Some dude claims to have cracked the Zodiac Killer's final cipher.

[Krynj]

Gizmodo

The only thing creepier than the Zodiac killer calling himself the "Zodiac killer" and murdering a lot of people in the 60s was his trademark codes. And 40 years later, most of them remain unsolved. Unless you ask this guy.

Corey Starliper, a Californian amateur codebreaker and devout Zodiac historian, says he's busted the murderer's toughest cipher. The result? A mostly-coherent jumble of killer-ranting, and proof of Zodiac's true identity.

Foster City Patch explains that Starliper's method wasn't so sophisticated, merely using an old code technique known as the Caesar to swap in replacement letters. He had to do some guesswork with the non-alphabetic characters, but the yield is something that resembles English sentences. And it's scary: begging for help, claiming a loss of control and a lust for blood, the alleged code solution fingers Arthur Leigh Allen, the case's main suspect who died an innocent man in 1992.

But not everyone's buying Starliper's claim—in fact, police and other cryptographers are dismissing it entirely. "That really ticked me off," he laments. ""With a code that constantly changes a pattern ... you can't attack it using brute force. There are people who have tried. Out of all of the solutions that I've seen this one has the highest readability and probability for accuracy that I've ever come across." [Patch]

Jonah Hill has been a busy dude.

Original story:
http://fostercity.patch.com/articles/has-the-code-of-the-zodiac-killer-been-cracked

 

[Wanescotting]

interesting if true

 

[Locut0s]

Why would the police dismiss it out of hand?

 

[AznAnarchy99]

I have a feeling that some people are jealous.

 

[moshquerade]

meh... anyone could have "figured" that's what it said.

 

[HAL9000]

It's pretty cool, read this earlier, I'll be interested to read any other Zodiac ciphers that he decodes.

 

[lxskllr]

Why would the police dismiss it out of hand?

Because they're douchebags, and it makes them look inept if the code was unsophisticated as they say. It's same way a prosecutor will send someone to jail, even with overwhelming proof of innocence :^S

 

[Rudee]

Main problem is, Arthur Allen passed a polygraph test, had his fingerprints compared to those at the murder scene of known Zodiac victim Paul Stine and had his handwriting examined. In 2002, a DNA comparison to a sample found on one of the stamps of the Zodiac letters did not match Allen's.

 

[Wanescotting]

Because they're douchebags, and it makes them look inept if the code was unsophisticated as they say. It's same way a prosecutor will send someone to jail, even with overwhelming proof of innocence :^S

Wher is SandEagle when ya need him?

 

[Locut0s]

Because they're douchebags, and it makes them look inept if the code was unsophisticated as they say. It's same way a prosecutor will send someone to jail, even with overwhelming proof of innocence :^S

This does sound like the case. From the article it sounds like they didn't even bother to look at it. Sure it could be fake but at least take a look at the thing!

 

[Rudee]

Hoax!

http://oranchak.com/zodiac/corey/hoax.html

 

[Locut0s]

Hoax!

http://oranchak.com/zodiac/corey/hoax.html

Don't have time to read it but p0wned if true.

 

[Arkaign]

It seems remarkable that this hasn't been solved by some cryptographer by now.

Interesting work being done on Kryptos 4 right now at least.

 

[Red Squirrel]

When I first heard of this, I thought of maybe giving it a jab, then I figured, if I do figure it out, chances are people will do it before me.

 

[zinfamous]

Hoax!

http://oranchak.com/zodiac/corey/hoax.html

I look at the line of expected caesar shifts and what cory put down, and it looks pretty damn close to me.

after doing quit a bit of simple sanger sequencing, clean-up, and SNP analysis...I tend to look at those "x" marks as SNPs or mutations (where the sequenced strand deviates from the original template--doesn't make the whole wrong or, in genetics, doesn't necessarily mean it will change a thing), and the hash marks as indeterminate (weird issues with sequencing, the software simply can't differentiate peaks, whatever).

I know nothing about cryptography, or if in theory, a single discrepancy should completely discredit his work...but in my world, that would be considered really, really accurate.