EASTNORTHEAST - This is not exactly the hint Jim Sanborn (JS) gave for K4 on the 29th of January this year. He only gave NORTHEAST - which refers to the positions 26-34 of K4's plaintext. Beside BERLIN and CLOCK it is the third revealed plaintext word of K4. However, also this hint does not seem to help much. However, it just so happened, that a member in the yahoo kryptos group had a conversation with Jim Sanborn due to a submitted solution. Sandborn's answer to the question contained again the last clue which surprisingly was EASTNORTHEAST at position 22-34. Jim Sanborns compass rose at CIA There is disagreement if Jim revealed this on purpose or he did it accidentially, but the new extended clue seem to be serious and valid.Interestingly, EASTNORTHEAST is exactly the direction which is illustrated on the compass rose on one of the stones around kryptos, also created by Jim Sanborn. Actually, i dont really kn...
Heureka, the cryptogram that was published in 2007 by Klaus Schmeh [1] was finally solved on 26.11.2013 by George Lasry. MysterieTwister (user: george4096) made today the official announcement about his achievement.
Over 6 years Schmeh's cryptogram resisted all attacks despite it is based on a cipher that can be executed with pencil and paper. Because of its difficulty it was brought to public attention in various forms, e.g. [2,3]. Schmeh did not chose the puzzle in an arbitrary way. No, it was particularly well chosen according to the rules from the former BSI president Otto Leiberich. Based on the cryptanalysis knowledge at that time, the parameters were picked in a way to make the cryptogram as hard as possible. This means for example to take $2$ keys of length $> 20$ that create incomplete rectangles during encryption.
In the post Double Columnar Transposition i talked about various methods to attack this type of cipher and also made some statements about the cryptopuzzle from Schmeh. Then George Lasry made comments to my blog post and we exchanged several e-mails talking about his approach and ideas to increase efficiency. He told me, that he worked since a few month on that puzzle after having extensively studied the single transposition and the ADFGX cipher before. I guess that brought him in the right position to be ready for Schmeh's cryptogram.
Congratulations to him!
Details of his approach will follow as soon as his official paper is accepted.
[1] Klaus Schmeh, Codeknacker gegen Codemacher: Die faszinierende Geschichte der Verschlüsselung, 414 Seiten, 2007
[2] http://www.heise.de/tp/artikel/26/26876/1.html
[3] Klaus Schmeh, Nicht zu knacken, 296 Seiten, 2012, Carl Hanser Verlag GmbH & Co. KG
Over 6 years Schmeh's cryptogram resisted all attacks despite it is based on a cipher that can be executed with pencil and paper. Because of its difficulty it was brought to public attention in various forms, e.g. [2,3]. Schmeh did not chose the puzzle in an arbitrary way. No, it was particularly well chosen according to the rules from the former BSI president Otto Leiberich. Based on the cryptanalysis knowledge at that time, the parameters were picked in a way to make the cryptogram as hard as possible. This means for example to take $2$ keys of length $> 20$ that create incomplete rectangles during encryption.
In the post Double Columnar Transposition i talked about various methods to attack this type of cipher and also made some statements about the cryptopuzzle from Schmeh. Then George Lasry made comments to my blog post and we exchanged several e-mails talking about his approach and ideas to increase efficiency. He told me, that he worked since a few month on that puzzle after having extensively studied the single transposition and the ADFGX cipher before. I guess that brought him in the right position to be ready for Schmeh's cryptogram.
Congratulations to him!
Details of his approach will follow as soon as his official paper is accepted.
[1] Klaus Schmeh, Codeknacker gegen Codemacher: Die faszinierende Geschichte der Verschlüsselung, 414 Seiten, 2007
[2] http://www.heise.de/tp/artikel/26/26876/1.html
[3] Klaus Schmeh, Nicht zu knacken, 296 Seiten, 2012, Carl Hanser Verlag GmbH & Co. KG
Hi Chris
ReplyDeleteThank you for your kind words.
Thanks in particular for your insights on how a key chosen from a key-phrase (such as "thisisakeyphrase") differs from a randomly chosen key (such as "bhjiadfegklmc"), which helps to improve the efficiency of key search.
I also enjoyed your original article, which shows a deep understanding of the very complex mechanisms involved a such a resilient code as the Double Transposition, probably the hardest type of manual code.
Good luck with your research!.
Regards
George
Hi George,
ReplyDeleteit was a pleasure to help you and if you have another project going and need some ideas for a new direction, feel free to send me an e-mail.
Regards,
Chris