Here are the details – http://www.isi.edu/natural-language/mt/ … ght-14.pdf

They use some kind of machine learning algorithm. It recognizes from among 50 different cipher types with accuracy of almost 60%.

A cool thing today was being in the same panel with Dan Olson from the FBI. He gave an interesting talk about the history of the FBI’s codebreaking.

If I see him during tomorrow’s sessions, what should I ask him?

I also met the author of this paper about the Kaczynski ciphers: http://www.researchgate.net/publication … ‘s_Ciphers I requested a copy of the paper because I’m very curious to know how the Unabomber’s crypto-system works.

A cool thing today was being in the same panel with Dan Olson from the FBI. He gave an interesting talk about the history of the FBI’s codebreaking.

If I see him during tomorrow’s sessions, what should I ask him?

Personally, I’d like to find out how much effort FBI put to decoding Z340, which encryption methods did they consider in particular, and how far did they get with each one. But I highly doubt that he’ll answer with any specifics, as it’ll likely be "national security matter". For example, I’m pretty sure FBI has the technical capability to brute-force all columnar transpositions of Z340. It would be nice to know if they tried and whether they succeeded or not, so that I can stop thinking about it. 🙂

OK, I’ll try to ask him about that.

Great stuff, Dave. Definitely looking forward to seeing the video.

Dave, did anybody offer any new or valuable ideas, or theories about the Z ciphers?

During the Q&A Rich SantaColoma (a Voynich researcher) asked if anyone had applied the 408’s key to the 340 and looked for transpositions that might make sense of the result.

I’m pretty sure people have tried the 408’s key, which produces gibberish (and not all symbols are in the 408’s key). But I haven’t heard of anyone trying out different transpositions of the gibberish plaintext.

Also during the Q&A I was asked if Zodiac might have had dysgraphia (an idea glurk brought up a while back: viewtopic.php?p=10861#p10861). The questioner has dysgraphia himself and said he thought Z’s letters and ciphers had some of the features of the condition.

Another person I met was curious about the repeating fragments (such as these trigrams: ). He referred to them as "isologs", a term I hadn’t heard of before. He wondered if some superencipherment scheme (additional step after the first encipherment step) might have concealed some patterns but revealed others (i.e., the isologs). He also asked if I knew of any periodicity tests being applied to Z340 (basically, distances between repeating patterns). I think some such tests have been done before but I don’t have a good summary of them.

Several folks were intrigued about the various oddities in the 340 that they hadn’t seen before (the pivots, odd/even ngram discrepancies, suppression of bigram repeats (but peaks when counted at distance 19), etc). I think those things made people curious about what might be going in the 340’s construction.

I met George Lasry, a very skilled Israeli programmer who during a period of unemployment cracked several notable unsolved historical ciphers. This got Google’s attention and they hired him. Anyway, I tried to encourage him to add the 340 to his list of projects but he’s reluctant because he doesn’t know the encipherment scheme. I think that makes many people reluctant to tackle it.

I learned about this paper which reveals Ted Kaczynski’s cipher system: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1 … ode=ucry20 I really want to get a hold of that paper since I’ve been trying to get a copy of Kaczynski’s cipher-related material from his journals for some time. I met the author at the conference and asked her to email me a copy of the paper – hopefully she will follow through. She was with the FBI gang that showed up for the Crimes and Ciphers panel that Dan Olson, Klaus Schmeh and I spoke in. BTW Dan didn’t attend the 2nd day of the conference so I lost my opportunity to ask him more questions. I’ll try to contact him via other means. I did ask him if there was any trend of criminals getting more sophisticated with their cryptographic schemes. I got the impression from him that there wasn’t.

Dan also mentioned the 340 is still on the FBI’s Top 10 unsolved codes list. I missed my chance to ask him what else was on that list – anyone know where to find it?

Elonka Dunin was telling me a story about how she solved someone’s challenge cipher (a playfair cipher, I believe). She first failed to solve it, but then realized he may have been drunk when he made it. So she reasoned about the kinds of mistakes a drunk person would make during its construction, and managed to solve it. I encouraged her to work on the 340 because that’s the kind of thinking we need from codebreakers — trying to guess what the cipher writer might have done. But she’s reluctant since it’s a creepy serial killer case, and she’s already preoccupied with Kryptos. (Kryptos side note: She’s hosting a dinner tonight and Kryptos sculptor Jim Sanborn and its cryptosystem consultant Ed Scheidt will be attending. I think the group is going to try to squeeze more info from them about K4, the last remaining unsolved portion of Kryptos).

I met Dennis McDaniels, a legendary retired NSA codebreaker who solved the other three parts of Kryptos in 1992. He had a lot of fascinating stories such as helping to break the code heard on a cassette tape, which led to the capture of an escaped fugitive who had been out in the wild for 20 years: http://www.harryjaffe.com/archive/the-fugitive

Great conference, filled with loads of fascinating and talented people! I hope I have learned a few things via osmosis.

Great stuff Dave. Thanks for the summation.

Very interesting ideas!

I’m glad you got the word out on the 340.

Superencipherment, isologs, some stuff to think about.

My biggest hope is that someone there will take one of the ideas and run with it, finding a solution so we can move on to other things.

Very cool, all these brilliant minds together, could hold a "brains storm ‘about the Z340 for a week, after you solved all together.
If I were there, i only understand that it was time for "coffee break" because i only "BREAK COFFE."
Now a coded praise for u Mr. Dave

Parabéns , que todos seu planos e desejos se realizem e que as melhores coisas sempre lhe aconteçam .Paz , saúde e sucesso.

My biggest hope is that someone there will take one of the ideas and run with it, finding a solution so we can move on to other things.

I suppose we’re writing the book here on the 340. Daikon’s latest work on nomenclators is – to me – another big step in the right direction. More and more things are pointing towards transposition.

I tried to encourage him to add the 340 to his list of projects but he’s reluctant because he doesn’t know the encipherment scheme. I think that makes many people reluctant to tackle it.

Hahaha, wimps. 🙂 Figuring out the cipher’s encryption method is like 90% of the battle. Well, for classical ciphers, modern ciphers are much more secure even if you know the encryption method.

I did ask him if there was any trend of criminals getting more sophisticated with their cryptographic schemes. I got the impression from him that there wasn’t.

That’s interesting. I would’ve expected the opposite. There is a steady increase in the IQ of general population over the years (Flynn effect), so you’d think criminals are getting smarter too? Maybe they are using ready-made encryption tools, like PGP?

Dan also mentioned the 340 is still on the FBI’s Top 10 unsolved codes list. I missed my chance to ask him what else was on that list – anyone know where to find it?

There are any number of "top 10 unsolved codes" lists, but I haven’t seen the official FBI’s one. Would be indeed very interesting to see it, but I suspect it’s classified.

But she’s reluctant since it’s a creepy serial killer case,

I totally get that feeling from time to time. We are not working on some cipher challenge created by someone in their spare time, or supposedly directions to some long forgotten and probably invented treasure. It’s not from a book, or a movie, it was a *real* killer, who murdered real people with his own hands, and for no real reason other than "just for fun". And once deciphered it might be even creepier than Z408 and equally real…

My biggest hope is that someone there will take one of the ideas and run with it, finding a solution so we can move on to other things.

Look forward to hearing updates about this and watching your video

Dan gave some brief responses to my questions:

(Regarding what techniques the FBI tried on the 340): "I have looked through the original exam files but have not actually made a list or inventory of their methods and tests. I can say they were quite thorough and very skilled, and made extensive use of the computer technology they had available in the 70s."

(Regarding the other entries on the FBI’s top 10 unsolved codes list): "All of our top 10 unsolved codes are either active FBI investigations or cases not owned by the FBI so we don’t have dissemination authority."