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200-year-old ciphers may reveal the location of treasure buried in Virginia

mentalfloss.com

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Re: 200-year-old ciphers may reveal the location of treasure buried in Virginia

#21

Post by rwallace »

> That attitude would reign among professional cryptanalysts until January 1970, when Dr. Carl Hammer, Director of Computer Sciences at Sperry-Univac, made a startling revelation at the Third Annual Simulation Symposium in Tampa, Florida. He had analyzed the Beale ciphers with a UNIVAC 1108 computer and compared the codes to the musings of a random number generator. The results showed signs of an intelligent pattern.

> “Beale Cyphers 1 and 3 are ‘for real,’” Hammer concluded. “They are not random doodles but do contain intelligence and messages of some sort. Further attempts at decoding are indeed warranted.”

Be careful of concluding that. The human brain is a bad random number generator. A hoaxer trying to write random gibberish in those days would do it by hand, not by rolling dice to ensure uniform randomness, and the handwritten gibberish would inevitably contain patterns.

Re: 200-year-old ciphers may reveal the location of treasure buried in Virginia

#22

Post by mhluongo »

shawnz wrote: post #20
yorwba wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't tell whether you're being sarcastic, but the article is essentially correct. The security of an encryption algorithm doesn't depend on how complex it is if you never reuse the key, because a uniformly random key produces uniformly random output for any input. Only key reuse can introduce statistical regularities that allow cryptanalysis to be applied. The reason most encryption algorithms are more complex tha…

> a uniformly random key produces uniformly random output for any input. This is clearly not true for a simple substitution cipher though, otherwise it couldn't be attacked with frequency analysis

Two different techniques here. One-time pad is a strong random cipher, versus a typical "lookup" substitution cipher which is garbage.

Re: 200-year-old ciphers may reveal the location of treasure buried in Virginia

#24

Post by killaken2000 »

mickronome wrote: post #11
tobinfricke wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed, even if you decode the supposedly "cracked" Beale letter, you get nearly complete gibberish: ihaie depos otedi nthec opntt olBed oorta boupf ourmi lesfr ombul ordsi nanep caiat ionor iault sipfe stbel owthe surla csoft hhgto undth sfotl owing artic issbe aongi ngjoi otltt othep artfe swhos lnamf sateg iieti nnumb erthr ffhtt ewith https://nibot-lab.livejournal.com/tag/beale%20ciphers It's almost certainly a h…

It's almost certainly a hoax, but any book substitution cipher is very sensitive to errors both in counting, and in exactly which book. From that perspective, if you remove the spaces, it's almost intelligeble even to a non native speaker. Observe: ihaiedeposotedinthecopnttolBedoortaboupfourmilesfrombulordsinanepcaiationoriaultsipfestbelowthesurlacsofthhgtoundthsfotlowingarticissbeaongingjoiotlttothepartfeswhoslnamfs…

Also in the past there was no standardized way of writing words so its possible that some spellings are off by today's standards.

I remember when the spellings of words became standardized.

Re: 200-year-old ciphers may reveal the location of treasure buried in Virginia

#25

Post by killaken2000 »

macintux wrote: post #18
wet_grass_sound wrote: post #7

What is point of finding it if the govt is going to claim it?

Virginia has a finders keepers law per the article.

I hear that money has a connection to crime. Time for a civil asset forfeiture.

Re: 200-year-old ciphers may reveal the location of treasure buried in Virginia

#26

Post by yorwba »

shawnz wrote: post #20
yorwba wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't tell whether you're being sarcastic, but the article is essentially correct. The security of an encryption algorithm doesn't depend on how complex it is if you never reuse the key, because a uniformly random key produces uniformly random output for any input. Only key reuse can introduce statistical regularities that allow cryptanalysis to be applied. The reason most encryption algorithms are more complex tha…

> a uniformly random key produces uniformly random output for any input. This is clearly not true for a simple substitution cipher though, otherwise it couldn't be attacked with frequency analysis

It is true for any cipher, but remember that you are not allowed to reuse the key. If you are just scrambling the alphabet, you can never encrypt more than a single character without key reuse.

Re: 200-year-old ciphers may reveal the location of treasure buried in Virginia

#27

Post by paulie_a »

mickronome wrote: post #11
tobinfricke wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed, even if you decode the supposedly "cracked" Beale letter, you get nearly complete gibberish: ihaie depos otedi nthec opntt olBed oorta boupf ourmi lesfr ombul ordsi nanep caiat ionor iault sipfe stbel owthe surla csoft hhgto undth sfotl owing artic issbe aongi ngjoi otltt othep artfe swhos lnamf sateg iieti nnumb erthr ffhtt ewith https://nibot-lab.livejournal.com/tag/beale%20ciphers It's almost certainly a h…

It's almost certainly a hoax, but any book substitution cipher is very sensitive to errors both in counting, and in exactly which book. From that perspective, if you remove the spaces, it's almost intelligeble even to a non native speaker. Observe: ihaiedeposotedinthecopnttolBedoortaboupfourmilesfrombulordsinanepcaiationoriaultsipfestbelowthesurlacsofthhgtoundthsfotlowingarticissbeaongingjoiotlttothepartfeswhoslnamfs…

> Supposedly epcaiation is excavation

I buy it, spelling in that area at that time wasn't exactly top knotch. I know that is stereotypical, but come on.

Re: 200-year-old ciphers may reveal the location of treasure buried in Virginia

#28

Post by sethrin »

nighthawk1 wrote: post #10
wet_grass_sound wrote: post #7

What is point of finding it if the govt is going to claim it?

After black swan, it seems like big treasure hunting is close to hopeless https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Swan_Project

> "The ineffable truth of this case is that the Mercedes is a naval vessel of Spain and that the wreck of this naval vessel, the vessel's cargo, and any human remains are the natural and legal patrimony of Spain."

Legal opinion seems to be fairly solid on this point. Perhaps the lesson instead should be to not pillage national warships.

Re: 200-year-old ciphers may reveal the location of treasure buried in Virginia

#29

Post by tobinfricke »

DoctorOetker wrote: post #8
tobinfricke wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed, even if you decode the supposedly "cracked" Beale letter, you get nearly complete gibberish: ihaie depos otedi nthec opntt olBed oorta boupf ourmi lesfr ombul ordsi nanep caiat ionor iault sipfe stbel owthe surla csoft hhgto undth sfotl owing artic issbe aongi ngjoi otltt othep artfe swhos lnamf sateg iieti nnumb erthr ffhtt ewith https://nibot-lab.livejournal.com/tag/beale%20ciphers It's almost certainly a h…

I also believe it was a hoax, but this is not a good argument for it being a hoax: The perpetrator would expect buyers of the pamphlet to try reproduce the decoding of the second ciphertext, so presumably there were versions of the declaration that correctly formed the key. For the edits (compared to original declaration) see also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beale_ciphers#Deciphered_messa... I would like to see a…

> The perpetrator would expect buyers of the pamphlet to try reproduce the decoding of the second ciphertext, so presumably there were versions of the declaration that correctly formed the key.

The version of the DoI that was used to decode ciphertext #2 was included with the pamphlet. It does not produce an error-free decoding.

> I would like to see a python (or other) script with the most important observations reproduced (such as the alphabet like sequence)

The link in the post to which you are replying contains, at the bottom, all three ciphertexts, the key text, and a C++ program that performs the decoding.

Re: 200-year-old ciphers may reveal the location of treasure buried in Virginia

#30

Post by tobinfricke »

ComplexSystems wrote: post #9
janwillemb wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem would be to define what is considered a successful outcome, measurable by an automated system.

There are, I dunno, maybe 1,000,000 words in the English language. With a book cipher, almost all books will produce gibberish words not on the list. If you find one for which almost all words are magically on that list of 1,000,000 words, you win. I get the appeal of the notion that some second grader could stumble on the winning book and claim the prize, but this article is like halfway between cryptographic fantas…

See my post below. Even using the supposedly-correct key, the decoding produces near-gibberish. It would certainly not pass a test that requires the decoded plaintext to consist of dictionary words.
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