Nin, Subject: Harden key for the 408   Sun Apr 04, 2010 12:25 pm

This is the Harden Key for the 408 cipher in case anyone wants to play with it:

, Subject: Re: Harden key for the 408   Sun Apr 04, 2010 3:45 pm

Thanks for posting that, Nin.

May be a dumb question but … has anyone heard of any variations on the Harden solution (or tried it and found any) e.g. if one or more of the letters in their cipher-solve were different, it might have slightly altered the wording of the solution ???

, Subject: Re: Harden key for the 408   Mon Apr 05, 2010 2:29 am

I think that the A and the S were used to represent the same letter, as far as I can tell I think it happened once in the cipher, to me it looks like Z made a mistake. Also when using say 4 symbols to represent 1 letter he tended to use them in order, like say a,b,c,d represented the s, then he would use a the first time then the b and so on and then go back to the beginning. Only nearing the end of the cipher would he appear to mix it up a bit. So I think he probably left more pattern that way. You can see by the above key from Nin that a lot of letters were only represented by one letter, I think you will see that he didn’t make that mistake again.

I’ve been messing with the 340 for the last fortnight now, I def think there is a message in it, plugging away with different words and phrases, etc. I’m seeing plus signs everywhere

Richard, Subject: Re: Harden key for the 408   Mon Mar 28, 2011 10:59 am

The Zodiac Code (referred to in some posts as the "408 code") as broken by the Hardens used 55 characters to represent the 23 alphabet letters used by Zodiac in his three part letter to the three newspapers (1 August 1969). As stated in previous posts, multiple characters were used to represent most letters. The three letters which do NOT appear in his message (as decoded) were: J, Q, and Z.

He did duplicate character meanings in a few instances. The black triangle is used to represent either A or S. The N is used to represent either E or T. While the White Triangle is used several times to represent the letter I, he does use it one time to represent W. I feel, however that he simply meant to write an A to represent the W and it just looked more like the white triangle.

There is a grid pattern to this first Code writing. Each part of the three-part letter had 8 rows of 17 characters. It is because of this that many think the final 18 characters are simply filler – to make all message parts of equal size.

Zodiac made up his code for his message using regular alphabet letters, backward letters, and a few geometric figures and other symbols. All but three letters have another letter (forward or backward) to represent them (these are: K, P, and Y). Those three are each represented by a non-letter character. And of course, we do not know what he may have used to represent the J, Q, and Z, since they were not used in the message. But it is likely that Zodiac created his code first before he wrote out his message in plain language.

Note that he does not use any numerals in the body of his decoded message. Nor does he use any numerals as characters to represent any letters.

Characters missing from the Zodiac "408 Code" were the forward C and the backward B and Y.

On 8 November 1969, Zodiac sent his "340 Code" message. This one included all the previous characters of the earlier "408 Code" as well as 17 additional characters, INCLUDING the forward C and the backward B and Y. It is likely that those three letters would have represented the missing J, Q, and Z of his "408 Code" message.

It is possible that Zodiac wanted to include additional characters in his 340 Code to represent letters of his first code which had only one representative character. To do this, he would have needed exactly 17 additional characters, and that is the exact number of new ones seen in the 340 code.

While the 340 coded message is obviously an extension of his earlier 408 code, he may have reshuffled his code a bit with his 8 November 1969 message so that code breakers would have to start over.

It is also possible that Zodiac’s "340 code" could have used characters to represent numerals as well as letters.

The grid pattern of 17 characters is repeated with the 340 code, only this time there are 20 lines of 17 characters in one message.

The pattern of 17 characters is also seen in his Mount Diablo map code (July 1970) in which the first line has 17, and the second has only 15 characters.

rand, Subject: Re: Harden key for the 408   Tue Apr 19, 2011 1:13 am

I think the Harden’s got the key wrong. If Z correctly spelled DANGEROUS, then the E can be an S.
If Z correctly spelled SLOW, then the triangle is an I.
If the hand drawn crosshair at the end of the 408 message is actually another character, then we have an additional D

Making these substitutions with the last 18 characters and adding the handwritten crosshair at the end yields the letters: ROBERTDEPEWITISMETH

morf13, Subject: Re: Harden key for the 408   Tue Apr 19, 2011 8:01 am

I think the Harden’s got the key wrong. If Z correctly spelled DANGEROUS, then the E can be an S.
If Z correctly spelled SLOW, then the triangle is an I.
If the hand drawn crosshair at the end of the 408 message is actually another character, then we have an additional D

Making these substitutions with the last 18 characters and adding the handwritten crosshair at the end yields the letters: ROBERTDEPEWITISMETH

A guy at my work has a funny saying, "IF my Aunt had balls, she would be my Uncle". If we ‘correct’ the couple things you just mentioned, it would change the entire message around, and it would not make sense.

rand, Subject: Re: Harden key for the 408   Tue Apr 19, 2011 9:51 am

Not so, and I don’t understand your logic here. The E can be an S as well as what the Harden’s claimed; the triangle can be a W as well as what the Harden’s said. It changes nothing except that the two words are now spelled correctly in the 408. Explain your logic.
My point is simply this: Z supposedly spelled DANGEROUS and SLOW incorrectly as DANGEROUE and SLOI. So either he didn’t spell them incorrectly or he did, so he got confused and thought that the E was an S and the triangle was a W. Either way, the last 18 letters read precisely as what I’ve said. And why assume that the handwritten crosshair symbol at the end is not part of the message?

morf13, Subject: Re: Harden key for the 408   Tue Apr 19, 2011 9:53 am

Not so, and I don’t understand your logic here. The E can be an S as well as what the Harden’s claimed; the triangle can be an I as well as what the Harden’s said. It changes nothing except that the two words are now spelled correctly in the 408. Explain your logic.

Please post your full solution to the cipher, AFTER you have changed around the ones you think are wrong.

rand, Subject: Re: Harden key for the 408   Tue Apr 19, 2011 9:58 am

nothing changes except that the two words, DANGEROUS and SLOW are spelled correctly. I’m not subtracting anything from the Harden key, I’m adding two additional substitutions that make those two words correctly spelled. In other words, the W is now a multiple character substitution and the S has another character to its already multiple character substitution.
My assumption is straightforward: Z mispelled words but he did so phonetically. He didn’t mispell DANGEROUS as DANGEROUE or SLOW as SLOI.

morf13, Subject: Re: Harden key for the 408   Tue Apr 19, 2011 10:40 am

nothing changes except that the two words, DANGEROUS and SLOW are spelled correctly. I’m not subtracting anything from the Harden key, I’m adding two additional substitutions that make those two words correctly spelled. In other words, the W is now a multiple character substitution and the S has another character to its already multiple character substitution.
My assumption is straightforward: Z mispelled words but he did so phonetically. He didn’t mispell DANGEROUS as DANGEROUE or SLOW as SLOI.

That is pretty interesting Rand. Maybe one of the others here that are stronger than me with cipher stuff will chime in.

Richard, Subject: Re: Harden key for the 408   Wed Apr 20, 2011 10:14 am

Regarding the double use of characters to represent letters;

Zodiac did do that, as I mentioned in my earlier post on this thread. Specifically, he used a white triangle on one occasion to stand for the plaintext letter "W". Since he used a character "A" to represent "W" in all other instances, however, I feel that this was probably an error on his part simply of penmanship. (ie. he intended to write an "A", making the upward part of the letter, but then simply put the horizontal line too low, resulting in a triangle.)

Note also, that one of the characters used by Zodiac to represent the plaintext letter "S" was a capital "F". Again, a simple mistake of one penstroke could have made this an "E".

I agree that Zodiac would hardly have intentionally spelled Dangerous as Dangeroue, or Slow as Sloi. This was likely an error in encryption rather than in the initial spelling of the word.

I do not think that these two errors would necessarily have been repeated in the final 18 characters of the message, but it is possible. And IF the white triangle and the "E" were in fact intended to have double meanings, then it would not necessarily change the entire text of the message. All other decrypted words would/could remain the same.

It has always been my own opinion that the final 18 characters were nothing but FILLER used to make the message a specific length. Numbers and patterns were important to Zodiac, and by using "filler", he could make his three messages all the same length of exactly 8 rows of 17 characters each.

Making all messages of equal length is something done in Military Communications. This is so that the enemy cannot determine through message length the meaning of a particular message and in so doing, break the code. For example, if an aircraft or ship were to send a position report, it would be of a specific uniform length, containing a set pattern of numbers and letters. (Example 3820 N 17800 W 1300 Z). Knowing this, and knowing the location of that aircraft through other means and the aproximate time of the report, the message encrypted as ACSB X JKCBB Y JABB T could be broken. From here, the enemy could begin to decrypt other messages.

To prevent this, FILLER – in the form of random letters or nonsense words and phrases – is added to the message to make it longer. In proper encryption technique, all filler is put into a message at the very end so that the intended recepient does not have to sort through a lot of nonsense to read the important part of the message in a timely manner.

Zodiac had at least a rudimentary knowledge of encryption and probably knew about the use of filler. It has been thought by some that he had Military Training in Codes and Communication.

His "408" message(s) show proper use of filler if that is what the last 18 characters are.

Zodiac had a Compulsion to write his messages out in even sets of 17 character lines. It is likely that this compulsion was due to some obsession that he had with those numbers and a sense of mathematical order.

Note also that in his second encrypted "340" message, it was 20 lines of 17 characters each. Also, he added exactly 17 new characters not seen in his origional "408" code.