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Convicted Terrorist Relied On Single-Letter Cipher

Hugh Pickens writes "The Register reports that the majority of the communications between convicted terrorist Rajib Karim and Bangladeshi Islamic activists were encrypted with a system which used Excel transposition tables which they invented themselves. It used a single-letter substitution cipher invented by the ancient Greeks that had been used and described by Julius Caesar in 55BC. Despite urging by the Yemen-based al Qaida leader Anwar Al Anlaki, Karim rejected the use of a sophisticated code program called 'Mujhaddin Secrets' which implements all the AES candidate cyphers, 'because "kaffirs," or non-believers, know about it so it must be less secure.'"

5 of 254 comments (clear)

  1. Re:More spreadsheet abuse by somersault · · Score: 4, Informative

    Actually considering the story on The Register is from March, I'll stick with hilarious.

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    which is totally what she said
  2. Re:More spreadsheet abuse by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    Muslim mathematicians no doubt helped cracking it.

    Close. The Ceasar shift was broken before Islam even began. But the improved version known as the Vigenere cipher was broken (after being considered unbreakable for centuries) by the Arabic scientist Al-Kindi in the ninth century A.D.

  3. Re:More spreadsheet abuse by daem0n1x · · Score: 3, Informative

    I'm glad terrorists are even more retarded than the government officials that try to catch them. Makes me feel a lot safer.

  4. Kaffir != non believers. by 140Mandak262Jamuna · · Score: 1, Informative

    Infidels are the non believers, usually restricted to the Jews and Christians because they are the people of the Book, but they just don't accept Mohammad. Kaffirs are more like pagans, heathens, idolators. Then there are najis, the dirty. Then there are apostates. The ranking is muslim > infidels > kaffirs > najis > apostates.

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    sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
  5. Re:More spreadsheet abuse by StormShaman · · Score: 3, Informative

    Wait, huh? Wikipedia says the Vigenère cipher was created in the 16th century.