Seven Codes You'll Never Ever Break

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/12/codes/

by cyphersanctus • 14 years ago

55 45 14 years ago

jgrahamc2• 14 years ago

Stupid title.

Just because Kryptos Part IV hasn't been broken so far doesn't mean that it won't be. It was designed to be broken.

Oh, wait, the actual title is "7 Codes You’ll Never Ever Break" instead of "Codes Hackers Will Never Ever Break". The actual title is more likely to be true, especially given the complete crackpots that appear in groups like Kryptos with outlandish 'breaks' to the codes that are complete crap.

Breaking codes is hard, takes a long time and requires method. Most people won't break these codes.

stephengillie11• 14 years ago

At some point, someone will just brute-force these.

achille• 14 years ago

You can't brute force if you don't know the cipher. Heres an example: Imagine a code that smartly encodes and hides spoken voice. No amount of brute force would be able to crack that.

iso-8859-14• 14 years ago

How do you know they're not one-time pads?

podperson2• 14 years ago

One of the codes may be a one-time-pad reference to a book which may no longer exist OR the ciphertext may simply be a meaningless fraud.

Another is probably written in an invented, private language.

Two others are short enough that brute force approaches will almost certainly create false positives.

In general, brute force can only work if you have some idea of what to expect the clear text to look like.

marshray7• 14 years ago

I know, would anyone like an 8th?

    641648018FD15E9157AB76299C47FFCC9974EB401494D13398A9F2635F66AD83

Spoiler alert: It's just /dev/random

Dylan168072• 14 years ago

Spoiler alert: That makes it not a code.

Tichy2• 14 years ago

Grr, of course the link to "drawings of naked women" is broken. Anybody has the correct URL?

ColinWright2• 14 years ago

For your delight and delectation, here's a link:

http://brbl-zoom.library.yale.edu/viewer/1006200

For reference, a simple Google search found it in about 30 seconds.

Tichy2• 14 years ago

Delightful, thanks!

dutchbrit2• 14 years ago

You can find a PDF version here: http://archive.org/details/TheVoynichManuscript

jzig• 14 years ago

The Dorabella cipher has been solved: http://unsolvedproblems.org/S12x.pdf

jgrahamc2• 14 years ago

No, it hasn't.

Did you read his 'explanation'?

First the decrypted code is close to gibberish and second he starts by creating the key by removing duplicated letters and yet the key has two Ns, three Is, two Ys, two Ws, etc.

ColinWright2• 14 years ago

Unpaginated: http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/12/codes/?pid=1708&...

Added in edit: Interesting that someone downvoted this comment. Did someone fat-finger it, or do some people really think it's wrong to give a link to the unpaginated version? I'd like to know. If you feel unable to reply here, then feel free to email - address is in my profile. Thanks.

Surio• 14 years ago

I, for one, appreciate unpaginated links, so thank you.

dutchbrit2• 14 years ago

On decoding the Voynich manuscript, http://www.edithsherwood.com/voynich_decoded/

nnq2• 14 years ago

semi-offtopic: how could one crack a cyphered text if it was written in a 100% invented/artificial language, with no relation to any natural language, not even good word-to-word mapping (imagine a pictografic language like the assian ones, but unrelated)? where would one start without word-frequency analysis or something similar to begin with?

Maybe the Voynich manuscript has such a completely imagined language, and that's why nothing worked (if it's not a "hoax:, of course).

MichaelGG• 14 years ago

A 100% artificial language can be equivalent to a one-time pad, so there's no guarantee it could be cracked.

stephengillie11• 14 years ago

Why can't we brute-force one-time pads? Did someone figure out how to create infinite combinations of 26 letters? As far as I understand, this space is finite, and thus can be brute-forced.

nnq2• 14 years ago

So if we were to have to make sense of a crypted message from an alien civilization we knew nothing about, this would be equivalent with cracking a one-time pad cyphered message and therefore simply impossible? (this is the original context I thought of when asking the top question actually)

piqufoh• 14 years ago

Bruce Schneier broke these codes before breakfast, and now he's gonna break you! http://www.schneierfacts.com/

Zenst• 14 years ago

Thats brillianty funny, now us geeks have our own chuck norris.

greiskul• 14 years ago

There is also Jeff Dean: http://www.quora.com/Jeff-Dean/What-are-all-the-Jeff-Dean-fa...

Seven Codes You'll Never Ever Break

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