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 Forum index » Archive » Archive: General » Low-Volume Games
[WF][Trailhead] Whitechapel Foundation: Open Cases
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surfzoned
Decorated


Joined: 30 Jun 2007
Posts: 237
Location: City of Denial, Nation of Sheeple

 		hmm
reminds me of digram ciphers.

when "Tinman" is over I'll give it a crack =)
commercial break. VCR? They still make those?
_________________
"CypherMonkey: A person required to do many hours of cryptology for free at the cost of MANY braincells."

PostPosted: Wed Dec 05, 2007 1:27 am
Last edited by surfzoned on Wed Dec 05, 2007 2:48 am; edited 5 times in total
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Coffeebean
Unfettered


Joined: 11 Jun 2007
Posts: 626

 		Don't you know how to set a vcr to record? Probably not, too complicated Razz (just kidding) and GET BUSY.

PostPosted: Wed Dec 05, 2007 1:30 am
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mortality
Unfettered


Joined: 12 Jul 2007
Posts: 428

 		He sets VCRs to record for a living. Now if only he could get them to all stop blinking "12:00" (in morse code).

PostPosted: Wed Dec 05, 2007 2:47 am
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surfzoned
Decorated


Joined: 30 Jun 2007
Posts: 237
Location: City of Denial, Nation of Sheeple

 		commercial is over
all the 'words' are in strings of eight. possibly a rail cipher with a keystring of 8? Could be a rotational cipher of some type too.



sidenote: I DON'T do xenociphers =P
_________________
"CypherMonkey: A person required to do many hours of cryptology for free at the cost of MANY braincells."

PostPosted: Wed Dec 05, 2007 2:48 am
Last edited by surfzoned on Wed Dec 05, 2007 3:37 am; edited 2 times in total
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mortality
Unfettered


Joined: 12 Jul 2007
Posts: 428

 		Definitely not a Caesar cipher.

Ethan's newest personal post says he thinks MSG1 is a poem.

PostPosted: Wed Dec 05, 2007 2:51 am
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casablanca
Boot

Joined: 01 Dec 2007
Posts: 39

 		I'm new, so I'm not sure of the etiquette here. There is a new comment at Ethan's personal journal, but it is a response to a direct question from Sylvia so I wasn't sure if it was OK to quote it here.

I'm hoping it's OK to post the link since it's out in the open: http://ethangrant.wordpress.com/2007/12/04/all-i-wanted-to-do-today/

PostPosted: Wed Dec 05, 2007 4:10 pm
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WolfHawk
Entrenched


Joined: 15 Nov 2006
Posts: 1247
Location: St. Louis
zizka wrote:
maybe upper/lower case shows the sie of the letter. Hence, all initial sentence letters are large Xs. the remainder would something like l's (lower case L) t h j k b d i (give or take a few) would all be upper case X's, while a, c, v, e, w, u, g, s, etc would be lower cases.


surfzoned wrote:
I knew I liked Ziz for a reason.
I was just speculating that
Quote:
X# = capital raised letter [T]
X = raised letter [t]
x = lower letter [a]
, = dropped letter [g]
X-x or x-x = coupled letters [ch, sh, th]


WHAT????????!!!!!!!!! I assume both of these quotes are based on something and mean something else, but they are BOTH harder to understand than the frikkin' clue!!!!!!!!!!! Shocked
_________________
Having abandoned my search for the truth I am now looking for a good fantasy.

The light at the end of the tunnel may be the headlight of an oncoming train.

PostPosted: Wed Dec 05, 2007 6:10 pm
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Sylvia
I Have No Life

Joined: 21 Apr 2006
Posts: 2062

 		rofl
WolfHawk wrote:
WHAT????????!!!!!!!!! I assume both of these quotes are based on something and mean something else, but they are BOTH harder to understand than the frikkin' clue!!!!!!!!!!! Shocked

amen. the best comment on this whole thread. thanks, I needed that laugh and am glad i'm not the only one going, What???

casablanca wrote:
I'm new, so I'm not sure of the etiquette here. There is a new comment at Ethan's personal journal, but it is a response to a direct question from Sylvia so I wasn't sure if it was OK to quote it here.

Welcome, and feel free to post anything you think might help. I just got home a bit ago, he hadn't answered before I left. But looks like we are going to get another case or it may be related to this in an around about way.
Quote:
3 Responses to "All I wanted to do today…"

1.
Sylvia, on December 5th, 2007 at 1:20 am Said:

Did you get a chance to look at the memo that you got from Shannon. May be important.
2.
ethangrant, on December 5th, 2007 at 12:57 pm Said:

Hi Sylvia,

Funny you should mention that. I was on a bridge call with Shannon this morning and we had a chance to talk about that. The page she found was in a copy of the Amphitheatrum Sapientiae that she was cataloging for the Hawthorne Group. The page is definitely not from the Amphitheatrum, it is of much more recent origin (the paper, that is; no idea where the content is from yet), but it does have a simple geometric figure on it as well as some symbols and what appears to be another cipher. There were no notes and no other references on the page. She says it looks like someone was making a copy from some other source. But she doesn't recognize the content (which is saying something, 'cause she knows her historical docs.)

I've been thinking of creating a new case for it on OC. I was thinking someone might recognize the content and know where it comes from, especially if it is more recent? Do you think I should?
3.
Sylvia, on December 5th, 2007 at 6:56 pm Said:

Yes, please do.


PostPosted: Wed Dec 05, 2007 9:32 pm
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surfzoned
Decorated


Joined: 30 Jun 2007
Posts: 237
Location: City of Denial, Nation of Sheeple

 		In reply
zizka wrote:
Quote:

maybe upper/lower case shows the sie of the letter. Hence, all initial sentence letters are large Xs. the remainder would something like l's (lower case L) t h j k b d i (give or take a few) would all be upper case X's, while a, c, v, e, w, u, g, s, etc would be lower cases.


surfzoned wrote:
Quote:

X# = capital raised letter [T]
X = raised letter [t]
x = lower letter [a]
, = dropped letter [g]
X-x or x-x = coupled letters [ch, sh, th]

Wolfhawke wrote:
Quote:

WHAT????????!!!!!!!!! I assume both of these quotes are based on something and mean something else, but they are BOTH harder to understand than the frikkin' clue!!!!!!!!!!! Shocked
_________________


Both are examples of possible rule sets that could have been used to encode MSG2.
Using the rule set I wrote above the sample text "I want a big banana."
when enciphered would become "X#xx-xxXxx, Xxxxxx."

So, does my example ciphertext look like MSG2's ciphertext?
If yes, then we're on the right track... Maybe.
It's all part of the process of codebreaking.
_________________
"CypherMonkey: A person required to do many hours of cryptology for free at the cost of MANY braincells."

PostPosted: Wed Dec 05, 2007 10:21 pm
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surfzoned
Decorated


Joined: 30 Jun 2007
Posts: 237
Location: City of Denial, Nation of Sheeple

 		Woot
Ethanagrant is on googletalk right now.
Awaiting his reply but it seems from his blog that he wants to talk to any of us that would like to discuss the case.
_________________
"CypherMonkey: A person required to do many hours of cryptology for free at the cost of MANY braincells."

PostPosted: Wed Dec 05, 2007 10:57 pm
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surfzoned
Decorated


Joined: 30 Jun 2007
Posts: 237
Location: City of Denial, Nation of Sheeple

 		Ethan on googlechat
Quote:
surf: How are you doing today Ethan?
ethanagrant: Hey there, a name I recognize. Good. How are you?
surf: Doing well.
I was about to start in on our ciphers again to see what I could come up with. I found some old military files on the web that do a very good job of teaching crypto it seems. I can link then if you would like.
ethanagrant: Sure. I'm finding the field very interesting, but also absolutely overwhelming.
surf: http://www.umich.edu/~umich/fm-34-40-2/ the page works best if you open the links in a new tab on you rbrowser.
ethanagrant: It boggles the mind, the mental leaps that people seem to be able to make in solving some of this stuff.
Thanks.
So you think MSG1 is a math construct?
surf: I think MSG1 is a logic leaper. I feel strongly that due to all the x's and X's that it will be an obscure poem that fits a ciphering system that I've been working out.
ethanagrant: It's a relief to hear that it might actually be a poem. Is that common?
I mean do people who do crypto use poems sometimes to transmit information?
surf: To be sent a handmade cipher of this complexity? I hope not.
They do use ciphers. However, most are much more rudimentary.
ethanagrant: I've been trying to step back and look at the events a little more generally.
surf: When I first started looking at the MSG's I thought maybe someone was thinking malicious things towards WCF. However, the complexity of the ciphers would have to be weak enough that anyone could crack them.
ethanagrant: The thing that's been bugging us is "Why would someone choose to communicate with us in this way?"
surf: Because of their complexity I feel they are more of an intriguing clue into something more mysterious.
ethanagrant: Yeah, exactly! If someone is trying to tell us something why all the theatrics?
Which has led to the conclusion among a couple of my colleagues that this is just a hoax.
surf: People that use complex ciphers and send them to non-cryptoanalysts are usually trying to either gain attention, ie. they work with you and want to watch you squirm, or they are trying to gain the attention of a cryptoanalyst because they want the person cracking the info to be worthy of the information they are going to provide.
I'm leaning towards the second scenario.
ethanagrant: Which is probably why they aren't pointing many official resources at it.
surf: Like most ciphers, with time, they will get cracked.
ethanagrant: That's a good point. They would obviously know that we do research and that a lot of the stuff we look into has some sorth of mystery about it (ene if it does turn out to be swamp gas Smile)
Not unreasonable for someone to assume that we have some hard-core codes people on staff (even though we don't)
surf: The best case scenario we can hope for is the encryptor will throw further clues at you until the ciphers are cracked. Then if he feels he gave you too many clues he just won't give you the information that he was withholding.
True enough. A well funded organization could have analysts on staff.
ethanagrant: An alternate thought is that the sender gave a clue, but we haven't realized it yet.
surf: LOL, on a side note, I'd gladly do crypto work for half the price Chris's headhunter cryptoanalyst does it for.
Yes. That's possible.
We still have no idea's about why he used the 123 circle carrot triangle.
ethanagrant: You and I could split half the price and we'd still be doing great.
surf: LOL Smile
sounds like a real money maker!
ethanagrant: Other than to number the pages.
surf: The shapes have to have a significance or they wouldn't be there.
ethanagrant: and, or course, the shapes illustrate the numbers, in a way.
surf: true
Wouldn't a single line have worked for MSG1 though?
He went so far as to use a circle... "the perfect line"
ethanagrant: sure, or even the "1" itself which is a single line.
MSG3 also has a triangle in the content.
surf:MSG3 is still a complete mystery to me. The only intuition I have concerning it is that it might be some form or 3 tiered box cipher.
ethanagrant: Did you notice the relationship to "2" in the content or the solve for MSG2? I didn't think to look until just now.
surf: I think if we can break one cipher the others will become clear.
Other than the fact that the 6 words 'can' be used to make 2 word meanings, no/
It's still possible that the messages need to all be taken into context together.
ethanagrant: Yeah, good point. For all we know he may be sending us a serial story and we haven't even seen chapter 1 yet.
surf: I saw the OC replies had a cipher message too. I'm still working on the answers for it.
ethanagrant: Oh he**, I was really hoping one of you guys sent those to be cute.
surf: The replies are a further clue. They alone give me the impression that the cipherer wants us to decrypt his messages.
ethanagrant: One of them was marked as a backtrack. Do you know what that is? I haven't even had a chance to ask one of the IT guys.
surf: I noticed that too but haven't had time to research it yet.
ethanagrant: It's a feature of wordpress whatever it is. I'll ask one of Calvin's guys about it tomorrow. Aw, he**. Christopher's calling.
Got to drop. I'll try to jump on again soon.


META-
At first glance there might not seem to be much information gained. There is actually quite a treasure trove of PM prods and nudges.



(he** was a profanity and some people are easily offended so they're bleeped. Personally I curse well enough to make a sailor question his own skills!)
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"CypherMonkey: A person required to do many hours of cryptology for free at the cost of MANY braincells."

PostPosted: Thu Dec 06, 2007 12:48 am
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badaim68
Boot

Joined: 26 Nov 2007
Posts: 38
Location: Sussex, UK

 		Trackback
Trackback definition for Wordpress:

Trackback helps you to notify another author that you wrote something related to what he had written on his blog, even if you don't have an explicit link to his article. This improves the chances of the other author sitting up and noticing that you gave him credit for something, or that you improved upon something he wrote, or something similar. With pingback and trackback, blogs are interconnected. Think of them as the equivalents of acknowledgements and references at the end of an academic paper, or a chapter in a textbook.

So essentially hlbgvloi has a blog somewhere (yes I tried hlbgvloi.wordpress.com Wink )

PostPosted: Thu Dec 06, 2007 7:38 am
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surfzoned
Decorated


Joined: 30 Jun 2007
Posts: 237
Location: City of Denial, Nation of Sheeple

 		 =)
I'm noticing a lot of greenhorns and boots (referring to the titles you get for the number of posts you have made) and I'm loving it.

Welcome badaim86, casablanca, yellowcard, andh, THESB & pipakin! (and Noam plus anyone I missed) Very Happy

No detail is too small to mention and is often the one missing clue needed to solve the puzzle.
_________________
"CypherMonkey: A person required to do many hours of cryptology for free at the cost of MANY braincells."

PostPosted: Thu Dec 06, 2007 10:37 am
Last edited by surfzoned on Thu Dec 06, 2007 10:06 pm; edited 1 time in total
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Andh
Boot

Joined: 21 Jun 2007
Posts: 14
Location: Belgium

 		Thanks surfzoned Very Happy

I've been searching for poetic forms with eight lines.
These are what I found:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ottava_rima
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sicilian_octave
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triolet

PostPosted: Thu Dec 06, 2007 2:08 pm
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WolfHawk
Entrenched


Joined: 15 Nov 2006
Posts: 1247
Location: St. Louis

 		Re: In reply
surfzoned wrote:
Using the rule set I wrote above the sample text "I want a big banana."
when enciphered would become "X#xx-xxXxx, Xxxxxx."

I'm sorry, I still don't see how one makes the other.
_________________
Having abandoned my search for the truth I am now looking for a good fantasy.

The light at the end of the tunnel may be the headlight of an oncoming train.

PostPosted: Thu Dec 06, 2007 8:12 pm
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