Zodiac Killer cipher cracked after baffling police for 51 years

[Shawn Knight]

Bottom line: An international team of cryptographers have managed to crack a coded message from the Zodiac Killer that has remained a mystery for more than five decades. As exciting as it is that the code has finally been cracked, the solution unfortunately didn't provide any tangible evidence that would point to the identity of the Zodiac Killer. He killed at least five victims in the late 1960s.

The coded letter in question was sent to the San Francisco Chronicle in November 1969 and is known in the cryptographer community as the Z-340 due to the fact that it consists of 340 characters. Despite the best efforts of amateur and professional cryptographers and law enforcement alike, the contents of the puzzle have remained a mystery until just recently.

Software engineer David Oranchak has been tinkering with the puzzle since 2006. In a YouTube video discussing the process, Oranchak said he and mathematician Sam Blake used a piece of code-breaking software from Jarl Van Eycke called AZdecrypt after Blake became interested in transposition ciphers.

The theory was that perhaps the Zodiac Killer had rearranged the characters in the message based on a set of rules, making it harder to solve. They were correct.

One particular manipulation uncovered a few key phrases including “trying to catch me” and “or the gas chamber.” It was this tiny trail of crumbs that put the team on the right path and eventually, they were able to work out the full solution as follows.

"I HOPE YOU ARE HAVING LOTS OF FUN IN TRYING TO CATCH ME

THAT WASNT ME ON THE TV SHOW

WHICH BRINGS UP A POINT ABOUT ME

I AM NOT AFRAID OF THE GAS CHAMBER

BECAUSE IT WILL SEND ME TO PARADICE ALL THE SOONER

BECAUSE I NOW HAVE ENOUGH SLAVES TO WORK FOR ME

WHERE EVERYONE ELSE HAS NOTHING WHEN THEY REACH PARADICE

SO THEY ARE AFRAID OF DEATH

I AM NOT AFRAID BECAUSE I KNOW THAT MY NEW LIFE IS

LIFE WILL BE AN EASY ONE IN PARADICE DEATH"

The solution was submitted to the FBI, who verified the discovery late last week.

Permalink to story.

https://www.techspot.com/news/87949-zodiac-killer-cipher-cracked-after-baffling-police-51.html

 

[kimo1]

I bet that guy died from depression long ago.

 

[Squid Surprise]

Well, it’s been over 50 years... guy is probably dead by now...

 

[terzaerian]

Somewhere Ted Cruz is chuckling "well it's about time...."

 

[PEnnn]

How come the police / FBI whoever was in charge never bothered to ask the NSA / CIA and all the Cryptography experts during those 50 plus years for help??

I find it mind boggling nobody bothered or thought of such a simple request!

 

[candle_86]

How come the police / FBI whoever was in charge never bothered to ask the NSA / CIA and all the Cryptography experts during those 50 plus years for help??

I find it mind boggling nobody bothered or thought of such a simple request!

Are you kidding? The best crypto analysts in the world have been working on it for 50 years.

 

[Squid Surprise]

How come the police / FBI whoever was in charge never bothered to ask the NSA / CIA and all the Cryptography experts during those 50 plus years for help??

I find it mind boggling nobody bothered or thought of such a simple request!

Obviously, reading comprehension is beyond you...

 

[kiwigraeme]

Yeah I looked at it - he signs the most different characters to the most common letters .
It is actually a very simple encrypt - but hard to break .
But imagine if not 63 characters - but 100 - and the same character could be use for more than one or even 2 letters - based on a repeating pattern - eg * the first time is use is a "A" , 2nd use is an "E" and third use is "N". Then use 2 transformation grids instead of one - that would be a lot of work for the encryter-
So in hindsight he used something that was easy to make and fill a grid - yet was fiendishly hard to crack . I think just the first change I suggested would of made it orders of magnitude harder - ie characters can mean the different letters based on an ongoing pattern - and you could do it in one day easy.
Plus also interesting was the code was in itself complete - ie you did not need a phrase like a bible verse to break it.

 

[Makste]

He really took his time to waste time for others.

 

[VBKing]

In the video the narrator mentions the end of the message doesn't flow quite right and may need a little more tweaking / solving.

It looks like the last word in the message might just need moved up one line (they would have to figure out how the deciphering solution would support doing that)

But the end of the message would then change from:
SO THEY ARE AFRAID OF DEATH
I AM NOT AFRAID BECAUSE I KNOW THAT MY NEW LIFE IS
LIFE WILL BE AN EASY ONE IN PARADICE DEATH

To:
SO THEY ARE AFRAID OF DEATH
I AM NOT AFRAID BECAUSE I KNOW THAT MY NEW LIFE IS DEATH
LIFE WILL BE AN EASY ONE IN PARADICE

(Edited) Or another solution would be (I separated the lines to simulate the missing punctuation marks):
SO THEY ARE AFRAID OF DEATH
I AM NOT AFRAID BECAUSE I KNOW THAT MY NEW LIFE WILL BE AN EASY ONE
IN PARADICE DEATH IS LIFE

 

[Endymio]

Are you kidding? The best crypto analysts in the world have been working on it for 50 years.

With the speed of modern computers, fixed-rule ciphers are trivial to break with brute force -- as evidenced by the fact this was broken by an amateur, using nothing but a PC and free software. And the NSA doesn't reveal its methods to outsiders, not even for serial-killer investigations. I imagine there's been no true "professional" attempt to break this since the 1970s or so.

 

[Uncle Al]

Since the 2nd World War, the USA has had a reputation for being able to crack many different kinds of codes so I'm surprised it took so long for this to take place, especially with the advent of computers in general and AI in particular .....

 

[stewi0001]

I know one thing for sure, he isn't going (or hasn't gone) to paradise.

 

[Lionvibez]

I bet that guy died from depression long ago.

The surviving victims said the killer was around 25-30 years of age so add 50 years and the guy is 75-80 years old and may still be alive.

 

[Bamda]

Ahh, another puzzle game lover at work! lol