Zodiackillersite.com

Hi-

A few years ago, someone I have known for fifteen years now through the case and whose integrity is beyond question told me something. The problem is that this item was passed along to him by a buddy of his who was in the military prior to the Zodiac era. And we have no idea as to what his credibility is. I want to stress that I have no way of verifying this and neither does my friend. However, I pass it along as food for thought and possible research into a timeline for Mr. Harden prior to becoming a teacher.

My friend's buddy said he flew helicopters in the military and that he flew people around to various places. He said that he knew who Don Harden was and that he had flown him in his helicopter. He said that Mr. Harden was ex-NSA.

That is all I know. However, given how quickly they were able to force a solution to the 408 and the possibility that he merely deflected credit to Bettye's "sticktoitiveness" in order to throw people off the scent, this might begin to make sense.

As I said, just food for thought. I am not stating this as fact. I was told this four or five years ago.

Mike

Interesting story.

One thing I've always wondered about: How difficult is it to solve a cipher like the 408? Or, to put it in slightly different terms, how impressive is it that the Hardens solved it in...what was it, five (six?) days?

Honest question to the crypto heads - I have absolutely no idea myself, but my impression has always been that the 408 isn't all that complicated.

Hi-

As I've said on the other MB that you visit, once they had the idea about "i" and the "double L" in "kill," they were halfway home. That was the breakthrough that did it.

Mike

Harden's obituary, here:

http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/azcent ... =156920581

Makes absolutely no mention at all of any military service of any kind. So ex-NSA seems unlikely to me.

As to the 408 cipher itself, it would be considered difficult, but solvable. It mostly depends on how much time and effort one applies, and a little luck helps also. As has been pointed out, once they got the toehold of "I LIKE KILLING" a great deal of the cipher just falls into place.

Incidentally, they did NOT "force a solution to the 408." They found the solution, which is 100% correct. Multiple computer programs can solve it now, and they all reach the same solution. There certainly are such things as forced solutions, and we have all seen many of them in re to the 340 cipher, but that is an entirely different thing.

-glurk

Hi-

Not a crypto guy but I thought a "forced" solution is where you decide to look for certain words or phrases, as opposed to doing whatever else you do to solve a code, like just looking at letter frequency, etc.

Mike

mike_r wrote:Not a crypto guy but I thought a "forced" solution is where you decide to look for certain words or phrases, as opposed to doing whatever else you do to solve a code, like just looking at letter frequency, etc.

Mike-

While there isn't really any "formalized parlance" that I know of, a "forced solution" is one that breaks one or more of the generally accepted rules of cryptography, such as switching keys (as needed, randomly), using 'polyphones' - i.e., making symbols represent more than one letter, etc. Basically, a "forced" solution is a bad thing.

Looking for words and phrases, etc., is just as valid a part of the solving process as using letter frequencies, bigrams, trigrams, and so on. A good example of a true forced solution is Corey Starliper's 340 solution from a few years back. Doranchak has a nice writeup on it here:

http://oranchak.com/zodiac/corey/hoax.html

-glurk

I just want to add to glurk's answer and stress this important difference:

Trying out different words to see if a solution pops out is called a "crib" or "cribbing" (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Known-plaintext_attack). It is a valid way to attack certain cryptograms, and is part of how the Hardens cracked the 408.

A "forced solution", such as Corey Starliper's, turns "cribbing" into an application of pure imagination, and typically does not use valid cryptographic methods.

I don't see what difference Don Harden's credentials make. *shrug*

smithy-

There is some contingent of people out there who really want to believe that it is ABSOLUTELY AMAZING that a mere schoolteacher could solve Zodiac's INCREDIBLY DIFFICULT cipher and beat all of the best crypto minds out there, including the CIA, FBI, NSA, Naval Intelligence, etc. And that particular story makes for a good narrative, I suppose.

It isn't supported by any facts, though. There is no evidence whatsoever that any government agency even made any attempt to solve the 408, much less that they tried and failed. The story keeps getting repeated, though.

Fact is, this type of homophonic cipher is not really that difficult, as I am sure you well know. But I guess some people just refuse to let facts get in the way of a good story...

Nope, Harden's background doesn't mean anything. He and his wife solved the 408, released the solution, and it is correct. That's the end of the story for me.

-glurk

Hi-

Don't count me among those who refuse to believe that a hobbyist cryptographer could have solved the code. Once you try "open triangle" as "I" and then look in the third part of the code, you see an "open triangle" and two similar "semaphore flags." There is your theoretical "ILL." Once you begin plugging those in, you're almost home free.

I've posted about this on the Proboards MB.

Thank for educating me about cribbing vs. forcing. Now I won't mix up my terminology being the non-crypto guy I am. Harden cribbed, he didn't force.

I'm just telling you what someone told me FWIW to see if we can verify or refute this claim. I'm not asserting it is true or that the only way that Harden could have solved the code is to be ex-NSA.

Smithy, maybe you haven't been around the case long. People ruminate over all sorts of meaningless trivia that is much less relevant to the Zodiac story than Don Harden having worked for a secret code-solving institution before becoming a teacher. F'rinstance, this might explain how he came up with the solution before anyone else did and how he didn't just stumble onto his methodologies, but rather he was trained to do the type of cribbing he did to solve the code.

Mike