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Mafia Boss Using Crook Crypto Captured
Posted by
Zonk
on Tue Apr 18, 2006 11:13 AM
from the never-heard-of-pgp-and-email dept.
from the never-heard-of-pgp-and-email dept.
boggis writes "Discovery is running a story on Bernardo Provenzano, the recently arrested 'boss of bosses' of the Sicilian Mafia. He apparently wrote notes to his henchmen using a modified form of the Caesar Cipher, which was easily cracked by the police and resulted in further arrests of collaborators. Discovery's cryptography expert describes it as a code that 'will keep your kid sister out'."
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Substituion Cipher? (Score:4, Informative)
People have been using frequency analysis [wikipedia.org] for over a thousand years to crack substitution ciphers!
Re:Substituion Cipher? (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:Substituion Cipher? (Score:5, Insightful)
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If only.. (Score:5, Interesting)
You see, now if you want to do secure pencil and paper ciphers here's how you do it.
Self-shrinking generators are broken but the best attack requires an insane amount of plain-text. Far, far, more than you could ever generate by hand. If Mr Mafia had used this instead of a crappy cipher from two thousand years ago then he might not have been caught.
Throughout history lives have literally depended on the strength of the cryptography people have deployed. I find it exciting that these times are still with us and are not mearly confined to the history books.
Simon
Re:If only.. (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:If only.. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:If only.. (Score:5, Funny)
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Solitaire (Score:5, Informative)
(The article does exist in the Internet Archive at
http://web.archive.org/web/20050206214237/http://
It does describe what sound like they might be some problems with the randomness of the keystream, but it doesn't seem like a complete break. Sorry for pasting the address, but Slashdot doesn't seem to like IA links much.)
Anyway, I'd be curious in knowing what the problems with it are.
Parent
Re:Wouldn't have helped in this case anyways... (Score:5, Interesting)
If the police aren't looking for something like a deck-of-cards-as-key, then they won't find the key, all they'll find is a deck of cards.
I only say this because I recall reading an article some years back about drug dealers storing their business information on USB thumbdrives & wearing them as necklaces or on keychains. The police would arrest the dealer, but since the police didn't know what they had, the thumbdrive was treated as any other possesion & sealed up till the dealer was released.
You're still hiding your 'key', you're just hiding it in plain site & hoping no one sees it for what it is.
Parent
You didn't expect (Score:4, Funny)
Re:You didn't expect (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Not very smart (Score:5, Informative)
To put that into computer terms, he ROT13ed the text. This sort of cipher was used by Caesar not because it was secure, but because most people couldn't read. Even those that could read undoubtedly lacked sufficient education to consider a cryptoanalysis of the text. But if someone does consider a cryptoanalysis, it is incredibly easy to break this cipher.
Simply substituting the first letter with each letter of the alphabet allows for a brute force attempt at decoding by then replacing the rest of the letters with the exact same offset used on the first character. This method ensures that the message will be decrypted even if the alphabet has additional characters. (Either for purposes of obfuscation or additional information.) The only method that can be used to prevent an attacker from using this simple decoding method (you don't even need a computer!) is to mangle the alphabet somehow. For example, if the alphabet is backwards an attacker would have more trouble decrypting the cipher. Even then, however, a simple statistical analysis on the occurance of the letters would quickly decrypt the message and reveal the secret alphabet used.
That being said, this particular mobster was smart enough to realize that a simple cipher like this would be insufficient to deter a decoder. So he attempted to confuse would-be attackers by using a number code to obscure names. I imagine that he thought that attackers would assume that he was using a codebook to keep track of the assigned names. Unfortunately (for him), his 8th grade education was obviously insufficient for him to know that his number sequences are very similar to compression techniques. Anyone with experience would note that the codes were far too long, and that the number 1 appeared quite often. Its appearance suggests that its a "trigger" for interpreting the next number differently.
So there you have it, security through obscurity does not work.
High security. (Score:5, Funny)
I AM.... (Score:5, Funny)
He should've at least read (Score:4, Interesting)
OK , he doesn't know cryptography... (Score:5, Insightful)
so he must've been doing something right. I imagine the ceaser
code was simply to prevent other knuckle dragging criminals from
understanding the message, not a load of top crypto crackers
at police HQ.
Keep my kid sister out!? Impressive! (Score:5, Funny)
Considering my kid sister is a mathematician at NSA... Hmm, maybe he meant a hypothetical kid sister?
Didn't need crazy encryption (Score:4, Insightful)
And the secret message is... (Score:4, Funny)
Cryptography is not the important point (Score:5, Informative)
The important point is that he managed to stay at large, not as a fugitive, in the neighbourhood of Corleoni (Sicily, Italy) for almost 43 years without being noticed or identified and while still heading at full steam the Cosa Nostra [wikipedia.org]!
So, as far as security and privacy is concerned, a good design can make poor technology rock!
Crude, maybe, but dumb, no way (Score:5, Interesting)
The coded notes are more likely have been intended to prevent his fellow mafiosi from getting too close and knowing too much. There was nothing dumb about this man's rule as a godfather. He evaded capture for forty years, rebuilt the organization after the disasters of the Riina years, retained power by remaining as invisible to his fellow mobsters as he was to the authorities, and simply survived into his 70s in a "profession" in which many are lucky to reach their thirties.
Yes, it's good news that another gruesome killer is behind bars. But the more worrying question is why the godfather found it unnecessary to take more stringent precautions, suggesting that clearing out the Mafia-infested lands of Western Sicily and the corruption-prone "public works" economy still has a very long way to go. It's going to take more than a few smart remarks about cryptography to do that.
Behold the power of ROT13 times 2! (Score:5, Funny)
Behold twice the power of a ROT13 used twice!
Parent
Re:Behold the power of ROT13 times 2! (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:Most interesting part... (Score:5, Interesting)
For this, I turn to the advise of Mark Twain:
He is completely correct - there's no need for letters if they sound like others. Bekause of this, I suggest that we should follow in his footsteps.
Parent
Re:IT Consultant (Score:5, Funny)
Hello, mafia! For $250K/year, I am an IT guy who can give advice on security, encryption, what can be recovered from a hard drive etc. In addition to IT, I enjoy pasta, Chianti, parmigiano, and pitted olives (preferably all in one night). Salary is negotiable if you can provide an "Italian woman," something I keep hearing about but, being a geek, haven't figured out the details of just yet.
References available upon request.
Parent