must know the encryption table and hence must know the victim. But how would that help?
Page 1 appears to be directions. If you look at his numbers, they are highway numbers leading from Kansas City, MO into North Carolina.
OMG It's a Cook Book! eek Thus proving that the government is in fact aliens.
"Computers are a lot like Air Conditioners" "They both work great until you start opening Windows"
"The FBI is seeking the public's help in breaking the encrypted code found in two notes discovered on the body of a murdered man in 1999"
In other unrelated news, the FBI has launched their new recruiting campaign...
There's no place like
I could probably figure it out, but I'm afraid I'd get sued by Sony.
Looks like Lisp to me
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
I'm thinking "SE" is a space. that would make N an "A", I believe. Okay slashdot. go!
As others have sort of pointed out, there's a good chance it's based on allusions that have meaning only to the author.
If that's the case, it's pretty much a lost cause. Is it even clear that he meant to provide the identity of people persuing him? It could just be a shopping list or something.
OTOH, if I were going to do an allusion cipher I'd probably make it less rambling. Maybe it's stego. I had my passwords stegoed on a business card for a while. It was very simple--the password was embedded in a long string. I only had to remember the start letter.
I haven't seen anybody else mention that there seem to be two types of 'E' in the note. One is is like a left paren with a dash to make the 'E', the other is more like a regular E.
Perhaps the way the letters are written is significant. You'd think the FBI would have thought of that and analyzed it though. You'd think their crypto guys would have experience with codes where the font matters. A font code is also simple enough for a kid to use too so it fits.
Also, as others have pointed out, better scans would help.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
it looks pig-latinish
It's just in his own made up language :)
> McCormick had used such encrypted notes since he was a boy
Kids make up languages.. :P
watch it turn out to be a rickroll...
wastes it's time on unimportant stuff.
Female Body Inspectors, my ass. You are all about a dead dude on this one.
Be seeing you...
You my dear have committed a so called rooky mistake as you most likely have employed security through obscurity. It must be so because nobody can even find some sort of system, the FBI is pissed like hell and you wind up dead on /.
/.
OTOH, only the truly great wind up dead dead on
I hadn't the slightest objection to his spending his time planning massacres for the bourgeoisie... (P.G. Wodehouse)
I'm sorry this guy is no genius.
Hes using his own short hand and its pretty obvious that he was taking notes on how the gambling scheme he was involved in ... worked.
Take a step back and use a dumb ass approach (he obviously wasn't very bright), a computer won't solve this or tell you who killed him ... hes not making ciphers or anything like that, hes just dumb.
If you read between the lines its very clear that he's seeing what wild or making notes on it.
I had a bunch more here on what I got out of it but I googled some short hand on cards and lost it!
If they're encrypted, they could be anything (e.g. a recipe). What makes the FBI so sure they're clues to the murder?
The arrangement of the numbers seems to exclude an alphanumeric encryption, greatly simplifying any possible encryption. Also, this more closely resembles a modern day teens phone text, or possibly a memory aid, similar to what I have seen some students do in preparation for a test. It would seem more likely to me that this is just an abbreviation or condensation, like the first letter of each word. For instance, the first sentence of this post would read 'TAOTNSEAAEGSAPE', or something similar. When I was younger, I remember making 'super secret' doodles that were annotated in a similar fashion, in the most complex encryption I could devise on my own, to prevent others from reading them. There would likely appear to be structure in the message, since language has rules and guidelines that govern which words make sense in what order, that gives the semblance of a simple encryption. Anyway, that is my guess with my limited knowledge of encryption... LOLGLGTGTTYL.
From TFA:
"McCormick was a high school dropout, but he was able to read and write ..."
Is this considered someting worth mentioning in the USA? Where I live we learn to read and write in first class primary school...didn't know it was considered an advanced in the US...
They could figure out the Zodiac notes in SF and now this. Sounds like another serial killer on the loose or it could be the same. Its difficult to tell from the lack of information. Face it either way the FBI didn't get their man then or now.
So the first few characters decode to
46 DC EA D3
Hmmm, looks like hex. Might be an intermediate code, maybe the key to something else? I'll play with it some more and see if I can crack it.
Here are the biggest versions of the notes. They are much easier to read.
http://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/2011/march/cryptanalysis_032911/image/gallery/encyphered-note/
http://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/2011/march/cryptanalysis_032911/image/gallery/help-us-solve-this-encyphered-note/
"GET / HTTP/1.0" 200 51230 "-" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; Setec Astronomy)"
Remember guys, if you solve it you become the prime suspect :) What happened to the guy who found a stolen laptop with sensitive information and called the police? Ahem ahem :)
There are supposedly larger pictures here:
http://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/2011/march/cryptanalysis_032911/image/gallery
If you break them remember to use TrueCrypt or something to send them back; these might be TSA related after all..
It appears to be just a hand-written Microsoft Activation Key.
There are lots of repeating 4 letter groups. My guess is that NCBE is 'Feck' and PRSE is 'Arse'. One group has to be 'Grls' but that lies outside my experience.
My guess...he is using some sort of phonetic code. He is mixing in self conceived sounds in combinations with memories/location associations. He then dropped in some extras. If he did this and you only have 2 samples to break his code.....good luck with that.
Also, he may have just been writing gibberish and imagining it actually meant something, just the act of thinking and writing would help cement memories.
Isn't this what we pay all the uber-brains at CIA, NSA, DIA for? What was the last estimate of the supercomputing power at the NSA?
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
Not sure if he wrote 99.8H or 99.84. It might be an FM radio station. Here's a list of MO radio stations: http://www.ontheradio.net/states/missouri.aspx
...just summoned Cthulhu in my kitchen... help...
Anyone else notice the missing letters?
J (or maybe his J looks almost like his T), Q and Z.
There are a few instances of characters that could be either a U or a V, but could also be one of his oddly shaped N characters.
First impression from both pages is of a missouri-dialected "Feersum Enjin". And later on, in the middle of the first page, I noticed ""NTE GDDMN SENCURE RCBRNE""...
I guess the point is they're hoping people /not/ tainted with handwriting analysis reports and victim backgrounds might come up with; but I immediately find myself wanting to know things like: was he a truck driver, are these scribbled notes (suggesting a short hand) or pontificated (suggesting an encryption). Sports fan? (did he write up the plays to a game?) Or a PC gamer? (is it a cheat sheet for a game, directions for a mud/adventure)
Lastly, most folks seem to be assuming left-to-right ... If it was right-to-left, ES could easily be "espacio".
-- A change is as good as a reboot.
It must have been a victim of the "Killer by serial numbers". You can actually activate a Windows 98 instalation with one of the CD keys on the second page.
Note #1: Shopping List
Milk
Eggs
Bread
Frozen Corn
Bacon
Note #2: To Do List
Wash Car
Take dog for a walk
Sign up for self defence classes
It's not a conventional cypher so standard cryptanalysis won't work. It could be a rotating key depending on line number or word position where simple frequency analysis would be thrown off. You'd need more samples to look at, and try to develop a pattern.
Microsoft aggravates my tourettes syndrome.
It does seem to be written from left to right however, as the text is mostly flush to the left margin. If it was written from the right to the left, usually people make the text flush from where they begin writting.
"SE" definitely looks like a space or some token marker, perhaps a shorthand for "Stop. End" like a telegraph.
As a kid I was fascinated by two kinds of cyphers, such as the "Tic-Tac-Toe" cypher where the letters would be put into a grid and you used the grid shapes as keys to the letters, basically a substitution cypher. A variant could be made using some well known secret word or phrase that provides the key substitution. Subtitution cyphers can be broken using frequency analysis, which is the first thing you can check with the computer. If it were that easy they would have solved it by now.
He seems to correct himself in the middle of writing (for instance see 3rd line of 2nd note, where he corrects the 'T' into an 'R', and on the first note where he corrects the first letter of the second line). This makes me think that it is more than a substitution cypher but something perhaps he counts from a certain letter to get the next one (it's easy to make mistakes counting if you are thinking of the thing you want to write), or that his key could easily miss from one letter to another. The difference from 'T' to 'R' is not very far away, so he could have miscounted in applying his algorithm.
The fact that there seems to be some delimiting symbols ('SE' is a marker of some sort) means perhaps that the algorithm had some kind of break points where to reapply. If it was a simply one-to-one correspondence he probably wouldn't use two letters for substitution of a space. It might be something simple like removing all the letters but the first and last (SpacE), with spaces following the same rule.
Also there are some lines that are very similar, for instance (3rd to last lines of 1st note):
(cdnseprsednsde74ncbe)
(prtseprseonrede75ncbe)
They only differ in a few letters, namely CDN -> PRT; DNS -> ONR and the two numbers. If the message was an address or describing something with numbers (a car model year for instance) then there could be clues for trying certain transformations.
The fact that the encryption doesn't seem to encode numbers might be significant. If it were a sort of rotating cypher, where each letter is substituted and then counting from the last letter the next substitution, normally you wouldn't include numbers as then it would be difficult to subsitute past 9 (at least for a boy who doesn't know modular arithmetic).
The fact that he corrects himself so often in my opinion means that the encryption is something more complicated than a simple one way substitution. If he used it for a while there would be less errors (after awhile using substitution cyphers you almost automatically write v for e or whatever). It seems to be some kind of rotating count where errors are more prevalent.
It would really be helpful to have more examples of his handwriting and to know more about his personal habits. Breaking passwords is also more often trying to guess what a person was thinking at the time than actually trying symbols (at least when a human tries to decypher them). I wish the FBI would release more of his writing, especially his unencrypted text as that would give hints on his spelling habits and level of education in general.
Thank you for this link Moderator (189749)
http://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/2011/march/cryptanalysis_032911/image/gallery
Look at the E, note that it seems to be different in different places, the middle line is short, offset left, offset left and the right half is longer than the top or bottom, etc. Some E's look like a C with a middle line, some E's have a top line longer, some have the top line angled up, etc So with just that you can make a matrix of the differing E's and assign each an identifying symbol...
Now about the R, notice the solid vertical left line in one, the dual left line forming a vertical oval in another, the top loop being tilted up or down, etc.
Maddening isn't it?
I'd go on a Vegan diet but the delivery time from Vega is too long. --brownkitty
It's obviously LISP.
Isn't that the leaked HD-DVD key?
~Syberz
With most of the words ending in 'E', it's either Pig Latin or perhaps Ubudubee.
I have no mod points and I must scream.
I'd go on a Vegan diet but the delivery time from Vega is too long. --brownkitty
Please ban parent poster for falling into one of the more obvious goatse traps and then even lamenting about it. If you haven't gotten it before, this is Slashdot!
...I'm not convinced this is a real case. I did a prelim search of keywords within the time frame of the listed murder date until now. There are articles from that year listed, but looking at the sites in more depth will tell you that all of the references to "Ricky McCormick" are actually entries from the last couple of days. I also did a quick obit/article search from a couple of local papers, and nothing seems to come up. Obviously a simple 'net search in a case which was reported to have happened in 1999 isn't all that reliable - but I do find it interesting that someone took the time to write short stubs in websites that would be indexed as being from 1999, when in fact the entry dates are recent. This sounds to me more like a scenario conceived on the premise that people will ignore the vague background information and focus on the cipher itself.
I would also like to point out that the victim is described as a "street-smart, high-school drop out" who was born around 1958. Assuming that he had been writing this mysterious code since he was "a child", that would all but eliminate the chances of any modern computing references being an influence on the code itself. This would be a straight cipher, my guess would be in English, with a possible Midwestern dialect influence on the overall outcome of the message (although I doubt it if this is a feeler-skills test, since that would require the breaker to not only crack the code but then search out 1960's Midwestern slang if any came up in the final product).
If this is all the information to be given for this exercise, then you could probably start the topic search with things like directions, addresses, grocery/supply lists, drugs, proper nouns (names of people or landmarks), cars, job, etc - things that might have been stereotypically on the mind of a poor middle-aged Midwesterner in 1999. If I were going to take a crack this, I'd start with a brainstorm of generic keywords and phrases, and see if any of those plug into a pattern of some sort.
Lastly, I found it interesting that in several of the stubs, a snail-mail address is listed if you want to send any info in directly. You'd think a simple email would suffice these days, but perhaps they're looking for people who also understand the value of discreetness? (That last extrapolation was pulled directly out of my ass, I know, but anyone cruising this as an opportunity for future employment might be happy for details, maybe?)
Feel free to throw rotten fruit at me if I've jumped the shark at all...
Did you read the article?
Probably stupid. I know nothing about comic books.
The phrase (194 WLD's NCBE) stuck out to me. Search on the internet for 194 World's and a Superman comic book comes up. N - Comic Book - E? Maybe some sort of Expo?
If we knew something about the guy, his interests, his hobbies, it would be a heck of a lot easier to relate to it. They don't give you much to go on at all.
13 years and several million dollars later the FBI announced today it successfully deciphered the grocery shopping list of murder victim Ricky McCormick of St Louis, Missouri.
From yahoo news article comments:
"I keep trying to post a reply explaining how I get this info but its taking too long to type and when someone replies it all gets erased, so I'll try to be quick and save what I write as I go along....also, I want to make clear that I dont care about getting credit, just solving this tragic event...finally, if you have never worked with children with autism, you may not understand the logic or find yourself frustrated
I first noticed the hyphens on page 2 and quickly identified that as a set of numbers; phone number, address, or social..etc. Remember, Mr McCormick created this language as a child, and therefore you MUST think as a child:
ALPNTE GLSE - SE ERTE
VLSE MTSE - CTSE - WSE - FRTSE
I started with breaking up CTSE-WSE-FRTSE
I then associated numbers to letters: A=1, B=2, etc. (I have now noticed people posting this on the thread so others are doing the same thing now, so I feel even more confident now)
Starting with CTSE
C=3
T=20
S=19
E=5
*Keep 3 because it is the first number and smallest* T-S=1
E-1=4 (See how I repeated that twice? That is the "law" of 2 and you'll see it again and again in this code, and its the reason he repeats letters twice in patterns.)
WSE; W=23, S=19, E=5
23-19=4 (the law of 2) add 4+4=8, then 19-5=14(the law of 2) 14/2=7
again...(the law of 2) You get two 7's....the answer is 877!
Finally, I did it a 3rd time and got 314-877-6400
THEN I Googled the phone number (for the gentleman who accused me of being a farce) and found the Missouri Institute for Mental Health with that phone number...I quickly noticed the address as Arsenal Street and found those letters within the code:
ALPNTE GLSE - SE ERTE
VLSE MTSE = Arsenal Street (You use the same A twice b/c it is the first letter and the law of 2 remember?)
NOTE: If you are a computer scientist or math teacher and are pulling your hair out right now, then you will now realize why the FBI is asking for help, right? You don't use logic, you use children-like rules, which is sort of how the mind of some people work, such as autism champs! LOL
Finally, after you use those letters to get Arsenal Street....the remaining letters are:
PGLSETEVLSEME = 5400 (using the same math formula for the phone number and always, the law of 2!)
Coincidence? I get 5400 Arsenal Street 314-877-6400
Now, here is the tricky part...the next paragraph then changes "laws"...its no longer the law of 2 and the alphabet...its a game where you find the letters before a repeating letter:
Here is the next 3 lines:
PNRTRSE ONDRSE WLD NCBE
NWLD XLRCMSP NEWLD STS ME XL
DULMT6TUNSE NCBEXL
I immediately noticed the "N"s and wrote out all letters before the N's:
PODEPUE
NOW...I Googled PODEPUE...and got nothing...then I googled "podepue" and "missouri" and I got Susan Depue from the Missouri Institue for Mental Health. So for the gentleman who thought I had the answers and then Googled to make the answers fit (that doesnt even make logical sense does it?)...that's how I found her name in the pattern and confirmed with Google her association with the letter code....
Finally, I didnt even have to keep doing that, just kept staring at the code and I got the medications being wrong, the "mg" letters you'll see (after separating the "bad" letters), you'll get a message about the wrong dosage (see XL? He's talking about medications because I've gone through this where pharmacies think XR instead of XL, or EL, and that could cause you a serious health problem). Get it?
The paragraph below that seems to be a social security number or numerical code, the page titled "NOTES" is all incriminating evidence to point to the people responsible for hurting this man, the first page are directions, or a diary of where he travelled and what he did, and once all that is solved you'll get a story about the crime committed
email: dannysantopiettro at yahoo "
What i find odd is that his shorter lines are always on the center of the page. Perhaps he started writing from the middle, then expanded outwards. Otherwise, he would have had to know exactly how long each of his lines were going to be before he wrote them. Really interesting stuff.
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. -- Isaac Asimov
So there are lots of great comments, some on the topic of generating ideas towards a solution and lots of good humour ones. However for the purposes of doing a project like this is there an appropriate free site that could act as a collection point for all of the good comments, observations, and ideas? Sort of a wiki but some sort of comment section like /. where comments are evaluated and voted up and down, etc. It just seems that on /. this story will: 1. disappear off the radar in a day or so or sooner; 2. fill up with funny, interesting, and other off topic (solution related) comments.
For those of us that are interested in the idea of attempting to solve the problem (even if futile it is still interesting) having a crowdsourcing project site for this would be great. Thoughts? Suggestions?
More info on case may also prove to be helpful, ie: map of area found, last known address, name of hospital & distance from, how long in hospital, staff names, prescriptions, friends... How can anyone solve this not knowing the victim at all? Good luck to all of you working on this!
Line 7 in P1 seems to be something about someone demanding something, "Or Else" (money?)with instructions to follow in three parts.
The "Notes" page seems to be directions to somewhere. Perhaps for the dropoff? 36 miles on 74 S, or S Parkway, or SE, 29 (Is that an exit?) I 73
The FBI can do their own fucking work for a change.
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
Nearly every letter ends in E.
"I can't imagine how things could get any worse!" (some guy) "That could just be failure of imaginatioÂn on your p
There is no reward being offered, just the knowledge that you may be solving an intriguing murder mystery, the FBI stated.
"I can't imagine how things could get any worse!" (some guy) "That could just be failure of imaginatioÂn on your p
a substitution cypher... Noting that WLD is both used frequently throughout both messages and appears to be used possessive as well as it is found with an apostrophe once throughout note 1, and found other places without said apostrophe.
Not sure that the brackets have any meaning other than an emphasis, they appear to be used as an enclosure, not appearing to be indicative of replacing anything else.
Interesting to note that PRSE and NCBE are common throughout, and WLD NCBE appear to be paired in both notes. I wouldn't be surprised if these notes are related via topic.
I wouldn't be surprised if the base is set off of a simple child's toy, such as a cracker jack toy decoder and a few letters mixed up from the original as years went by, paired with some possible shorthand and spelling errs...
Would be nice to have an idea how his speech patterns were.
IMO, this article is about scouting for new cryptoanalysis talent at the FBI.
The article is even kind enough to provide the address to apply to.
Remember to show all your work.
it has a look to it like the pages in Neues Archive des criminalrechts
There is a statutory exception for circumventions performed in the course of an investigation by a bona fide law enforcement agency. See 17 USC 1201(e). I imagine that anyone participating in this competition would be deemed "a person acting pursuant to a contract with the United States", though I'd check with the FBI first to make sure such a contract is in place.
IT says:
REMEMBER THE MILK
This doesn't look like a cryptogram/code, more like his own language; a mix-up of words. I swear I see 'first', 'second' and 'third' in one note. Looks like he scrambles words while replacing a few when it's a related group of words.
You want to know how to help your kids? LEAVE THEM THE F*&K ALONE. --George Carlin
Obviously these letters have nothing to do with the murder if they were wrote 3 days befor his death then what the heck does it have to do with the killer what he knew he was gonna be killed and who done it i don't think so i think it's about getting the killer to come forward and start a forum with him to eventually catch him and if it works great.I think they should close the book Open it again (without the letters) and start over from the beginnig and this time don't worry about the letters ya never know