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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.
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
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
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Say you crack the code. Would you divulge the key?
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.
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.
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!!
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
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
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.
it's Welsh!
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.
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
Just find an autistic kid, problem solved!
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120749/plotsummary
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.
It says "Youmadbro?"
yes..none of the people who have worked on this thought of that, well done. I wonder if the ROT 13'd it..idiot.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
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
Too many repetitive letters to be true OTP. There are several repetitive sequences. It appears to be more akin to a sort of compression to my eyes...
I said no... but I missed and it came out yes.
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.
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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.
So lets see some examples from that lifetime of writing in code... And how bad was his spelling when he didn't write in code? Did he speak only English?
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
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
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.
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
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
Has anyone considered that maybe these notes ARE the one time pad for decrypting another message that hasn't been discovered yet?
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
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 >+
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!
Have gnu, will travel.
I guess they shouldnt have said so many uncharitable things about the NSA after 9-11.
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
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!
perhaps he was trying to translate the Voynich manuscript, and got to close, and a secret society had him killed. (lots of his words end in e, lots of the words in the Voynich manuscript end in the same symbol. Just saying)
I've decided to Diversify my Holdings. I've divided my cash between my left and right pockets, instead of all in one.
Looks like LISP code to me.
GNU/Stallman strikes again!
Why do all the people mentioning Lisp have no idea who made it? It's McCarthy, people, McCarthy!
(John, not Joe)
I feel the same way looking at it. In the first line, when my eyes scan over it, it reads something like "The impulses get" and then my brain goes 'wait what?' and i go back to re-read, and it vanishes back into the text. Its almost as if someone took two messages, dyslexiaed/letterdropped from both of them, then mingled the messages letter by letter or word by word. Most codes i see don't look like much of anything, but looking at this, it seems like a message is about to just fall out of it, if only my eyes moved in the right pattern.
I've decided to Diversify my Holdings. I've divided my cash between my left and right pockets, instead of all in one.
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"?
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)
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.
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)"
It appears to be just a hand-written Microsoft Activation Key.
I don't totally agree with you. He has been working on this code/cipher for years so his personal algorithm has probably gone through several revisions, becoming tougher with time. It is complicated enough that even with his years of playing with that cipher he still makes mistakes.
This really has the look of a code done completely in the persons head without the need of a sheet to do calculations on. There are too many mistakes, and the writing shows haste and carelessness, not the slow process of copying out the resulting code blocks as they are calculated. The three simplest codes that people start using is the simple substitution cipher (ex A becomes Z), transposition ciphers (ABCD becomes CABD) and the Playfair cipher. Next comes the Vigenère cipher, but that is usually too difficult to do in your head.
This doesn't look like it uses a one-time pad since there is too many weird repetitions, notably NCBE and WLD. I'd say something like a combination of a Playfair cipher, simply because there are some things in the message he couldn't encrypt like the 's at the bottom, and the inc near the top of page 1. The circled bit in the top right really looks like a key (and I'd bet the key is obscured by a substitution cipher).
The weird repetition really makes me think of Playfair ciphers, but the problem is the grouping. Playfairs always result in 2-letter groupings, and this message shows a lot of five letter groupings (ex page 1, line 2, block 1 "TFRNE") and even using Playfair would not result is so many NCBE.
That NCBE really puzzles me. Anyone who knows enough about codes to use one would know about the problems with such an obvious repeating element. As other people have mentioned it almost looks like a symbol for the period, but why use a four character replacement, and why be so obvious about it?
I did test out a few Playfair blocks to see if I could get anywhere, but obviously I am missing a few steps somewhere.
Anyone else think that the lines in the middle that have 71, 74, and 75 are steps/directions? It almost looks like the first phrases there are "first", "second" and "third". The part at the bottom almost appears to be an address (194 XXX's (NCBE) XXXXX) the last five either being "drive" or "court"
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.
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
Isn't that the leaked HD-DVD key?
~Syberz
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!
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.
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
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
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.
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