Kryptolulz

KeithTalent

Elite Member | Administrator | No Lifer
Administrator
Nov 30, 2005
50,231
118
116
Yeah I remember reading about this a little while back. Pretty interesting stuff.

KT
 

Crono

Lifer
Aug 8, 2001
23,720
1,503
136
Read that in print edition earlier this week. Some of those CIA guys are compeltely obsessed about cracking it. It's almost worse then Lost obsession.
 

yllus

Elite Member & Lifer
Aug 20, 2000
20,577
432
126
Waterboard the artist until he gives up the meaning? :p

I love that the artist is "deeply annoyed" by the fact that Dan Brown will reference his art in his next book. Dan Brown sucks.
 

James Bond

Diamond Member
Jan 21, 2005
6,023
0
0
I don't understand why it's so hard to crack if some random artist made it..? I didn't read much of the article.
 

effowe

Diamond Member
Nov 1, 2004
6,012
18
81
Originally posted by: James Bond
I don't understand why it's so hard to crack if some random artist made it..? I didn't read much of the article.

Read it, it's worth it. Random artist turned cryptologist.
 

Crono

Lifer
Aug 8, 2001
23,720
1,503
136
Originally posted by: effowe
Originally posted by: James Bond
I don't understand why it's so hard to crack if some random artist made it..? I didn't read much of the article.

Read it, it's worth it. Random artist turned cryptologist.

Or rather he had a cryptologist from the CIA help him out. Only the artist knows the answer itself, though.
 

xanis

Lifer
Sep 11, 2005
17,571
8
0
Watch, no one is going to be able to figure it out, and then on his deathbed the artist is going to say, "The numbers are random. They mean nothing. Fuck you all."
 

LordMorpheus

Diamond Member
Aug 14, 2002
6,871
1
0
Originally posted by: Xanis
Watch, no one is going to be able to figure it out, and then on his deathbed the artist is going to say, "The numbers are random. They mean nothing. Fuck you all."

Haha, in "Cyrptonomicon" something like this happens. A cryptanalyst with the united states cracks a code being used by a conspiracy of mostly good guys that are stealing large amounts of gold from the axis powers, and because several members of the conspiracy are his friends, he takes the original intercepted messages and keeps them, replacing them with the the output of some function seeded with the name of his boss.

His boss later becomes one of the top dogs at the NSA and pours tons of resources into cracking it for years and years until someone finally solves it, and it almost ruins his career.
 

Jeff7

Lifer
Jan 4, 2001
41,596
20
81
"I think I've got it!!! At least every other word is coming out....

'gonna you never let down gonna goodbye'....Oh DAMMIT!!"

 

Double Trouble

Elite Member
Oct 9, 1999
9,270
103
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I remember reading about this a few years back. I don't know that much about cryptography, but I'm truly astounded that a presumably simple cipher using transposition etc can't be broken using modern computers. Obviously it can't -- or it would have been broken years ago -- but I don't understand why. If it's that easy to create codes that can stand up to years of attempts to brake them, wouldn't it be very easy to create pretty much unbreakable encoding? Dunno, I find the whole thing very interesting though, that the spooks themselves haven't been able to solve it. I'd bet that the NSA already has it cracked though :)
 

Babbles

Diamond Member
Jan 4, 2001
8,253
14
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I read the print version of the article and I fail to understand how the OP can conclude that the CIA "sucks at codes." I dunno, to me just seems like the OP is attempting to live vicariously via the code-maker.