The new episode of Let’s Crack Zodiac has been released! It’s about the aftermath of the 340 solution. And how the cipher might have been created.

Last weekend, we solved the 340 and submitted it to the FBI. They have confirmed the solution. Authorities have spent the time since then making the appropriate notifications to the victims’ families. Now that the notification process is complete, we are announcing the solution in the latest episode of “Let’s Crack Zodiac”.

https://youtu.be/-1oQLPRE21o

For a more detailed look at the story behind the solution, see this article:  http://zodiackillerfacts.com/news-and-updates/breaking-news-the-zodiacs-340-cipher-has-been-solved/

The National Cryptologic Museum has been closed due to the pandemic, so they’ve been doing a series of online educational events. They invited me to give a lecture about the Zodiac ciphers.  Check it out in my latest episode of Let’s Crack Zodiac:

Topics include Zodiac’s crimes, letters, postcards, ciphers, mysterious symbols, and copycat ciphers.

Join me for a deep dive into the Zodiac Killer’s first mysterious cipher, as told through a combination of newspaper articles, police reports, FBI documents and books.  Learn about Zodiac’s crimes, his taunting letters, the mysterious cryptogram he sent to local newspapers, all the efforts to solve it, the breakthrough solution by the Hardens, the involvement of a prominent cryptographer, evidence and leads revealed in the police reports, cipher analysis by the FBI, unanswered questions, and much more!

Is Zodiac’s unsolved cipher a hoax, or does it have a real message? Let’s investigate some possible clues, in Episode 2 of “Let’s Crack Zodiac”:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uyH9-AHz-HY

Quarantine inspired me to create a new video series on Youtube.

It’s called “Let’s Crack Zodiac”.

True crime meets classical cryptography.

Episode 1: Graysmith

Almost 35 years ago, Robert Graysmith published his blockbuster book, “Zodiac”, and claimed to solve a famous unsolved Zodiac Killer cipher.  But did he really solve it?  Let’s break it down.

Here’s a great conversation I had with Michael Butterfield for the first episode of his podcast, “Zodiac: A to Z”:

HistoCrypt 2019, an annual conference on historical cryptology, convenes this week. The proceedings have been published and include many fascinating papers:

http://www.ep.liu.se/ecp/158/ecp19158.pdf

Those here who like to tinker with solvers and the Zodiac ciphers need to read these:

Nils Kopal, “Cryptanalysis of Homophonic Substitution Ciphers Using Simulated Annealing with Fixed Temperature” (This paper in particular is the first to formally acknowledge and accurately describe the long-available solvers such as ZKDecrypto and AZDecrypt)

Tom S Juzek, “Using the Entropy of N-Grams to Evaluate the Authenticity of Substitution Ciphers and Z340 in Particular” Notable conclusion:

We applied those two SVM models to the the Zodiac Killer’s two major ciphers, z408 and z340. z408, which has been solved, is correctly predicted to be a real substitution cipher. z340, which remains unsolved, is predicted to not be a substitution cipher. We think that it is likely that z340 is either another type of cipher, e.g. a transpose cipher or a Vigenere cipher, or that it might not be a bona fide substitution cipher after all.

Also, while this one is about PlayFair ciphers, the algorithmic techniques described in the paper would well apply to homophonic solvers:

George Lasry, “Solving a 40-Letter Playfair Challenge with CrypTool 2”

The proceedings are definitely worth a read if you have any technical interest in cryptology in general and the Zodiac ciphers in particular!

Here is the latest trailer for the upcoming Zodiac-focused episode of “Very Scary People”, hosted by Donnie Wahlberg:

HLN interviewed many folks for this show, including me for the cipher-related material. Apparently the episode is split between two episodes, so it looks like there will be a lot of detail.

Here are two other promos: