Glurk;
I downloaded it and ran it briefly, appears to work okay.

CP

Glurk;
I downloaded it and ran it briefly, appears to work okay.

CP

Thank you CP!

I remember you quite well from the original development of the program, thanks for all of your help along the years. I was pretty certain that the actual download would work OK, was just not sure about how to host binaries on GitHub.
In programmer years, I am ancient, LOL. I don’t like change. Glad that it works, and good to hear from you again!

-glurk

Download works fine,

I have tested it briefly. Version 1.0 seems to be superior at standard settings, coming up with a much faster solve and of better quality. Edgar Dorabella is a 87 symbols cipher instead of 88.

Thanks for keeping it available. It’s a great tool.

Downloaded, and is ok !!!
thanks for work an this link mr Glurk!!
Marcelo

I have tested it briefly. Version 1.0 seems to be superior at standard settings, coming up with a much faster solve and of better quality.

I have added the 1.0 release also now, so both 1.0 and 1.2 are available. I agree that the 1.0 version might be better in some respects. Thanks for testing.

-glurk

I’ve been trying both 1.0 and 1.2, but neither are working for me.

They load a cipher with no problem, and display the correct patterns and symbol count.

When I start solving, however, it runs through all the iterations, fails 5000 times and says best score 0 and displays nothing. I’m trying this with the solved 408, and also tried it with a simple substitution version of the 408. The program seems to be "working" — my processor is buzzing away — but it doesn’t find/display any results

Does anyone have the same issue or any suggestions? I’m using Windows 8 (64-bit).

After loading a cipher, select KEY -> INIT KEY and press OK. Then START.

This is described in the instructions. Press F1 for instructions.

-glurk

*facepalm*

Thank you, glurk. I *did* read the instructions–surely my lack of reading comprehension will have no bearing on my codebreaking skills…

Does anyone have documentation on how ZKDecrypto scores its solutions? I can’t find anything online. I am using the lite version to solve variations (where the columns move) and the using the scores help the computer to determine whether it will accept or reject the column moves. The problem is that in most cases the scores are to similar to make an informed decision. Anyway, I’d like to know how it scores the solutions before I move on to writing a separate program to score the cipher moves.

Glurk,

still would love to modify the dictionary into my own one..is that possible somehow (changing the language file works?)?

QT

Does anyone have documentation on how ZKDecrypto scores its solutions? I can’t find anything online. I am using the lite version to solve variations (where the columns move) and the using the scores help the computer to determine whether it will accept or reject the column moves. The problem is that in most cases the scores are to similar to make an informed decision. Anyway, I’d like to know how it scores the solutions before I move on to writing a separate program to score the cipher moves.

I think it is something like this:

First, it adds up ngram frequencies and weighs them: sum = bigrams/(2^3) + trigrams/(2^2) + quadgrams/(2) + tetragrams.

Then it calculates index of coincidence, entropy, and chi^2 tests and uses their differences from expected values for English.

Then it combines the score similar to this:
score = sum*(1.05-5*iocdifference)*(1.05-5*entropydifference/150)*(1.05-5*chi2difference/60).

I think the factors 1.05, 5, 60, and 150 came from experimentation to determine which adjustments to the formula give the best results. You might have to run your own experiments – I don’t know which values are best or if the ones I used here are the most up to date.

The composite score is important because if it is only ngram-based, it is easy to maximize with spurious plaintexts such as THE THE THE THE THE.

What Doranchak has said is basically correct. Yes, there are "magic" numbers used in the scoring.

I never really liked doing things that way, but they were arrived at through experimentation and seem to give a good result. I am retired from any work on the ZKD variations, but it is all open-source, so feel free to modify anything and recompile as seen fit.

Jarlve’s AZDECRYPT is probably a better solver at this point anyways, but I have only barely used it.

-glurk