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."

Comments

I've cracked it!

[elrous0]

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.

Re:I've cracked it!

[thomasdz]

No, no, no! It appears to be a conspiracy between Slashdot users ganjadude (952775) and elrous0 (869638) to deflect suspicion.

Re:I've cracked it!

[elrous0]

In all seriousness, though, it would help to have these additional details:

McCormick was a high school dropout, but he was able to read and write and was said to be “street smart.” According to members of his family, McCormick had used such encrypted notes since he was a boy, but apparently no one in his family knows how to decipher the codes, and it’s unknown whether anyone besides McCormick could translate his secret language. Investigators believe the notes in McCormick’s pockets were written up to three days before his death.

Over the years, a number of CRRU’s examiners—who are experts at breaking codes—have puzzled over the McCormick notes and applied a variety of analytical techniques to tease out an answer. “Standard routes of cryptanalysis seem to have hit brick walls,” Olson noted. Our cryptanalysts have several plausible theories about the notes, but so far, there has been no solution.

To move the case forward, examiners need another sample of McCormick’s coded system—or a similar one—that might offer context to the mystery notes or allow valuable comparisons to be made. Or, short of new evidence, Olson said, “Maybe someone with a fresh set of eyes might come up with a brilliant new idea.”

I think the code was probably meant for his eyes only, which means he probably constructed it using abbreviations and codewords that only he himself would understand. Without knowing those, well...good luck.

Re:I've cracked it!

[wreakyhavoc]

It's a one time pad. The pad, in this case, seems to have resided in the head of the writer. If statistical methods of attack have failed, there is little hope of solving the code.

One wonders what information would need saving in such a complex manner. It seems like the memory needed to remember the decoding scheme would be equivalent to the memory needed to remember the information in the first place. Perhaps the notes were intended for someone else, with a key to be provided at another time or location.

If http://xkcd.com/538/ I guess it didn't work.

Re:I've cracked it!

[cforciea]

Given that there are repeated segments of symbols, it is almost definitively not a one time pad.

Re:I've cracked it!

[LWATCDR]

Your probably correct but just a note to myself. If I ever kill someone I need to leave a message that is nothing but the output of a random number generator. That will keep them busy for decades :)

Re:I've cracked it!

[Ecuador]

According to members of his family, McCormick had used such encrypted notes since he was a boy

So, wouldn't they have more samples of the encryption to help with the decryption effort? If they have samples from when he was a boy, they might even be an earlier & easier code that evolved to the one in question...

Re:I've cracked it!

[psergiu]

Unfortunatelly it's something darker. I don't dare to put the message here in plain text for all search engines to find so here's a ROT13 version of the decoded message:

Jr'er ab fgenatref gb ybir
Lbh xabj gur ehyrf naq fb qb V
N shyy pbzzvgzrag'f jung V'z guvaxvat bs
Lbh jbhyqa'g trg guvf sebz nal bgure thl
V whfg jnaan gryy lbh ubj V'z srryvat
Tbggn znxr lbh haqrefgnaq

Arire tbaan tvir lbh hc
Arire tbaan yrg lbh qbja
Arire tbaan eha nebhaq naq qrfreg lbh
Arire tbaan znxr lbh pel
Arire tbaan fnl tbbqolr
Arire tbaan gryy n yvr naq uheg lbh

Re:I've cracked it!

[Al Al Cool J]

So chances are we'll never be able understand it. Shaka, when the walls fell.

Re:I've cracked it!

[wooferhound]

The larger versions of the encrypted notes are here . . .
http://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/2011/march/cryptanalysis_032911/image/gallery
It appears that each word ends with an E with some kind of prefix, almost all words end with SE but also common are NE and BE, and sometimes TE and LE
Could be some kind of variation of Pig Latin ?

Re:I've cracked it!

[Whatsisname]

The unabomber did that sort of stuff. He left tons of false clues in the packages he sent, and it caused the FBI to undergo the most expensive manhunt in its history. Only they didn't even catch him, his writing was recognized by his brother.

Link to the notes:

[Moderator]

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!"

Re:Link to the notes:

[mastershake82]

Well... since nobody has any clue as to how it is encrypted... perhaps there is something specific as to how it was written regarding how to decrypt. They don't know that there is, and they don't know that there isn't, so they've effectively provided you everything they have to work with. It's up to you if you think it should be worked in a different format.

And the coded message is...

[wcrowe]

DRINKYOUROVALTINE

Hmm...

[tool462]

There are a lot of nested parens in those notes. It's clearly Lisp code. They should bring Alan Turing in for questioning.

Re:Hmm...

[One Louder]

"The more than 30 lines of coded material use a maddening variety of letters, numbers, dashes, and parentheses"

It's obviously a port of sendmail written in Perl.

we are volunteers

[alphatel]

If the Fed really wants help they should consider providing:

• Images at sizes greater than 100kb and 600x600 pixels.
• Scans with resolutions higher than 96 dpi.
• Tear up my dossier (I know I must be on it because I'm an American).

if you know how to read these

[bugs2squash]

you must be a suspect

I'd like to, but...

[Steauengeglase]

I can't violate the DMCA. Sorry.

Re:I'd like to, but...

[Stray7Xi]

I can't violate the DMCA. Sorry.

Seriously, the guy's been dead for 11 years...

So only 59 more years to go on his copyright. I'll consider downloading it then, until then I'm supporting the artist.

Re:I'd like to, but...

[tepples]

So only 59 more years to go on his copyright.

You mean 59 + 20 + 20 + 20 + ...

Lots of patterns

[davidbrit2]

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.

It's not encrypted

[QX-Mat]

it's Welsh!

Re:FBI is grasping

[Anonymous Coward]

They could be shopping lists that the victim made in code for his own amusement

I was about to give you a smart response, but I just realized that I read the wrong article (I read the actual FBI posting, not the commentary on the posting). From the original posting, it seems like there's two reasons for the FBI wanting to crack the code: from a investigative standpoint, it might give some hint as to where the victim was before he was murdered, which might lead to other clues.

However, since the cryptanalyst quoted also said, "Even if we found out that he was writing a grocery list or a love letter, we would still want to see how the code is solved. This is a cipher system we know nothing about," I'd guess that a large part is just wanting to know the answer to a puzzle that they couldn't solve. If you don't understand this impulse, you're obviously not human, or have no interest in bettering yourself.

thats it?

[mugnyte]

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?

Re:maybe it's just gibberish

[C_L_Lk]

Has anyone considered that maybe these notes ARE the one time pad for decrypting another message that hasn't been discovered yet?

Larger versions of the notes

[bl968]

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/