WW2 Pigeon Code Decrypted By Canadian? 158
Albanach writes "At the start of November Slashdot reported the discovery of a code, thought to be from the Second World War, found attached to the leg of a pigeon skeleton located in an English chimney. Now a Canadian by the name of Gord Young claims to have deciphered the message in less than 20 minutes. He believes that the message is comprised mostly of acronyms."
Makes some sense (Score:5, Interesting)
If you are in enemy territory sending messages back to your headquarters you want to be able to encode quickly and move fast to avoid capture. If the pidgeon is caught it is going to give away your position (somewhat) regardless of whether its message is decrypted so the strength of the crypto may not be so important to you.
Well, duh (Score:5, Interesting)
Gord Young, from Peterborough, in Ontario, says it took him 17 minutes to decypher the message after realising a code book he inherited was the key.
Not hard to "crack" a code if you have access to the relevant code book - which a) GCHQ says they don't have, and b) can hardly be called cracking the code. The possible point of failure is - as I'm sure I'm not the only one to spot - if Mr Young has the wrong codebook; codes got shifted and shuffled a lot, and the wrong code book might give a plausible plain text that is never the less incorrect.
Gonna be fun to see what more comes of this.
Re:Slashdot: 2517 (Score:3, Interesting)
On this date in the year 2517, slashdotters
You don't honestly believe this site will still be around in another 505 years, do you? Hell I'd be surprised if it was still around in 2015, considering how rapidly it is losing relevance.
Re:Too generic (Score:4, Interesting)
Furthermore, half the text isn't "decrypted" yet, the "decryption" is inconsistent in places and acronym-based crypts don't tend to yield a neat letter grid like this.
What makes matters worse is that not only is the proposed text not useful at all, but it's complete gibberish. There is no trace of a narrative there; it reminds me very much of the texts that ghost hunters produce after listening to the noise of detuned FM radios.
A more realistic text would be: Found Panzer Group West HQ in château Le Bourg at La Caine. Commander, X infantry, Y tanks. &c. &c.
My best bet is that given that the proposed acronym solution yields gibberish and that the letters form a neat grid, that this was either a one-time pad or a code-book based code. If a OTP message, it must have been sent very late in the war, but on the other hand OTP messages from the time do look exactly like this. Which is a downer because without knowing how to identify the key we'll never know what it says since OTP security is absolute (if a key at least as long as the message is used).
Not impossible to confirm... (Score:5, Interesting)
His decoding of the data gives specific information about german troops present on a specific day and time in history at a particular location. At least some of it should be verifiable.
In 17 minutes he certainly wouldn't have time to find a set of conditions that matched the acronyms he was claiming.
Re:Well, duh (Score:4, Interesting)
I suppose so, but only as much as "wtf", "lol", and "brb" could be considered encrypted communications.
I think it's pretty neat that the history buff figured out what it was, complete with historical context of who sent it, from where, what he was doing, etc. That's what makes that stuff interesting.
Re:The Alleged Decoded Message (Score:3, Interesting)
Searched the net and found this http://www.dday-overlord.com/eng/27_june_1944.htm
"The Epsom operation continues in the West of Caen, and the 49th British Infantry division, after hard fightings, manages to liberate the village of Raurey. The 15th Scottish Infantry division, after having made safe the village of Cheux, wishes to continue its fulgurating progression and moves towards the bridges on the Odon river, major objectives of the Operation Epsom. But it is slowed down by the defenders of Panzer Lehr who refuse to lose more ground. The Allied losses are very important."
Mentions a Panzer Lehr who are holding on. Could be efforts to displace this Panzer unit are generating high Allied casualties. Need somebody with more detail about the battle on this day.
Re:Well, duh (Score:4, Interesting)
It is like I get a blob of data and try to run it through GPG with all passwords known to me and then declaring is "uncrackable" and you pointing out that the first 4 bytes spell JPEG and I should just rename the file to
Same here.
Re:Well, duh (Score:4, Interesting)
I disagree. According to Mr Young, it was not encrypted in the first place- it's a plain-text message composed entirely of acronyms. If it isn't encrypted, you can't decrypt it.
Heavily abstracted plain-text CAN be a code, however; and you "crack" a code. Or "decode" a code would probably be more accurate.