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FBI wants public help solving encrypted notes from murder mystery

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Re: FBI wants public help solving encrypted notes from murder mystery

#31

Post by bertil »

proexploit wrote: post #19
portmanteaufu wrote: post #10

I know that it isn't practical for the FBI to publicize the approaches that they've attempted in deciphering this, but I'm very discouraged by the prospect of spending time on what might be simply redoing a small corner of a failed effort by someone much more qualified.

I agree. I'm certainly not their ideal codebreaker but would have given it a go for fun trying to come up with some off-the-wall stuff based on what I do but the lack of disclosure is a huge turn off.

Like most similar “for fun” code-breaking competition, this one presumably will trigger forums where all the classic strategies tried by the FBI will be tested once and signalled as failed.

Re: FBI wants public help solving encrypted notes from murder mystery

#32

Post by double122 »

I thought this could be a fun 'challenge'...

I'm inclined to believe that this is potentially ciphered in English, due to, what look to be stiking similarities between the alphabetic character frequencies of the notes:

http://d122.com/murdermystery/freq.png

and the frequencies of characters in English:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:English_letter_frequency_(...

If anyone else wants to have a play here is my (rough) transcripts and an ODS with some frequencies:

http://d122.com/murdermystery/1.txt

http://d122.com/murdermystery/2.txt

http://d122.com/murdermystery/freq.ods

I'll update here if I find anything interesting. Lots of patterns repeated in this text!

Re: FBI wants public help solving encrypted notes from murder mystery

#33

Post by pero »

danielsoneg wrote: post #29
pero wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Asperger's precludes anyone from having the necessary toolbox to be even remotely considered 'streetsmart', as is mentioned in the article. Interesting perspective however.

Depends on where they are on the spectrum - one of the better salespeople I knew was diagnosed mildly AS. He was extremely smart, had gotten very good at reading people's mannerisms, and didn't get uneasy with that sort of manipulation - it's not a black and white thing. And, frankly, "Street Smart" + "Murdered" = "Not Street Smart Enough"

Granted I'm not a psychologist but am extremely familiar with the literature/research on AS, and everything I can recall promotes a severe disability in recognizing, interacting, and making connections with/between individuals, groups and environments--which is how I would define 'streetsmarts.'

But you're absolutely right in saying that it isn't black and white. There are also plenty of misdiagnosed cases; and the research and criteria continually evolve.

Re: FBI wants public help solving encrypted notes from murder mystery

#34

Post by Tichy »

famousactress wrote: post #7

Really intriguing. The first page has 'p1' up in the corner, which makes me think the sequence of the pages might matter... The whole thing reminds me of pages in my notebook where I kept all of my Windows and Adobe license codes.

Maybe he was selling pirated copies of Windows and Adobe in the street?

Re: FBI wants public help solving encrypted notes from murder mystery

#36

Post by noahc »

double122 wrote: post #32

I thought this could be a fun 'challenge'... I'm inclined to believe that this is potentially ciphered in English, due to, what look to be stiking similarities between the alphabetic character frequencies of the notes: http://d122.com/murdermystery/freq.png and the frequencies of characters in English: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:English_letter_frequency_(... If anyone else wants to have a play here is my (roug…

What was your methodology for getting freq.png?

Re: FBI wants public help solving encrypted notes from murder mystery

#38

Post by electromagnetic »

jarin wrote: post #30
fluidcruft wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other hand, hopefully we don't graduate illiterates.

Well, I guess that depends on whether your standards for literacy include knowing the differences between "they're", "there", and "their".

Personally, having worked as a writer and wanting to be a novelist, my standard for literacy does include knowing the differences between "they're/there/their", "we're/were/where/wear", etc. So from what I've seen about 50% of students are graduated illiterate.

I'd also add that they should know how to use who and whom, but then that would be making our population 90% illiterate.

Re: FBI wants public help solving encrypted notes from murder mystery

#39

Post by double122 »

noahc wrote: post #36
double122 wrote: post #32

I thought this could be a fun 'challenge'... I'm inclined to believe that this is potentially ciphered in English, due to, what look to be stiking similarities between the alphabetic character frequencies of the notes: http://d122.com/murdermystery/freq.png and the frequencies of characters in English: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:English_letter_frequency_(... If anyone else wants to have a play here is my (roug…

What was your methodology for getting freq.png?

It's just a frequency count of the letters in the transcriptions I did. Obviously my transcript may not be perfect, but I was pretty confident with most of the letters.

This was just my first observation and I thought it was interesting enough to post.

Re: FBI wants public help solving encrypted notes from murder mystery

#40

Post by jcl »

double122 wrote: post #32

I thought this could be a fun 'challenge'... I'm inclined to believe that this is potentially ciphered in English, due to, what look to be stiking similarities between the alphabetic character frequencies of the notes: http://d122.com/murdermystery/freq.png and the frequencies of characters in English: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:English_letter_frequency_(... If anyone else wants to have a play here is my (roug…

I would guess that he is using "E" as a separator, since it seems to occur at almost all end-of-lines and before punctuation/numbers. And maybe the letter just before "E" has some significance, as there is only a small set of letters that appears there, with "SE" extremely frequent. It's possible that he is stripping out vowels as a kind of shorthand.
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