Subscribe by EmailCan You Break Codes?
November 24, 2007 by PatB |The Federal Bureau of Investigation employs a crack team of cryptanalysts to break ciphers that criminals use. Some ciphers are simple, such as the codes that numbers runners and other bookies use for illegal gambling. Others are a bit tougher, such as codes used between gangsters in prison and their organized crime families still on the outside.
But rather than giving the cryptanalysts a cipher to break, they have created one for the public to play with. The FBI has posted the crypto puzzle below on their website. Anyone here game enough to try to crack it? Feel free to post clues in the comments section.
Hint: if you want a primer on basic cipher systems and how to break them, see the article Analysis of Criminal Codes and Ciphers.
One of the most famous cases where FBI cryptanalysts were used was the Zodiac Killer case. The FBI has a page on that here.
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I went through and used clues to the obivous words to map the letters in this simple replacement cipher.
Here’s some Powershell code to do the mapping and return the clear text. With the few assumed words it became trivial to reason out the rest of the message and build the mappings.
$cryptotext = 'PIKODENHFENJIKM!
YIH QELB GDISBK
NQB PICB.
OI NI AGJ.OIL/PICB.QNT
MI WB SKIW, EKC
UFBEMB PIKMJCBD
E PEDBBD WJNQ
NQB AGJ.'
$charactermap = @{
# Hashmap Syntax Format
# 'A' = 'B';
# 'B' = 'C';
}
function translate ($letter) {
if ($charactermap.Keys -ccontains $letter) {
$clearletter = $charactermap["$letter"]
Write-host -NoNewline -ForegroundColor ‘Green’ $clearletter
} else {
Write-Host -NoNewline -ForegroundColor ‘red’ $letter
}
}
$cryptotext.ToCharArray() | % {
translate -letter $_
}
Write-Host “”
I do not understand the code you posted. I guessed the first word would be congratulations because it was long and ended in a ‘!.’ Then the next sentence seemed to read “You have broken the code.” From there I just took the letters I had won and worked out the rest of the thing.
I didnt bother to decipher the entire thing..
but the moral of the story:
http://www.fbi.gov/code.htm
Pretty simple just to look at it, due to the:
OI NI AGJ.OIL/PICB.QNT
Since we knew it was on the FBI site.. it was easy to just guess that AGJ.OIL is FBI.GOV And if ‘I’ is ‘O’.. Easy to guess that OI NI is “GO TO”. Knowing HTML, you can guess QNT is probably .htm..
The first word has the same amount of characters as congrats, and the letters match up.. overall, I don’t understand why this wasn’t on the “kids” page that they reference.
DID IT
———–> SPOILER SPOILER <————-
The First word makes the whole thing easy.
Oops, i’ll try again:
Spoiler
so easy… if the fbi don´t know make other things better, Bin Laden will destroy EEUU !!!
SPOILER!!!!
“Congratulations! You have broken the code. Go to fbi.gov/code.htm so we know, and please consider d (the) career with the FBI.”
http://nostoy.com/2007/11/pikodenhfenjikm-primer.html
Instead of “d (the)” comes “a”.
[...] (Ivn Trrxf Ner Frkl.) [...]
I love that oil = gov… Will the sillyness never end??? LOL
Amateurs!
Here is one of your comments encrypted with a real encryption program. See http://www.away32.com/howPROFworks.html
for the password if you give up. There are no linebreaks.
Spaces between words are encrypted.
gOi8oidopbljQ8GS+gJp8CAVwwKIGOXE6
LtT3phocs4yN8nI2M0HBsrNQzav9p9wGoRBe6ci/
HCA5IvUN7u4ER27XVYuVndikV4kVWq1AhRdkk9V1
jlnRc5Df9y0lmPuvE/qb1BiGZ2KDdWqiCZ54G
rQ8llaYyPuq36+xzMZeKFyaPruhYLAcQsDjHu
FDBQ01ZfD79ZvIRHeqhISjOIZFIdNbERFj/HQQ5
SeBqmO4ODvhiqYaI4nC+zKZkZm7kwe26Tpqre
39Y7LQYMZKBm1rku9zE9DySMGXYumq5PXTxao
HC1o8aXbHdQDgzxf3pzrsYnqRG6sIes5OcGndH
T6oNqYrO5rIlcGWQC1NUKqkOeLFGUB1mdr3l8
i/cuHUgIcoV2NsmRhZD+1rwUhtAnFxQ2LT1Xfny
MY24sXK0obn2n2wtI4YHQHBDNfg3Qv+fjqIB
ktMonxYQiza+hdadbvUlfsjj$014
The problem is you’ll need to have a computer to decypher this text, which is not the case with the other algo.
this was a kids game cipher hahah, have been playing with ciphers for some good 6 years now. Even got to the point where I’m developing a cypher wargame for other people who want a tough game that takes a lot of analyzing.
zamek.intruded.net , 3 levels so far. If you enjoy cracking and ciphers you’ll like this one.
P I K O D E N H F E N J I K M
C O N G R A T U L A T I O N S!
Y I H
Y O U
Q E L B
HAVE
G D I S B K
B R O K E N
N Q B
T HE
P I C B
C O DE.
O I
G O
N I
T O
A G J.O I L/P I C B. Q N T
F B I.G O V/CODE. HTM
M I
S O
W B
WE
S K I W,
KNOW,
E K C
AND
U F B E M B
PLEASE
P I K M J C B D
C O N S I D E R
E
A
P E D B B D
C A R E E R
W J N Q
WITH
N Q B
THE
A G J
FBI