Cipher message to Zodiac
On October 23, 1969, the San Francisco Examiner published an article about the ongoing hunt for the Zodiac killer. This enciphered “message to Zodiac” appeared in the article: The article was published after the 408-character cryptogram was solved, and before…
Ricin lone bomber code solved
Updated April 17, 2013: In light of recent events, I’ve decided to remove the ricin recipe plaintext from this post. The FBI, however, continues to display the encrypted ricin recipe on their website. Cryptographer Klaus Schmeh recently posted about a…
Are the ciphers prime-phobic?
Dan Johnson recently posted a really curious discovery about the 340-character cipher on his blog. First, number each of the positions of the cipher from 1 to 340. Then, mark each of the positions occupied by a symbol, the most…
Klaus Schmeh’s book of famous unsolved codes
German computer scientist and cryptology writer Klaus Schmeh recently published a German-language book about famous unsolved secret messages, including the Zodiac Killer cryptograms. (The cover depicts what we all probably want to do with Zodiac’s cryptograms.) Nicht Zu Knacken (which…
Kevin Knight’s upcoming Voynich lecture
I love that we live in an age where university lectures are frequently made free for all to benefit from. From Nick Pelling’s consistently intriguing site comes news that Kevin Knight, the famed USC researcher whose team cracked an old…
Daryll Lathers’ solution makes the front page
Click above to view the entire article as it appeared as the top story in the Leader-Herald, a local newspaper in Gloversville, NY. The article also appeared online here: Decoding a Killer. Daryll did not solve Zodiac’s puzzle, and this…
Sonja C’s Solutions
These videos popped up on Youtube recently: 340 Zodiac Killer Cipher 408 Zodiac Killer Cipher The first video presents this solution to the 340 cipher:
Daryll Lathers’ solution
I recently saw this post on Twitter: Sounds like a joke at first. But someone really did pay to place this ad in the San Francisco Chronicle newspaper: It appeared in the December 21, 2012 paper, and appeared three more…
Did Zodiac use Kahn’s “Codebreakers” book?
In his book Zodiac, Robert Graysmith makes this claim about the Zodiac’s 408-character cryptogram: Fifty-five characters comprise a very complicated cipher. Was this a totally original code or had Zodiac used other sources to build his cipher system? If he…
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