Coded World War 2 message found - UK intelligence agency unable to decipher it - Polidicks

[img]http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/64345000/jpg/_64345866_masons_pigeon_code_07.jpg[/img] [url]http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-20456782[/url] [quote=BBC News][B]Britain's top code-breakers say they are stumped by a secret code found on the leg of a dead pigeon.[/B] The remains of the bird were found in a chimney in Surrey with a message from World War II attached. Experts at the intelligence agency GCHQ have been struggling to decipher the message since they were provided with it a few weeks ago. They say it may be impossible to decode it without more information - some of which could come from the public. The message was discovered by David Martin when he was renovating the chimney of his house in Surrey. Among the rubbish, he found parts of a dead pigeon including a leg. Attached to the leg was a red canister. Inside the canister was a thin piece of paper with the words "Pigeon Service" at the top and 27 handwritten blocks of code. This was given to GCHQ at the start of the month. "We didn't really hold out any hopes we would be able to read the message because the sort of codes that were constructed to be used during operations were designed only to be able to be read by the senders and the recipients," said GCHQ historian Tony, who asked that only his first name be used. He told the BBC: "Unless you get rather more idea than we have of who actually sent this message and who it was sent to we are not going to find out what the underlying code being used was." [B]'Dear Santa'[/B] The experts believe there are two ways the message might have been coded. One is with a so-called one-time pad where a random "key" is applied to a message. If the key is truly random and known only to sender and recipient, the code can be unbreakable. Another option is that this code was based on a specific - and now probably destroyed - code-book put together for a particular operation so the maximum amount of information about that operation could be relayed in the shortest message (this could be done in conjunction with a one-time pad). There had been speculation that the message might have been sent by an agent of the Special Operations Executive and that it was heading for Bletchley Park. But these theories have largely been discounted. An undercover agent in occupied Europe would not use an official note pad in case he or she was caught with it in their possession. And Bletchley became a station to decode German and Japanese messages rather than a place in which the British military regularly sent its communications. "The most helpful suggestion we had through all of this was from a member of the public who suggested that, since the message was found in the chimney, the first two words were most likely to be 'Dear Santa'," Tony said. The best guess is that the message was sent by a unit in the middle of an operation in Europe which was on the move and so unable to stop and set up the aerial for a traditional wireless message. It remains possible it could have been some kind of training exercise though - even perhaps for D-Day. [B]Secret to grave[/B] GCHQ is on the lookout for any help in discovering the kind of contextual information that could aid the process by identifying the sender or recipient. Based on the abbreviation of Sjt in the message, it is thought this was most likely an Army unit, since this is where the old fashioned spelling of Sergeant was used. But so far "Sjt W Stot" and X02 have not been identified. Another avenue is trying to identify the unit to which the pigeons referred to in the message were assigned. Some 250,000 pigeons were used during the war by all services and each was given an identity number. There are two pigeon identification numbers in the message - NURP.40.TW.194 and NURP.37.OK.76. It is unclear which one relates to the bird in the chimney. Help from the public is the best hope for any breakthrough. "There are still quite a lot of people alive who worked in communications centres during the war and who might have some knowledge about this and it would be very interesting if anyone did have information if they could put it in the pot and we could see if we could get any further with it," explains Tony. And without fresh information this pigeon may well have taken its secret to the grave.[/quote]

BREAKING NEWS: CODE CRACKED... "Where are you going for lunch today?"

Awesome. Shame it used a one-time cipher, or we'd be able to figure out what it says. Maybe shelve it for a few decades... come back when computing power breaks those wide open.

It's machine code.

Just a bunch of serial keys for Farming Simulator 1939

Code deciphered: [sp]ur a faget[/sp]

[QUOTE=scout1;38564739]Awesome. Shame it used a one-time cipher, or we'd be able to figure out what it says. Maybe shelve it for a few decades... come back when computing power breaks those wide open.[/QUOTE] One time ciphers are supposedly impossible to crack if used correctly

[video=youtube;BA6kG-tOkBs]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BA6kG-tOkBs[/video]

These encrypted code stories have had me interested since the Ricky McCormick story that was around sometime last year.

[QUOTE=Biotoxsin;38564884]One time ciphers are supposedly impossible to crack if used correctly[/QUOTE] Given enough computing power and letters, there is no uncrackable message

[QUOTE=scout1;38565137]Given enough computing power and letters, there is no uncrackable message[/QUOTE] Actually, one-time pads are information-theoretically secure, meaning that there is no way to crack them if all you have is the coded message, even if you had infinite computing power.

"Urgent! Target has flown the coop, I say, he has flown the coop!"

[QUOTE=Headhumpy;38565277]Actually, one-time pads are information-theoretically secure, meaning that there is no way to crack them if all you have is the coded message, even if you had infinite computing power.[/QUOTE] Not really. You can always just use dictionary attack. Try decoding it with pseudo random keys and algorithms. One will give you words which will make sense. The shorter message, the more probable it is that you will get more than one message made of real words, but this doesn't seem that short.

"Ravioli ravioli give me the formuoli"

[QUOTE=Awesomecaek;38565435]Not really. You can always just use dictionary attack. Try decoding it with pseudo random keys and algorithms. One will give you words which will make sense. The shorter message, the more probable it is that you will get more than one message made of real words, but this doesn't seem that short.[/QUOTE] A real one time pad isn't psuedo random, it's random.

"The cure for cancer is...."

[QUOTE=Awesomecaek;38565435]Not really. You can always just use dictionary attack. Try decoding it with pseudo random keys and algorithms. One will give you words which will make sense. The shorter message, the more probable it is that you will get more than one message made of real words, but this doesn't seem that short.[/QUOTE] In a one-time pad the key is the same length as the plaintext. Meaning that even if you try every possible value for the key, you [i]will[/i] get the data, but you'll also get every other sentence that has the same number of letters, and it's impossible to tell them apart. Like he said, it's secure.

[QUOTE=scout1;38565137]Given enough computing power and letters, there is no uncrackable message[/QUOTE] wrong

"the secret krabby patty formula is"

"Peter Molyneux likes this."

[QUOTE=KlaseR;38564854]Code deciphered: [sp]ur a faget[/sp][/QUOTE] [IMG]http://i.cubeupload.com/XokuJy.png[/IMG]

What if it's not a code, but just a crazy person's ramblings.

[QUOTE=A B.A. Survivor;38566400]What if it's not a code, but just a crazy person's ramblings.[/QUOTE] Donald Trump doesn't really like using pigeons though.

Is that a sni-

"Baba Booey Baba Booey Howard Stern's Penis!"

[QUOTE=Amiga OS;38566199]Nope, if you have the processing capacity you can run it through every decryption algorithm known with every possible key in a reasonable amount of time, obviously we don't yet have that capacity.[/QUOTE] You do understand that even if you came up with the right combination of letters, you'd basically have to GUESS it being correct in the case of a one-time pad, because there would be no other way to know.

[QUOTE=Amiga OS;38566199]Nope, if you have the processing capacity you can run it through every decryption algorithm known with every possible key in a reasonable amount of time, obviously we don't yet have that capacity.[/QUOTE] [URL=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-time_pad#Perfect_secrecy]Still wrong[/URL] Even if you magically had infinite processing power and assuming you had only the encrypted message there would be no way to tell which decoded message is the real deal. I believe a certain someone already said this too [QUOTE=Headhumpy;38565277]Actually, one-time pads are information-theoretically secure, meaning that there is no way to crack them if all you have is the coded message, even if you had infinite computing power.[/QUOTE]

There's probably some old man giggling somewhere that predicted someone would find his fake code message and make a big deal out of it in the future.

"I have the shot on Hitler, your orders to fire"

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