Slashdot Mirror
WW2 Pigeon Code Decrypted By Canadian?
Albanach writes "At the start of November Slashdot reported the discovery of a code, thought to be from the Second World War, found attached to the leg of a pigeon skeleton located in an English chimney. Now a Canadian by the name of Gord Young claims to have deciphered the message in less than 20 minutes. He believes that the message is comprised mostly of acronyms."
...squabbling about this.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
I have inherited a number of books and each one of them can be used to decode the message!
If you are in enemy territory sending messages back to your headquarters you want to be able to encode quickly and move fast to avoid capture. If the pidgeon is caught it is going to give away your position (somewhat) regardless of whether its message is decrypted so the strength of the crypto may not be so important to you.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
...for just winging it.
s/[stupid comments]/[intelligent discourse]/gi
The message - which attracted world-wide media attention - was put in the hands of Britain's top codebreakers at GCHQ at the beginning of November, but they have been unable to unlock the puzzle.
Isn't there old code books in museums anywhere?
He believes that the message is comprised mostly of acronyms."
Or it's another code, perhaps?
Gord Young, from Peterborough, in Ontario, says it took him 17 minutes to decypher the message after realising a code book he inherited was the key.
Not hard to "crack" a code if you have access to the relevant code book - which a) GCHQ says they don't have, and b) can hardly be called cracking the code. The possible point of failure is - as I'm sure I'm not the only one to spot - if Mr Young has the wrong codebook; codes got shifted and shuffled a lot, and the wrong code book might give a plausible plain text that is never the less incorrect.
Gonna be fun to see what more comes of this.
Everything in the world is controlled by a small, evil group to which, unfortunately, no one you know belongs.
OMG (oh my god) TIAAS (this is amazing and shit). BTW (by the way) IANAL (I am not a lawyer) ATINLA (and this is not legal advice).
Also, I pissed in your coffee. But your coffee is so bad anyway, I probably improved the flavour.
Canada's singularity will be when all of us are named Gord. I figure we're about five years away.
atyeu ushtr tasga poend
stsgd yyenb shjdm plkag
I don't believe this is a correct "interpretation" of the message, as it is too generic. Nothing contained in the message is of any use whatsoever. "Hit Jerry’s right or reserve battery here", "Troops, panzers, batteries, engineers, here", "Counter measures against panzers not working", "Go over field notes", "Found headquarters infantry right here"
What good is any of that? Where is "here"? There would have to be precise coordinates or grid numbers to indicate exactly what is where.
The other question is where would the pigeon be delivering this message to? All the way back to some headquarters in Britain is where. In that case the context of the message is even less useful, especially considering there would be a several hour delay before the message could be delivered all the way from France to Britain.
More information on these sites, includes the various "decoded" phrases.
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2012/12/16/world-war-2-pigeon-code-cracked_n_2311364.html
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2248818/Hit-Jerrys-panzers--code-dead-wartime-pigeon-cracked.html
Better known as 318230.
It makes for an interesting read.
Visit CryptoGnome in his home.
The alleged decoded message:
AOAKN - Artillery Observer At "K" Sector, Normandy
HVPKD - Have Panzers Know Directions
FNFJW - Final Note [confirming] Found Jerry's Whereabouts
DJHFP - Determined Jerry's Headquarters Front Posts
CMPNW - Counter Measures [against] Panzers Not Working
PABLIZ - Panzer Attack - Blitz
KLDTS - Know [where] Local Dispatch Station
27 / 1526 / 6 - June 27th, 1526 hours
I don't know about WWI/WWII acronyms but it seems unlikely that they were all exactly five letters long and had letter frequency like this (look at all those Qs, Xs, and Zs). I do know that ciphertext is usually written in groups of five letters to provide spacing without giving clues about the spacing of the plaintext. Also, there is a bit of stuff in the middle of the page below the ciphertext (cropped out of most photos), which if I remember right was used for metadata about what code was used.
This sounds like a case of someone looking at random stuff and trying a bit too hard to make sense of it.
On this date in the year 2517, slashdotters are trying to decode the following message (believe to be related to a covert intelligence op codename 'Twitter'): STOP #SOPA #PIPA #HR1981 #NDAA #CISPA #MPAA #RIAA #ACTA #TPPA
When the copyright term is "forever minus a day", live every day like it's the last.
the real message is much harder to decipher -- and we'll never tell.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
I love the title, "by a Canadian." Canada's national complex is such they can't even talk about breaking a code with the help of a codebook, without mentioning a Canadian did it.
5 letter acronyms of random letters
Um, yeah, it clearly needs a one-time-pad and this guy is a kook.
Gord-o, go back to beaver smoking, eh.
His decoding of the data gives specific information about german troops present on a specific day and time in history at a particular location. At least some of it should be verifiable.
In 17 minutes he certainly wouldn't have time to find a set of conditions that matched the acronyms he was claiming.
ICMP Type 3 Code 666: Carrier burned in transit.
The decrypted message: "Be sure to drink your ovaltine."
Is there any evidence that five letter acronyms of this kind were ever used?
His decryption just sounds made up. JW stands for "Jerry's Whereabouts"? Would "Jerry" ever be used in an official communication? Why does the message use "HV" for "have," then later "D" for "determined," and later still "K" for "know," all which are used as more or less synonymous?
PABLIZ looks a lot more like "PABUZ" on the original note to me, too, and makes far more sense given the rest of the five-letter blocks.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Dubious, right? If nobody knows, mandating outside references exudes oddness. Variable acronyms lose time in nervy efforts! :-)
In other words, the initial-based decryption as claimed looks like hopeful nonsense rather than a proper decryption as such. More here:-
http://www.ciphermysteries.com/2012/12/16/dead-ww2-pigeon-cipher-cracked-with-ww1-codebook-says-the-mail-errr-really
Does this change the official results?
EOM
No brain, no pain.
... in the first place is twitter able to lose???
Have gnu, will travel.
No idea how anyone thinks this holds up to even a cursory examination ...
For a better research insight I can recommend http://www.ciphermysteries.com/2012/12/11/at-last-the-secret-history-of-that-dead-cipher-pigeon as a good read ... It does claim to decipher the code but provides some coherent analysis around the origin of the message.
I call bullshit on this whole story. The letter frequencies are nicely consistent with a random OTP and woefully inconsistent with shorthand (which Mr. Young claims it is). 6 Q's, 4 X's and 4 Z's as opposed to 5 T's and 4 E's? Gee, there must have been a lot of Queens, Xylophones and Zebra's involved in that war! This alone is sufficient to sink the whole claim. And then there's the little problem that the story is shock full of holes:
- Mr Young claims they're using WWI-era codes. What makes him think this would be tolerated, in a war in which both sides were heavily reliant on encryption and codebreaking?
- A WWII artillery observer using carrier pigeons? Seriously??? We're talking about a very mobile war, with widely available radio equipment, and during which radar, jet engines, ballistic and guided missiles, and the atom bomb were invented. By the time the pigeon found home, the target could have moved 100miles. Yes, carrier pigeons were still used, but mainly in a backup capacity, and most certainly not for artillery observation missions.
- Why would the official codes use "panzers" and "jerries" as opposed to "tanks" and "germans/enemy"? Also, I'm not sure the word "blitz" was colloquial in allied countries before the end of the war. And it's used in a wrong context.
- "Counter Measures [against] Panzers Not Working?" There's so much wrong with that sentence I wouldn't know where to start. Not to mention all the other sentences he "decrypted". The guy has a lot of fantasy, I give him that.
...Gord Young claims to have deciphered the message in less than 20 minutes. He believes that the message is comprised mostly of acronyms.
Maybe they got the age of the message wrong. This sounds like a modern corporate press release.
Well, it is clearly Pidgin English.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
This message used a non-standard protocol. The widely respected standard is "RFC 1149 IP Datagrams on Avian Carriers 1 April 1990". They clearly did not use the common standard protocol, but an older, non-standard protocol.
AFK BRB, OIC.
It's not the least bit surprising that people in such a specialized field requiring terseness would develop such a jargon. All you needed to decode it was to know that it was sent by somebody in such a community, and access to knowledge from people who were also in the community. Hat's off to this Canadian for having the knowledge and figuring out how to apply it.
"PABLIZ" has 6 letters. The time waster obviously misread PABLU. "FNFJW" is obviously FNFJU, because the W's look different. Seems we are talking 'underwear' here. And the stuff mentioned by others already. I'd fire both the editor and the author who let this very forced interpretation go as "news".
The would-be decrypter says that it is a collection of single character abbreviations. If so, frequency analysis should back up the assertion. Here's the character frequency:
A:9, B:3, C:3, D:6, E:5, F:6, G:6, H:8, I:4, J:5, K:8, L:3, M:4, N:10, O:7, P:7, Q:6, R:9, S:2, T:5, U:4, V:2, W:2, X:4, Y:3, Z:4
Every character used at least once, multiple Z's, X's, and Q's, and a pretty flat distribution. A set of abbreviated words would show a more spiky distribution, with peaks on the more common letters and dips on the less common.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
Groups of five letters just happen to be five-letter acronyms. Couldn't be the common format of most ciphers, nope.
Is that a pigeon that speaks pidgin?
What ? They have computers in Canada now ?
It says he used a WWI code book. Yet, it includes things like 'PABLIZ - Panzer Attack - Blitz', In WWI the Germans didn't produce any 'Panzer' ie armour. They had the A7V tank, but from my recollection it was never referred to as Panzer. They also didn't use Blitz warfare until WWII. So, why would a WWI codebook have words in it referring to things not yet known/familiar to allied forces in WWI????
HVPKD - Have Panzers Know Directions
CMPNW - Counter Measures [against] Panzers Not Working
A lot of reference to panzers ... prior to the first one being built in the 1930's (too lazy to look up the exact date). Did Nostrodamus write this WWI code book?
Sure enough, the cow costume was hanging up next to the superhero outfit and sailors uniform. (S,Spud)
will be overjoyed