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Breaking the Fermilab Code
Posted by
kdawson
on Tue May 20, 2008 03:22 AM
from the paging-frank-shoemaker-white-courtesy-telephone-please dept.
from the paging-frank-shoemaker-white-courtesy-telephone-please dept.
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Fermilab Calls For Code Crackers 392 comments
atrocious cowpat passes along a call for help from symmetry magazine, the joint publication of Fermilab and SLAC, noting: "Could be just plain gibberish, it could be something like those wonderfully weird letters to the Mount Wilson observatory, or it could be a message from aliens who just happened to have gotten their hands (tentacles/exoskeleton) on a fax machine." "A little over a year ago, the Fermilab Office of Public Affairs received a curious letter in code (4.4-MB image here). It has been sitting in our files all that time and we haven't had much of a chance to look into breaking the code, nor are we particularly expert at this!"
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That was ridiculously quick (Score:5, Insightful)
Many eyes make all bugs shallow (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:Many eyes make all bugs shallow (Score:5, Insightful)
No, not really. This only shows that a lot of people will try to solve interesting problems, and some of them eventually will. It does not say anything about open source software and finding bugs or security vulnerabilities, which involves (among other things) reading tons of "boring" code.
Note: I did not say that open source is bad for finding bugs and vulnerabilities, I just want to mention that breaking this code does not say anything about open source software.
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Re:Many eyes make all bugs shallow (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:That was ridiculously quick (Score:4, Insightful)
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solved within 7hrs... (Score:5, Insightful)
Also, based on the "employee number" speculation in the second link especially, I want to point out that although I am the furthest thing from a "codecracker," I do believe the BASSE misspelling of BASE is intentional and is a clue. Likewise, the FRANK SHOEMAKER WOULD CALL THIS NOISE stanza may be a reference to his work for fermilab (detecting signal that often hides amongst noise), but is probably a double entendre of some sort. If someone is methodical enough to encode this text and mail it to Fermilab, they wouldn't misspell such a simple word (BASE), unless for a good reason. Along these same lines of thought, I believe the "noise" comment is also a clue with multiple meanings. Also, from what I gather, the middle stanza can be assumed to be hex, so that makes the third stanza fairly insignificant, unless it has other meaning (hence looking at "BASSE" for a clue as to some other meaning).
Re:solved within 7hrs... (Score:5, Funny)
Clearly,
All your Basse are belong to us.
Sorry.
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Re:solved within 7hrs... (Score:5, Interesting)
Again, just as I believe "BASSE" is significant because it is misspelled (when nothing else is), I believe this wrapped word is significant (when no other words are wrapped). It's possible the encoder did this just to make things a bit harder, but if you look at the fact that it happens exactly at the part of the sentence referring to "noise," I believe you must be more inclined to lend it significance.
Regarding BASSE, again, I am not a mathematician or a cracker, so I may be at a strong disadvantage here. If the significance of BASSE is taking the "extra" S and incorporating it into the middle stanza, I will be of little help to this collective effort. That said, if we attack the problem from a psychological/wordclue aspect... Googling "basse" doesn't help much, but google: fermilab basse
In summary, BASSE SIXTEEN is (possibly) a sixteen story Fermilab building, named Wilson Hall. The significance of "NOISE" is still lost on me, and I believe the middle stanza should help with forward momentum. I am now going to review both explanations linked from the
Perhaps more now than ever I wish
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Re:solved within 7hrs... (Score:5, Interesting)
The odd breaks occur because the way it's written is in a fixed-width row format. Each row contains an equal number of columns, and each column contains either a '|' or a ' ' (dash or space). The correct interpretation of the message removes the line breaks and translates the sentence as a single line.
The first stanza has 47 columns per row. The 5-6 and 6-7 breaks occur because the last column in line 5/6 is a '|' but the first column in line 6/7 is also a '|'.
The third stanza uses the same notation, but now each row consists of 85 columns. The 2-3 break has the same problem as in the first stanza, the row ran out of columns and the gap character had to be continued on the next row.
If you're looking for significance with those gaps, instead consider the number of columns per row, and the fact that both stanzas have 7 complete rows and an 8th partial row.
Misc numbers that may or may not be helpful:
25 columns in the last row of Stanza 1
21 columns in the last row of Stanza 3
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Re:solved within 7hrs... (Score:5, Interesting)
If the orientation of the columns is rotated 90deg to make them rows, the stanzas may map to the columns in the building. If we assume the messages are significant, and the correlation to building "rows" is significant, and the left over "8th rows" from stanzas are significant.. we could derive all sorts of possibilities for the mapping of the remaining rows to a position in the building. Again, seeing how others here are much better at finding mathematically significant aspects than I am, I will throw this theory out and see if you or someone else can parse it.. because I believe the "25 columns in the last row of Stanza 1, 21 columns in the last row of Stanza 3" will need to be parsed somehow.
Also, speaking of my lack of math background-- can anyone post something useful for the second stanza? I know John and Geoff (linked crackers) have decoded the three character string below the second stanza, as being "508 (0Ã--1fc) or 2812 (0xafc)" but what about the second stanza itself? If it's base sixteen encoded can someone work on decoding it? We are really working with 2/3 of the available information here, and I think the remaining third will provide a lot of momentum.
also, as I expect this will continue long after this story is no longer at the top of the page, anyone who wants to collaborate via e-mail, may feel free to contact me. my email address is encoded as follows
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Left Hander (Score:4, Interesting)
Another clue on the psych path to decoding the SEKRIT MSGS !?
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Re:solved within 7hrs... (Score:5, Interesting)
Or look at the symbol section. You'll see the first symbol for 6 looks like a horizontal bar with a vertical hook and a dot under the bar. The second symbol for 6 has no dot. And to the right of the second symbol for 6 is a vertical cluster of three dots.
Maybe they're nothing, but I get the sneaking suspicion that it's the dots (noise) that's the real puzzle here. Potentially with the symbols indicating the relative geometric arrangement of the dots that then map back to the letters/numbers.
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Re:solved within 7hrs... (Score:5, Interesting)
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An additional link. (Score:5, Informative)
BASSE (Score:5, Interesting)
After some Google work:
Wilson Hall has a connection to ""Basse oeuvre". See this [fermilabtoday.com].
Wilson Hall has 16 floors, and you must have an employee badge to access the 16th floor.Re:BASSE (Score:4, Interesting)
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Answer =! Question. (Score:4, Funny)
Basse Donnée system (BDS) (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Regarding TFB(A) (Score:5, Informative)
1) FRANK@SHOEMAKER@WOULD@CALL@THIS@NOISE
Second part unknown
2) ?
Third part ternary code, II= seperator, same mapping as 1)
3) EMPLOYEE@NUMBER@BASSE@SIXTEEN
It is assumed the three hex symbols are the employee number 0xAFC,
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CHAR MAP (Score:5, Interesting)
Whereas other people kept thinking that the middle section was supposed to be substituting the hex numbers for the symbols above, I had to wonder if the symbols were trying to tell us something. After all, as was pretty clearly pointed out by the people who have solved paragraphs one and three, each section contains only five lines. (In fact, the middle paragraph was your clue to this one -- it was just obscured by the fact that it was in two different codes -- but still, only five lines).
Anyway, I realized that many of the symbols in the middle paragraph were in Charmap. AND each of these has a corresponding UTF code, which could be translated in to hex
For instance:
"Not Sign", U+00AC
"Inverted Exclamation Mark", U+00A1
"Greater Than Sign" (duh), U+003E
"Single Right-Pointing Angle Quotation Mark", U+203A (note in the code they are two different sizes)
"Greek Phi", U+03A6
(Unfortunately, slashdot does not support these extended characters, as I found out. So I could not display all of them.)
Not sure about the rest. The triangle COULD be a Greek Delta, but usually that is represented as a triangle with its base flat, not turned sideways. I have no idea what to make of the squiggly-"8"-like symbol. The three-pointed symbol could be a Greek Lambda, and possibly the top line is a Greek Tau. For the rest? You guess is as good as mine. I don't have the patience to go through CHARMAP symbol by symbol. Hopefully someone else just KNOWS this stuff.
I'm not a genius, so I'll leave this to the board to ponder some more. But the way I figure it, once you have the whole middle paragraph in hex, you should be able to translate it easily enough.
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Re:Regarding TFB(A) (Score:5, Funny)
1) FRANK@SHOEMAKER@WOULD@CALL@THIS@NOISE
2) ?
3) profit
(Filter error: Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING
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Re:Regarding TFB(A) (Score:5, Interesting)
The symbols in the middle are:
s F C
Correct? You worked out F and C were the other two symbols but F and C is undefined.
Did you ever think it was: Shoemaker, F.C.?
That is the initials Frank Shoemaker (mentioned in code)!
In the website, using google, you will find only 7 occurances whereas you will find 107 occurances if you search for F. C. Shoemaker! Ding ding!
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Well, Obviously this is a test. (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:I don't understand the interest (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Message by time travel (Score:5, Informative)
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