With the Z340 cracked, I decided to compare the Z340 Key to the Z408 Key. The hope would be that if there was a methodology to how the keys are constructed or mutated (Z408 to Z340) that the logic could be extended to the other ciphers.
I first wanted to see if the Z340 Key was based on the Z408 Key. I took the 50 symbols that are shared by both ciphers and subtracted their Z340 Letter Value (ASCII) from the Z408 Letter Value. I performed mod 26 on the output just for readability (IE: negative value get +26). I then looked at a histogram of that output to see how random the changes were (attached).
What is interesting is that it doesn’t look that random. Values are screwed to be lower that 13 ( favoring smaller shifts ‘right’) and also a strong peak at 13 (the opposite side of mod 26). It seems at least plausible that there is a methodology being used to convert the Z408 key to Z340 key.
Anyhow I was wondering if anyone else started to look into this.
That’s a great idea for comparing keys. Thanks for doing that!
Here’s an image showing the combined keys. I made it for my latest video:
Note that D, backwards K, backwards L, and P have the same decodings in both keys.
I wonder how often that happens during shuffles of the keys.
Also, notice how right-filled square and solid square both decode to L in Z408, and both decode to T in Z340.
That might be another phenomenon worth testing with shuffles.
This phenomenon is very interesting.
With Dave’s art, some things are visible.
Strange, the symbols form something like "Letter".
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