Solving the 405

[jroberson]

I think the point I was trying to make is that....if I could construct this in a few hours with absolutely ZERO cryptographical training or experience, The Zodiac could have done so as well, which imo pretty much destroys the long-held notion this guy had military codebreaking training.

Ofcourse, but there are some things to consider. The ciphers were made in the late 60's. And perhaps the 408 exhibits some properties that hint military training. Your pen and paper cipher is interesting in this regard. I'm eager to compare it to the Zodiac ciphers.

A question on my mind here, to what extent are the irregularities in the 408 intentional?

Hmm, I don't know. IMO, there's nothing in the 408 that couldn't have been learned from a book. Plenty of tomes at the time covered homophonic ciphers of the same ilk as the 408.

As for intentional...not really sure what's intentional in the 408. Seems to me a lot of misspellings and mistakes that hint at a lazy, semi-disorganized mind. Sure, the Zodiac used a lot of symbols, but one would need only a book of such things.

I used Wikipedia...


What exactly do you see in the 408 as indication of clear intent?

[jroberson]

Nice cipher penmanship

Here is a first attempt at a textual version:

Code: Select all

T[jaIfd+@rg=Dhj
2moK0Vs.uJ*v;w*
AEGbX>^GH5Uk(:?
<Tu_tF!#jx»i~R]
7-z{}pNg$3lM9fS
*@I-«Z2»|ks/J>4
Tq?PAsWH61yt,G$
mQ\a¨!iB=d09+vr
{ezUWd%6[w&\L#h

J>Ri5-yXp{m\¬:_
3Zs0v8!<jw4g^`j
(GM1OCTxQ’#-17n
,};fW9@/[a&2jm¨
{|E0CuvrX=V!KDh
cZJ~l,.53)|?_os
w-y$41]bé^Fe(*x
’RCUSyq/:\<&8èz
`?¬7W#«6/¨-O}Q>

au=é0vUF.W!:Iwd
E^zG*(d-«Xx<R#Z
4A)7u/9k1ay=’{H
l}YfJ.I:t~&\DQ¨
@r8<V3X]1S*m`ic
Oe0B6p%v5NM|Ph#
Z>w*^do«4(/9xI+
7bga1[è}Gq’KLfT
=d.Ak&!@uUFHtBz

Please counter-verify, this is a rough draft. I count 99 different symbols; that's a lot for a cipher this size...

_pi

Hmmm, well I don't have the original key set, but IIRC, there are a lot of symbols. 90 or so sounds about right. Basically I just used a frequency table to allocate x symbols per each letter. So near one hundred would be about right, even though I realize I could have used far fewer.

Anyway, I'm not sure that ASCII transliteration is correct. For instance, the symbol .. is an F in the first line of the first third, but in the second third on the second line, where there should be another F, another symbol appears.

Perhaps I'm missing something but I assume you replaced each symbol with an ASCII code, correct? Or is your transliteration in reverse? Is the bottom third meant to be the top third?

[_pi]

I had placed the cipher blocks in the order of your image naming convention (GEDC0300b.jpg, GEDC0301b.jpg, GEDC0302b.jpg). If I put the blocks in the order they appear in your post, you get:

Code: Select all

au=é0vUF.W!:Iwd
E^zG*(d-«Xx<R#Z
4A)7u/9k1ay=’{H
l}YfJ.I:t~&\DQ¨
@r8<V3X]1S*m`ic
Oe0B6p%v5NM|Ph#
Z>w*^do«4(/9xI+
7bga1[è}Gq’KLfT
=d.Ak&!@uUFHtBz

J>Ri5-yXp{m\¬:_
3Zs0v8!<jw4g^`j
(GM1OCTxQ’#-17n
,};fW9@/[a&2jm¨
{|E0CuvrX=V!KDh
cZJ~l,.53)|?_os
w-y$41]bé^Fe(*x
’RCUSyq/:\<&8èz
`?¬7W#«6/¨-O}Q>

T[jaIfd+@rg=Dhj
2moK0Vs.uJ*v;w*
AEGbX>^GH5Uk(:?
<Tu_tF!#jx»i~R]
7-z{}pNg$3lM9fS
*@I-«Z2»|ks/J>4
Tq?PAsWH61yt,G$
mQ\a¨!iB=d09+vr
{ezUWd%6[w&\L#h


Does this look in the proper order? And yes, I replaced each symbol with an ASCII code.

[Jarlve]

I think the point I was trying to make is that....if I could construct this in a few hours with absolutely ZERO cryptographical training or experience, The Zodiac could have done so as well, which imo pretty much destroys the long-held notion this guy had military codebreaking training.

Ofcourse, but there are some things to consider. The ciphers were made in the late 60's. And perhaps the 408 exhibits some properties that hint military training. Your pen and paper cipher is interesting in this regard. I'm eager to compare it to the Zodiac ciphers.

A question on my mind here, to what extent are the irregularities in the 408 intentional?

Hmm, I don't know. IMO, there's nothing in the 408 that couldn't have been learned from a book. Plenty of tomes at the time covered homophonic ciphers of the same ilk as the 408.

As for intentional...not really sure what's intentional in the 408. Seems to me a lot of misspellings and mistakes that hint at a lazy, semi-disorganized mind. Sure, the Zodiac used a lot of symbols, but one would need only a book of such things.

I used Wikipedia...


What exactly do you see in the 408 as indication of clear intent?

I don't really know. It's an open question on my mind. The irregularities known mainly are the symbol and plaintext errors, and mixing cyclic with random homophonic substitution but there may be more.

It seems that I cannot solve your cipher (_pi transcription) with my automatic solver (which is optimized for speed solving around 340 multiplicity levels) and neither with ZKDecrypto (w/o user interference).

The multiplicity is an indication of how hard a substitution cipher is to solve (higher is harder) and is simply the number of symbols divided by the amount of characters.

Zodiac 408: 54 / 408 = 0.132
Zodiac 340: 63 / 340 = 0.185
jroberson 405 (_pi transcript.): 99 / 405 = 0.244

[Jarlve]

With the newer _pi transcription this is the best scoring example out of 100 runs on thorough with my solver. The higher multiplicity seems to be an issue here for my solver.

4477_680_75.txt:

Code: Select all

tieratonguedher
factserancessed
collionnotheres
ingoughdintonof
whislaccoustswe
nganthatherlybe
dresarinceonehd
lortaindtorsmoh
ergontetionsinc
urswhatchetoldm
adlatiesmecrarm
etrandheoreaala
ndbountoittimth
elfadithcelesam
eduninghallimil
eatycaborandese
rsdouthodistinc
rilluentohandor
himthordthreamm
itisallgiustbes
oftocratshoyedi
shimineemedinsb
lacedheryairnou
sthandidlylourc
hhisolustatinty
toitheiderandth
edcouratietimem


[jroberson]

I had placed the cipher blocks in the order of your image naming convention (GEDC0300b.jpg, GEDC0301b.jpg, GEDC0302b.jpg). If I put the blocks in the order they appear in your post, you get:

Code: Select all

au=é0vUF.W!:Iwd
E^zG*(d-«Xx<R#Z
4A)7u/9k1ay=’{H
l}YfJ.I:t~&\DQ¨
@r8<V3X]1S*m`ic
Oe0B6p%v5NM|Ph#
Z>w*^do«4(/9xI+
7bga1[è}Gq’KLfT
=d.Ak&!@uUFHtBz

J>Ri5-yXp{m\¬:_
3Zs0v8!<jw4g^`j
(GM1OCTxQ’#-17n
,};fW9@/[a&2jm¨
{|E0CuvrX=V!KDh
cZJ~l,.53)|?_os
w-y$41]bé^Fe(*x
’RCUSyq/:\<&8èz
`?¬7W#«6/¨-O}Q>

T[jaIfd+@rg=Dhj
2moK0Vs.uJ*v;w*
AEGbX>^GH5Uk(:?
<Tu_tF!#jx»i~R]
7-z{}pNg$3lM9fS
*@I-«Z2»|ks/J>4
Tq?PAsWH61yt,G$
mQ\a¨!iB=d09+vr
{ezUWd%6[w&\L#h


Does this look in the proper order? And yes, I replaced each symbol with an ASCII code.

Yes, I think that's correct. You had them reversed based on the naming convention, which for me was reversed.

The order in which I posted them is actually correct. My apologies for the confusion.

[jroberson]

I don't really know. It's an open question on my mind. The irregularities known mainly are the symbol and plaintext errors, and mixing cyclic with random homophonic substitution but there may be more.

Hmmm. I've always assumed he just made similar mistakes with the cipher as those he made with his letters and his crimes.

You know, misspelling simple words and leaving blatant evidence behind, such as bloody fingerprints.

I realize that people ascribe these artifacts to higher intellect, but in my mind The Zodiac was just sloppy and semi-disorganized. Where one person sees super-villain intent, I see manic incompetency.

It seems that I cannot solve your cipher (_pi transcription) with my automatic solver (which is optimized for speed solving around 340 multiplicity levels) and neither with ZKDecrypto (w/o user interference).

The multiplicity is an indication of how hard a substitution cipher is to solve (higher is harder) and is simply the number of symbols divided by the amount of characters.

Zodiac 408: 54 / 408 = 0.132
Zodiac 340: 63 / 340 = 0.185
jroberson 405 (_pi transcript.): 99 / 405 = 0.244

Hmm. Well, as I said, I'm not a crypto-expert and thus I had no idea that higher multiplicity is an issue for the available software or I wouldn't have employed so many symbols.


I'll give you a hint, though: the 405 plaintext is a parody of the 408's plaintext. Dunno if that helps.




P.S. Yes, I see now with your ratio.

If multiplicity were 1, that would mean X symbols for X characters, which would be impossible to solve without some kind of hint.

[glurk]

Jarlve-

Any luck with this one? I've been away for a bit, and am now looking at it, but I agree that the multiplicity is a bit TOO high and jroberson may have accidentally made a 'semi-unsolvable' cipher himself.
I'll keep looking at it, for the time being, though...

-glurk

[Jarlve]

About the misspellings in various Zodiac communications,

From the start I've felt that these were at the least semi-intentional because they just seem so atypical and the experts in this video also believe this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ecOGk7IpQlo

Not only this, I believe most Zodiac communications were made up so to resemble a different personality, acting/living up to the role. The '5/8/74 Citizen Letter Sent to the SF Chronicle PHOTO' may be more in line with his real being. http://www.servimg.com/image_preview.ph ... u=14945813

[Jarlve]

Jarlve-

Any luck with this one? I've been away for a bit, and am now looking at it, but I agree that the multiplicity is a bit TOO high and jroberson may have accidentally made a 'semi-unsolvable' cipher himself.
I'll keep looking at it, for the time being, though...

-glurk

Nope. I just ran it through both solvers and haven't tried anything else. It makes me consider planning a multiplicity upgrade for my solver though, if possible.