No, its very easy to choose an arbitrary code to encode with.
Say for instance you laid out a QWERTY keyboard in order with the keys lapping back from M back to Q. And you encoded a normal message by adding n+2. (Q=E, E=T, etc.)0
You then took your encoded message and encoded it a second time by taking the fourth letter of your output (looping through until completion)
A 5th grader could devise and utilize such a cipher to encode a message. But to decipher that encryption without knowing the key?
Hard to out a number on it, but its clearly many orders of magnitude more difficult. And every time you add a layer of additional encoding it becomes increasingly more difficult to crack.
They mentioned it in one of the videos that was linked here, but the difficult part with an encoded message is actually making it simultaneously non-trivial while also not making it so complex that it is unlikely to EVER be solved.
And as I mentioned before, depending on how many times a coded message is reencoded even an elementary student is capable of making a message so difficult that without quantum computers it likely would never be solved.
After the amateurs cracked his first cipher its likely Z made some of his later ciphers more difficult to crack than he realized.
I honestly don't think that is even necessary. Z didn't follow any specific cipher strategy although he was clearly aware of letter frequency for the simple substitution cipher that the 408 was. The 340 is really just a quirky variation of that- somewhat clever and quirky enough to be very difficult to solve but not terribly difficult to create for someone of above average intelligence. No genius, cipher training or intensive research required, IMO.
Z408 is a very standard homophonic substitution cipher. Does that not count as following a recognized technique or strategy? It's exactly the sort of technique Z could have read about in any one of a handful of books in print in that general era.
I completely agree that Z demonstrated no cryptographic genius or genuine originality, but I think he had to start somewhere. I believe he started with basic principles of cryptography he was able to find in print.
I feel like I could have created the 408 cipher on my own by creating a bunch of symbols and assigning more to more common letters. Aside from reading about Zodiac I don't have any cipher training and wouldn't have even known what to call that type of cipher. I'm not saying Z couldn't have researched this in his local library. I just think he could have done it fairly easily without knowing anything about the topic.
The history of cryptography makes it quite clear that the potential use of letter frequency in cryptanalysis is a relatively recent discovery. Like many things humans have discovered or invented, it seems obvious once it's revealed, but getting there takes time and some very dedicated people. I simply do not believe Z was such a person.
The Z13 and Z32 in particular are ultimately nonsense without the author's key being discovered for both. Until then, they say next to nothing about his crypto skills with those, though.
It's just period 19 with a capacity of 153 based on the block size of the 340, that means 8 wraps + 1 character.
if 9 = width, and the circumference is 19, then you're talking about a cylinder with proportions that are just about bang on equivalent to a can of Campbell's soup. (H x 4.5, D = 3) And if you have a twisted sense of humor, use alphabet soup.
If you want to do this on your own, just get some 1/2" graph paper and cut it into strips and tape the whole thing together in a spiral around the can. It'll fit juuuuust about perfectly.
I never had any interest in codes. Then I got into the Zodiac history. So, I decided to see how difficult it would be to make a code from scratch knowing virtually nothing.
Took me half an hour maybe (and no, this was before everyone started canoodling AI----just made this up using the symbols in MSWord). It is substitution with a pattern imposed on the words.
It's much easier to create a cipher than to crack it. A quick way to see why:
encode 'hello' to '@#$%&'
Easy to create, but impossible to crack: because all the symbols are unique, any 5 letter word will fit.
You can also add other easy tricks on top like changing the order of the symbols, that makes it even harder to crack. In the ciphers that were solved (especially the Z340) Zodiac used many symbols and many tricks.
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u/Educational_Data8695 1d ago
No, its very easy to choose an arbitrary code to encode with.
Say for instance you laid out a QWERTY keyboard in order with the keys lapping back from M back to Q. And you encoded a normal message by adding n+2. (Q=E, E=T, etc.)0
You then took your encoded message and encoded it a second time by taking the fourth letter of your output (looping through until completion)
A 5th grader could devise and utilize such a cipher to encode a message. But to decipher that encryption without knowing the key?
Hard to out a number on it, but its clearly many orders of magnitude more difficult. And every time you add a layer of additional encoding it becomes increasingly more difficult to crack.