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Link Logger
MVM
join:2001-03-29
Calgary, AB

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MVM

Can anyone crack pigeon's wartime code?

quote:
LONDON - A World War Two code found strapped to the leg of a dead pigeon stuck in a chimney for the last 70 years may never be broken, a British intelligence agency said on Friday.

The bird was found by a man in Surrey, southern England while he was cleaning out a disused fireplace at his home earlier this month.

The message, a series of 27 groups of five letters each, was inside a red canister attached to the pigeon's leg bone and has stumped code-breakers from Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), Britain's main electronic intelligence-gathering agency.

"Without access to the relevant codebooks and details of any additional encryption used, it will remain impossible to decrypt," a GCHQ spokesman said.

The message is consistent with the use of code books to translate messages which were then encrypted, according to GCHQ, one of Britain's three intelligence agencies.

However without knowing who the sender, "Sjt W Stot", is or the intended destination, given as "X02", it is extremely difficult to decipher the code, GCHQ said.
»www.calgarysun.com/2012/ ··· ime-code

Post it and see what happens.

Blake
MIXZ1
join:2001-01-02
Florida

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MIXZ1

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Based on a "one-time pad" it will not be decoded without the pad, which is long gone. If used correctly OTP messages cannot be broken. »en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On ··· time_pad

norwegian
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So I gather using a random cipher stops the patterns of the English language from forming?

Such as 'E' is the most common letter.
'Q' has to have a 'U' follow it, etc.
Little subtleties like that to give away the form of the message?

Mind you when back at school I could have really dug this, I hate letting anything beat me. I started to try to split sections but if the key used has no set pattern, or void of a rhythm; I can't see an easy answer, which I guess as MIXZ1 See Profile points out becomes a "cannot be broken" category.

Still a very interesting story - I wonder what people, for example E. Kaspersky would be thinking in a read of this article.

Link Logger
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said by MIXZ1:

Based on a "one-time pad" it will not be decoded without the pad, which is long gone. If used correctly OTP messages cannot be broken. »en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On ··· time_pad

'Correctly' is always the question. Even in the Wiki article it list examples where OTP codes have been cracked because of incorrectly generated pads. Of course all WWII pads were supposed to be destroyed, so determining correctness might be a bit difficult, but if someone could comment on how those pads were initially created, then perhaps flaws in the randomness (if they exist) could be used to crack this code.

Blake

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Who knows, an idiot savant might take one look and crack it.

StuartMW
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Just goes to prove the old adage: Dead men pigeon's tell no tales secrets.

Blackbird
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said by norwegian:

So I gather using a random cipher stops the patterns of the English language from forming?

Such as 'E' is the most common letter.
'Q' has to have a 'U' follow it, etc.
Little subtleties like that to give away the form of the message? ...

Think of it as representing each plaintext message letter by a number (for its alphabet position), then add a random digit to it (a digit copied from the corresponding position in the key string). Their sum would represent the alphabetic positional value of the coded letter to be sent. eg: a plaintext "b" (=2) in the first character position of the message would get added to, say, an "e" (=5) or even the actual digit "5" in the first character position of the key string... the sum is 7, which corresponds in the alphabet to "g" which is what gets sent. If the sum exceeds 26 (the max number of letters in the alphabet, the count simply starts over so that a 29 corresponds to a 3 (or a "c"). The recipient simply reverses the process, subtracting his identical key's character value for the first key string position from the value of the sent-message first-character position to recover the correct plaintext message value.

By using truly random key strings from the one-time pad, the message sent is randomized beyond unwanted recovery, provided that the key is only ever used once and that the message is kept short enough. To assure shortness, the key page is limited in length. Each message sent uses a different one-time pad, so a recoverable pattern never emerges. The "pad" term derives from the original practice of providing key strings (one to a page) in a pad of pages, tearing off, using and then destroying them one at a time as messages are sent.

One time pads are a pain to use unless employing computers/machines to assist - but those create undesirable trails, so one-times are usually reserved for very critical or crisis messaging.
HarryH3
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That's an edited-down version of the story I read last week:

»worldnews.nbcnews.com/_n ··· r-pigeon

One very important part that was edited out is: "The senders would often have specialist code books in which each code group of four or five letters had a meaning relevant to a specific operation , allowing much information to be sent in a short message. For added security, the code groups could then themselves be encrypted," it said .

So it would appear that each character or group doesn't translate back to a meaningful word, but rather to code words (or even code sentences, places, etc) that represented the real intent. To me it implies that the message is an encrypted (one time pad) representation of something that was already previously encrypted by using the code book. Good luck breaking that!
MIXZ1
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said by norwegian:

So I gather using a random cipher stops the patterns of the English language from forming?

I repeat, when used correctly an OTP message is unbreakable without the OTP. Simple newspaper puzzle and jumble rules don't apply. And a point to remember is that these messages were often coded under duress, sometimes in terrible conditions, without the use of any computational devices other than a paper and pen. Not even the million monkeys can decode this one.

DrStrange
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I'm weighing in with the 'unbreakable' crowd.

An OTP message isn't Wheel of Fortune.

StuartMW
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said by MIXZ1:

Not even the million monkeys can decode this one.

Well an infinite number of monkeys given an infinite amount of time might. You might also get the complete works of William Shakespeare.

That said I don't see the point. Even if decrypted a 70+ year old message would most likely be completely meaningless to anyone living now.

Blackbird
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said by StuartMW:

... I don't see the point. Even if decrypted a 70+ year old message would most likely be completely meaningless to anyone living now.

It's the challenge involved in it. And who knows, maybe it involved a salacious revelation about a hitherto-unknown Hitler mistress... or an urgent request for another case of His Majesty's finest malt to be sent to the front. Inquiring minds want to know, as do folks with entirely too much time on their hands...
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Nd an interesting variation on the OTP:
»news.google.com/newspape ··· ,5921109

Blackbird
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Blackbird

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said by MIXZ1:

Nd an interesting variation on the OTP:
»news.google.com/newspape ··· ,5921109

Actually, that looks like the employment of an Ottendorf cipher, which is about as effective as an OTP, as long as the messages are kept fairly short and the key is changed frequently - hopefully to material in a different language each time. The beauty of the German approach is that they could so readily change the key to any printed matter known to be in both their hands and their agent's, the name of the key being communicated openly by a special phrase in a radio broadcast. That avoided the problem of securely distributing physical key pads to agents, but using non-random keys (since all printed languages are non-random) does reduce the impenetrability of the coded message... hence the desireablility of a change to the key language with each new message in order to keep security to a maximum.

NetFixer
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The use of random looking five character words that represent other words (or entire phrases), and wherein the meaning each of those coded five character words changes depending on a randomly selected key, the day (and/or the time of day) is a common method of sending encrypted messages. It is not intended to be easy to break this type of code.

Consider this hypothetical one way radio message:

Azalea One Two, Azalea One Two, this is Rose Garden....
Priority traffic follows, Do Not Answer...
ARZWX HGMTL ZORTQ MUTSZ...
I say again, ARZWX HGMTL ZORTQ MUTSZ...

Time is 2247 ZULU, Authentication is TU...
Rose Garden out.

Is Rose Garden sending Azalea One Two critical military mission instructions, or simply inviting Azalea One Two to the pub outside Gate Three for a round of beers when Azalea One Two returns to base?

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said by NetFixer:

... Is Rose Garden sending Azalea One Two critical military mission instructions, or simply inviting Azalea One Two to the pub outside Gate Three for a round of beers when Azalea One Two returns to base?

Bet on beer at the pub, every time!

Steve
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said by DataDoc:

Who knows, an idiot might take one look and crack it.

Dude is a cryptographer?

NetFixer
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said by Blackbird:

said by NetFixer:

... Is Rose Garden sending Azalea One Two critical military mission instructions, or simply inviting Azalea One Two to the pub outside Gate Three for a round of beers when Azalea One Two returns to base?

Bet on beer at the pub, every time!


OK, that was an easy one, but you probably cheated and used the codebook.

SparkChaser
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Has World War II carrier pigeon message been cracked?

Gord Young, from Peterborough, in Ontario, says it took him 17 minutes to decypher the message after realising a code book he inherited was the key.

»www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-20749632

Blackbird
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He may (or may not) be on to something, in terms of what the 'code' method actually is. If, instead of being pure "ordinary" encyption, it's a combination of acronyms, shorthand, and cryptic map/military references, then it certainly would never lend itself to forced decryption methods, any more than cracking a one-time pad. The problem is that, bereft of the exact matching symbols and cross-references, one can never know whether they've actually "cracked" the full message or the accuracy of the resulting attributed meaning. Any number of plausible explanations can be created for each character group (or symbol combinations within a group), so the solutions thus derived are (while interesting) merely products of the decoder's clever imagination. Like a number of other 'codes' stumbled upon over the centuries, this one may be destined to remain a forever-challenging puzzlement to those with time on their hands...
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»worldnews.nbcnews.com/_n ··· ast?lite

Despite Youngs translation, the GCHQ still maintains that without the original codebooks the note is indecipherable.

We stand by our press notice of 22 November 2012 in that without access to the relevant codebooks and details of any additional encryption used, the message will remain impossible to decrypt, a spokesman for the GCHQ told NBC News in an emailed statement. Similarly it is also impossible to verify any proposed solutions, but those put forward without reference to the original cryptographic material are unlikely to be correct.

Pjr
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join:2005-12-11
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Pjr

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Mr Young says the 1944 note uses a simple World War I code to detail German troop positions in Normandy.

PABLIZ - Panzer Attack - Blitz

That acronym dates to well after WW1. The phrases blitz and blitzkrieg were coined during WWII.


Edit:
After re-reading the BBC article Mr Young says:

The code is simple, relying heavily on acronyms, said Mr Young.

I missed that rather important piece at first. The article seems to imply that all the acronyms were used in WWI but that quote implies that some were created in WWII

Blackbird
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Blackbird

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said by Pjr:

Mr Young says the 1944 note uses a simple World War I code to detail German troop positions in Normandy.

PABLIZ - Panzer Attack - Blitz

That acronym dates to well after WW1. The phrases blitz and blitzkrieg were coined during WWII.

Edit:
After re-reading the BBC article Mr Young says:

The code is simple, relying heavily on acronyms, said Mr Young.

I missed that rather important piece at first.

Regardless, without looking at Young's codebook itself, it's unclear how he's rendering the various terms - or why. It's possible the WWI codebook itself provides a protocol for insertion of new terms (such as Panzer or blitz), but then which new terms would be represented by which letters are unknowable at this distance. In some cases, Young renders a "P" for "panzer", yet in another he renders the trailing "P" in "**HFP" to mean "post". There are a number of reasons why that might be true - but without the rationale for decoding, it's impossible to understand Young's rendering. In the end, as GCHQ has stated, without the codebook actually used for creating the original message, "it is also impossible to verify any proposed solutions". All that follows is an exercise in creative thinking, but untestable at the end of the day.

Pjr
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Pjr

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All that follows is an exercise in creative thinking...

Which is what I believe it is.