doranchak, do you have any plans for working on Z13 and/or Z32 in the future? just curious

doranchak, do you have any plans for working on Z13 and/or Z32 in the future? just curious

Might try out a few ideas. But not really planning much. There’s not much we can do with such short ciphers. But who knows? Maybe some interesting ideas will emerge.

First of all, congratulations guys. Truly amazing work. As someone who tries to uncover crimes for a living (though not these types of crimes) I would just push back on your comment in the video that this isn’t helpful or a big breakthrough. It is. I was reading just last night arguments on this website from two years ago about whether Zodiac needed any special cryptological background ("Ralphie could have made the 408 and the 340 is bullshit"). We now know that’s not true. Zodiac clearly had some cryptological background. Like others, I’m not at a place in my life where I can make this a serious hobby, but I think there are a few places I would start if I could:

1. How much technical expertise was needed to make the 340? Could someone who washed out of an Army coding class do it? Someone who read a book? Or do you need to really understand cryptology? Would be curious for doranchak and others to opine of this. There are also cryptological historians (the NSA actually runs a museum), and they might be able to shed some light on what sort of knowledge was floating around a broader cryptologic community at the time.

2. What unique cryptological signatures did Z use for the 340? I barely understand much of that video but going diagonally, splitting into three parts were probably not sua sponte ideas of Zodiac. What other ideas did he incorporate?

3. Where can those ideas be found:

a. What military (or IC I suppose) courses at the time existed for cryptology? A lot of that stuff should be in the national archives by now, next time someone can safely make a trip there. FOIA could work also.

b. What books existed at the time? How widely published were they?

Focus less on the content and more on what it says about the author. The 340 being real eliminates a large portion of the population. Congrats again.

It’s amazing work that this was solved! Great international recognition for the amazing work.

I happened to talk to my dad this week, who was in the Oregon National Guard during the late 60s. These weren’t a serious military unit by a long shot – mainly a bunch of draft dodging privileged kids (like my father, affectionately!) Dad and this other guy would spend a weekend once a month locked inside a "bunker" at PDX where they were ostensibly tasked with "code breaking", but really they just listened to football with a radio they snuck in knowing primarily that their main responsibility was to call The Adults if god forbid something suspicious popped up on the equipment (he doesn’t even remember what equipment they were supposed to be monitoring).

To train for this task, they had a few day training on codes with a bunch of random military soldiers at a base in Washington State. And, what he said is interesting. With code, the complexity isn’t writing a code (which they spent their time learning), its the decryption (which was barely hit upon). To this day, he thinks he remembers enough from his training to come up with a complex code that could be a challenge to break (especially if he made mistakes) – but he certainly couldn’t break anything more complex than a newspaper Jumble.

My point is that during this time, there were probably a lot of people who weren’t in formal code-breaking programs in the military who were randomly trained around the country with sufficient skill – especially had their training been relatively contemporary to when a person started sending his work product.

doranchak,
Looking forward for your next video! Great job! You were so close all this years.

People starting to get into idea of some ‘super smart military intelligence’ guy. IMHO columnar transposition concept (or whatever) is more like ’10 years school kid’ kind of intelligence.

You need to remember the times. It used to be very common for boys to be given guns, play cowboys and Indians, etc. before all the political correctness set-in! The Zodiac was also probably born after WW1 and before WWII. Then there was the Korean War and Vietnam! Lots of war toys and games (GI JOE).

The news and newsreels shown in movie theatres between double features had lots of items about the wars, military, spies, etc.

So imo it is a huge mistake to decide the Zodiac had lots of experience in codes based on military service or that what he did was on the level of a ten year old. He could have had military experience and just "dumbed down" or not.

First of all, congratulations guys. Truly amazing work. As someone who tries to uncover crimes for a living (though not these types of crimes) I would just push back on your comment in the video that this isn’t helpful or a big breakthrough. It is. I was reading just last night arguments on this website from two years ago about whether Zodiac needed any special cryptological background ("Ralphie could have made the 408 and the 340 is bullshit"). We now know that’s not true. Zodiac clearly had some cryptological background. Like others, I’m not at a place in my life where I can make this a serious hobby, but I think there are a few places I would start if I could:

1. How much technical expertise was needed to make the 340? Could someone who washed out of an Army coding class do it? Someone who read a book? Or do you need to really understand cryptology? Would be curious for doranchak and others to opine of this. There are also cryptological historians (the NSA actually runs a museum), and they might be able to shed some light on what sort of knowledge was floating around a broader cryptologic community at the time.

2. What unique cryptological signatures did Z use for the 340? I barely understand much of that video but going diagonally, splitting into three parts were probably not sua sponte ideas of Zodiac. What other ideas did he incorporate?

3. Where can those ideas be found:

a. What military (or IC I suppose) courses at the time existed for cryptology? A lot of that stuff should be in the national archives by now, next time someone can safely make a trip there. FOIA could work also.

b. What books existed at the time? How widely published were they?

Focus less on the content and more on what it says about the author. The 340 being real eliminates a large portion of the population. Congrats again.

Excellent questions – exactly what I am wondering too.

I hope Dave (along with his two colleagues) gets an invitation to speak at Crimecon in Austin next year, considering the amount of interest and publicity surrounding the 340 solve and the Zodiac case in general.

You need to remember the times. It used to be very common for boys to be given guns, play cowboys and Indians, etc. before all the political correctness set-in! The Zodiac was also probably born after WW1 and before WWII. Then there was the Korean War and Vietnam! Lots of war toys and games (GI JOE).

The news and newsreels shown in movie theatres between double features had lots of items about the wars, military, spies, etc.

So imo it is a huge mistake to decide the Zodiac had lots of experience in codes based on military service or that what he did was on the level of a ten year old. He could have had military experience and just "dumbed down" or not.

Totally open to the idea that my assumptions may be unfounded. But I think we should try to develop an informed opinion from people who understand crypto just how advanced the 340 was to create. Clearly, it’s more complex than the 408. Would love to hear opinions on just how much crypto knowledge creating the 340 required. Could everyone who worked a radio in Korea create this? Everyone who went through basic training? I would note that even if that’s true, that would still actually fairly aggressively limit the pool of suspects.

I would push back on the idea that oh military, spies, etc were more prevalent in the culture so trying to run this down is pointless. (Obviously) there was no internet. Zodiac couldn’t have watched a movie and googled it. Zodiac has some tie to a book/magazine/class/experience with crypto. Open to informed pushback on how much experience he would have needed.

It’s amazing work that this was solved! Great international recognition for the amazing work.

I happened to talk to my dad this week, who was in the Oregon National Guard during the late 60s. These weren’t a serious military unit by a long shot – mainly a bunch of draft dodging privileged kids (like my father, affectionately!) Dad and this other guy would spend a weekend once a month locked inside a "bunker" at PDX where they were ostensibly tasked with "code breaking", but really they just listened to football with a radio they snuck in knowing primarily that their main responsibility was to call The Adults if god forbid something suspicious popped up on the equipment (he doesn’t even remember what equipment they were supposed to be monitoring).

To train for this task, they had a few day training on codes with a bunch of random military soldiers at a base in Washington State. And, what he said is interesting. With code, the complexity isn’t writing a code (which they spent their time learning), its the decryption (which was barely hit upon). To this day, he thinks he remembers enough from his training to come up with a complex code that could be a challenge to break (especially if he made mistakes) – but he certainly couldn’t break anything more complex than a newspaper Jumble.

My point is that during this time, there were probably a lot of people who weren’t in formal code-breaking programs in the military who were randomly trained around the country with sufficient skill – especially had their training been relatively contemporary to when a person started sending his work product.

See my post above. Surely we can come to a more informed opinion about how much knowledge creating the 340 took. I would note though that your father had military training. Narrowing Z down to some sort of military experience would itself be a big breakthrough.

fraudatty,
What people refer to is 1950 ‘Basic Cryptography’ manual. It’s declassified historical document. Chapter 2 describes elementary transposition systems. You can find pretty much the same basic stuff in 1964 book ‘Codes and Ciphers’ by John Laffin. This book describes so-called scytale cipher. This scytale thingy is an ancient method of encoding which requires a pencil and a piece of paper wrapped around. On practice the is no need to use a pencil. It’s the same as simple columnar transposition. The quirk is that lines could be reshuffled or shifted on top of that.

I’m sure that David has better explanation.

Perhaps a good time to rethink Skaggs Island Naval communications installation, located just outside of Vallejo, and involved in codes and cryptology at the time. Some personnel records are available online.

fraudatty,
What people refer to is 1950 ‘Basic Cryptography’ manual. It’s declassified historical document. Chapter 2 describes elementary transposition systems. You can find pretty much the same basic stuff in 1964 book ‘Codes and Ciphers’ by John Laffin. This book describes so-called scytale cipher. This scytale thingy is an ancient method of encoding which requires a pencil and a piece of paper wrapped around. On practice the is no need to use a pencil. It’s the same as simple columnar transposition. The quirk is that lines could be reshuffled or shifted on top of that.

I’m sure that David has better explanation.

Thanks. Any elements of the 340 that are more complicated than this? Regardless, that manual was not publicly available at the time, though the book obviously was. Would be good to understand how widespread the book was.

Any elements of the 340 that are more complicated than this?

No, I don’t see any.

Would be good to understand how widespread the book was.

The book is just an example. Another good one is 1939 "Elementary Cryptanalysis" by Helen Gaines. It even mentions PARADISE keyword in couple of places. This basic stuff was known since 19th century.

Another good one is 1939 "Elementary Cryptanalysis" by Helen Gaines. It even mentions PARADISE keyword in couple of places.

Interesting!
I clipped them here:
https://imgur.com/a/x1Q1lHE