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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."
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!"
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No, no, no! It appears to be a conspiracy between Slashdot users ganjadude (952775) and elrous0 (869638) to deflect suspicion.
Karma: Excellent. 15 moderator points expire sometime.
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.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
I can't violate the DMCA. Sorry.
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 :)
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
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.
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
1% APY, No fees, Online Bank https://captl1.co/2uIErYq Don't let your $$$ sit in a no-interest acct.
So chances are we'll never be able understand it. Shaka, when the walls fell.
"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.
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 ?
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