Neil Sareen contributed to this article (2012 Cohort)
The Bay Area’s 1960s are widely remembered as a time of love and social development, yet there is a horrific and unexplainable blemish on the otherwise spectacular history.
At night, a lone and exceedingly elusive killer prowled the streets of the Bay Area.
Because of his messages signed with a zodiac symbol, he became known as the Zodiac Killer, and he became one of the most infamous and scary murders in history.
While he claimed responsibility for the murders of 37 people, police were only able to authenticate the identities of seven victims (five were murdered, two survived).
The Zodiac killer would write letters to the Bay Area press throughout his serial killings in an attempt to gloat and tease his pursuing authorities.
These, however, were not ordinary letters. They were nothing more than ciphers. The Zodiac killer sent four coded messages from the late 1960s through the early 1970s. Only one of the four ciphers has ever been cracked.
His letters were split into two sections.
The first half was normally written in plain text, while the second was written in cipher text, which he claimed included his personal information. In the plain text section, he threatened to kill more innocent people if media did not publish his messages. He specified the names of his next victims in various sections of his letters, wreaking havoc in the Bay region. His purpose was to generate dread in Bay Area residents through the media, and he succeeded. As cryptographers probed deeper into the Zodiac killer’s writings, they were able to figure out what drove him to continue killing.
One of the four cipher letters he sent was a three-part coded communication using a 408-symbol cipher, which he transmitted to three different press companies.
His other famous cipher letter comprises a 340-character encryption for which no definite solution has been found.
After sending his 408-symbol cipher (Z408), the Zodiac killer sent another message to the police indicating that if they could break that cipher, they would be free “They’re going to take me.
To figure out what the Zodiac killer intended, we’ll have to look at how the message was decoded.
Donald and Bettye Harden, two schoolteachers, cracked the Z408 cipher in 1969.
The Z408 encryption was made up of random symbols that matched a plain text message.
While the Zodiac Killer’s ciphers made him appear to be a genius, the Z408 cipher was quite simple to crack.
A homophonic simple substitution cipher was used.
Each ciphertext letter corresponds to a plaintext letter in a simple substitution cipher.
A homophonic substitution cipher, on the other hand, allows more than one ciphertext letter to correspond to a plaintext letter.
This may appear difficult, but this cipher was far easier than any cryptanalyst could have predicted in the past ” (“Zodiac Killer Ciphers, 2012).
Donald and Betty Harden deciphered the Z408 cipher by looking for common patterns and plugging in letters that might fit into the ciphertext.
They discovered that certain symbols appeared more frequently than others after examining the text.
The ciphertext, for example, contained a large number of double symbols (double letters).
When it comes to frequency analysis, the letter “In English, the letter L is commonly doubled.
They reasoned that because the message came from a serial killer, the double letter “L” must be followed by the letter “I,” forming the word “KILLING.
The word “KILL” was used as the “crib” in cryptography, a word that could be plugged into other portions of the message to determine other words.
While there were a few misspellings in the statement, the meaning was clear.
The decoded code provides chilling insight into the thinking of the Zodiac killer.
He was aiming to collect slaves for the afterlife, according to the plain text message.
Despite the fact that the plain text message revealed the purpose for his serial killings, it did not indicate his name.
He refused to give up his identification because it would “slow down or stop the collection of slaves,” according to the message (“Zodiac Killer Ciphers, 2012).
While the Hardens cracked the Z408 encryption, they were unable to crack the plaintext’s final 18 letters “EBEORIETEMETHHPITI EBEORIETEMETHHPITI EBEORIETEMETHHPITI
Despite the jumbled appearance of the text, cryptanalysts believe these characters are filler letters intended to divide the cipher into three equal pieces.
Others think the letters can be altered to spell out the Zodiac killer’s name ” (“Filler Theory, 2009).
The remaining 18 letters could be rearranged in 741,015,475,200 different ways, making the anagram nearly hard to solve.
Perhaps the Zodiac killer was alluding to the last 18 letters when he said the cops would come for him “He’s yours. Is it possible that the remaining 18 letters represent his name, or is it just another way for the Zodiac killer to drive society insane? While the Z408 cipher has been cracked, the last 18 letters are still a mystery.
To add to the terror he once instilled, the Zodiac killer has yet to be apprehended.
Corey Starliper of Tewksbury, Massachusetts, recently claimed to have cracked the Z340 encryption by realizing that Z340 is a Caesar shift cipher (or a cipher where each plain text letter is shifted 3 letters down the alphabet).
Perhaps you’re asking why the cops didn’t crack a basic shift cipher sooner. Before applying the Caesar shift, Starliper translates each Zodiac symbol to a Latin letter at random. The authorities were unable to crack the cipher because it was entirely made up of Zodiac symbols. Given that Starliper’s method is based on his own assumptions, this process appears to be a little shaky. Surprisingly, the encrypted message produces a message with English phrases but not complete sentences (Muessig, 2011).
Surprisingly, the plaintext’s final few syllables produce the words “MYNAMEISLEIGHALLEN is a German word that means “My Name Is Leigh Hallen.”
While authorities were still investigating the crime, Leigh Allen was a suspect, but his DNA did not match that recovered in the envelopes of the Zodiac letters (Winkles, 2011).
Many cryptanalysts doubt the decipherment’s correctness, but one thing is certain: if a basic three-shift cipher was used and gave a name as well as other words used by a serial murderer, it might very well be an accurate decipherment. Leigh Allen’s identity as the Zodiac Killer remains unknown. It’s possible that the Zodiac killer is framing Leigh Allen (Winkles, 2011).
Cryptography has only added to the mystery surrounding this case, and it has never truly assisted investigators in apprehending the Zodiac killer.
However, cryptography has aided us in learning more about one of history’s most mysterious serial killers.
This essay is part of a series on the history of cryptography written by Vanderbilt University students.
These essays were written as part of a first-year writing course led by mathematics lecturer Derek Bruff.
The essays are published here in part to provide students with an authentic and targeted audience for their work.
See the course blog for additional details on this cryptography seminar.
Ben Muessig, Ben Muessig, Ben Muessig, Ben Mue (2011, July 7). Corey Starliper, a Massachusetts man, claims to have cracked the code of the Zodiac Killer. The Huffington Post is a news organization based in the United States.
In This Article...
What was the total number of Zodiac ciphers?
The Zodiac Killer sent out four ciphers along with letters explaining his crimes in 1969 and 1970. The first, which was sent on July 31, 1969, was decrypted a week later.
“I enjoy killing people because it is so much fun,” read the cipher Z408.
Because man is the most hazardous animal of all, it is more enjoyable than hunting wild game in the woods.
Authorities were mocked by the cipher, which was mailed to The San Francisco Chronicle with a victim’s bloodstained shirt. The Zodiac Killer wrote, “I hope you’re having a great time trying to capture me.”
How did they figure out what the Zodiac letters meant?
According to an old FBI statement, the ‘Zodiac Killer’ gave local newspapers a three-part coded message detailing his purpose for the 1969 crimes, and hinted his name was concealed behind an elaborate cipher message in a second letter to the editor. The killer’s warped motive was revealed in the decrypted message, but his identity remains a mystery.
According to CNN, the FBI announced on Friday that the “340 cipher” was cracked by three codebreakers: David Oranchak, a Virginia software developer, Jarl Van Eycke, a Belgian computer programmer, and Sam Blake, an Australian mathematician.
The encryption was sent in all capital letters, with no punctuation marks, according to the deciphering.
What is the meaning of the 408 cipher?
cipher Z 408 The Z 408 was the killer’s longest cipher, at 408 characters. Donald Harden, a North Salinas schoolteacher, and his wife Bettye figured it out. This cipher was divided into three sections and mailed to two newspapers by the Zodiac killer.
Is the Z13 cipher cracked?
Decryption is impossible. Most experts and law enforcement authorities believed the Z13 and Z32 ciphers, the shortest of the four provided to newspapers when Zodiac was active, were unbreakable. Cryptologists claim that decoding them is impossible due to their brevity (just 13 and 32 letters, respectively).
When was the last time you received a Zodiac letter?
The Zodiac Killer was the moniker of an unidentified serial killer who terrorized Northern California in the late 1960s. The case has been dubbed “America’s most famous unsolved murder case,” having become a part of popular culture and prompting amateur investigators to try to solve it.
Between December 1968 and October 1969, the Zodiac murdered five people in the San Francisco Bay Area, in rural, urban, and suburban settings. His known attacks took place in Benicia, Vallejo, unincorporated Napa County, and the city of San Francisco proper, where he targeted young couples and a lone male cab driver. Two of his intended victims made it out alive. The Zodiac claimed responsibility for the murders of 37 people, and he’s been linked to a number of additional cold cases, some in Southern California and others beyond the state.
The Zodiac came up with the term in a series of taunting letters and cards he sent to local media, threatening murder sprees and bombs if they didn’t print them. Cryptograms, or ciphers, were included in some of the letters, in which the killer claimed to be gathering his victims as slaves for the hereafter. Two of the four ciphers he devised have yet to be cracked, and one was just cracked in 2020. While various speculations have been proposed as to the identity of the killer, Arthur Leigh Allen, a former elementary school teacher and convicted sex offender who died in 1992, was the only suspect ever publicly recognized by authorities.
Despite the fact that the Zodiac stopped communicating in writing around 1974, the peculiar character of the case piqued international interest, which has persisted throughout the years. The case was deemed “inactive” by the San Francisco Police Department in April 2004, although it was reopened before March 2007. The investigation is still ongoing in Vallejo, as well as Napa and Solano counties. Since 1969, the California Department of Justice has had an open case file on the Zodiac murders.
Is the Zodiac code deciphered?
A 51-year-old code left by the Zodiac, a serial killer who terrorized Northern California in the late 1960s and early 1970s, has now been cracked by cryptographic researchers. Mathematica, Wolfram’s statistics software, was used extensively in the cracking of the code.
Three researchers cracked one of the messages attributed to the Zodiac killer, according to Discover Magazine, which published a story about the effort in its January/February 2022 issue. Authorities believe the Zodiac killer killed at least five people in the San Francisco Bay Area more than 50 years ago.
According to the Discover Magazine story, the researchers, including David Oranchak, a computer programmer in Roanoke, Virginia; Sam Blake, an applied mathematician at the University of Melbourne; and Jarl van Eycke, a Belgian codebreaker and warehouse worker, had all attempted, but failed, to crack the Zodiac’s 340-character code before joining forces in 2018.
Many people have tried over the years to decipher the 340-character message that the San Francisco Chronicle received on October 14, 1969. This is considered to be the killer’s second cryptogram, the first being a 408-character message delivered to the newspaper in August of that year, which was deciphered just a week later (the killer subsequently sent two shorter messages, which so far have also resisted decryption).
But it wasn’t until the three began working on it seriously during the COVID-19 pandemic’s downtime that they were able to crack it. According to the magazine, Blake’s idea that the cipher is both a homophonic substitution and a transposition cipher (in which plaintext letters map to more than one ciphertext symbol) was the essential discovery (where plaintext characters are shifted according to a regular system).
Is the Zodiac killer’s identity known?
The Zodiac Killer’s infamous 340 Cipher has been decoded, and his message has finally been revealed, according to the FBI. The FBI has verified that codebreakers have cracked the famed 340 cipher employed by the Zodiac Killer more than 50 years ago.
What did the Zodiac letter say when it was cracked?
The Zodiac Killer sent three nearly identical letters to three Bay Area newspapers in August 1969, following the killings of three of the five known victims. The suspect claimed that one-third of a 408-symbol cryptogram in each letter would reveal his identify. The killer threatened to kill again unless the publications published the letters in their entirety.
A couple in Salinas, California, cracked the code a week after the letters were mailed. The plaintext indicated that the Zodiac Killer was collecting slaves for the hereafter and that he wouldn’t divulge his identify because it would jeopardize his intentions.
Today, how old would the Zodiac killer be?
Although the serial murderer claimed to have murdered 37 people in California in the late 1960s, only seven victims have been officially confirmed.
Gary Francis Poste, according to the Case Breakers, was a man who died in 2018. In any event, this isn’t the first time that various detectives claim to have discovered the serial killer’s identity.
Arthur Leigh Allen, a paedophile who was expelled from the military and from school, was one of the people singled out in the past, but authorities eventually found no link in his case.
Whether it was Gary Francis Poste or not, one thing is certain: the Zodiac killer would now be around 90 years old, according to officials.
Who was the first to crack the Zodiac code?
Mr. Kaye was the subject of a report by Harvey Hines, a now-deceased police detective who believed he was the Zodiac killer but couldn’t persuade his superiors.
Mr. Ziraoui, fatigued but elated, wrote a message about 2 a.m. on Jan. 3 captioned “Z13Z13Z13Z13Z13Z
On a 50,000-member Reddit site dedicated to the Zodiac Killer, my name is KAYE.
“The forum’s moderator wrote, “Sorry, I’ve removed this one as part of a sort of general policy against Z13 solution submissions,” stating that the cipher was too short to be solvable. The moderator declined to speak with The New York Times for an interview.
On other forums, similar dismissive remarks were posted. Many of the comments descended into technical, and often absurd, rabbit holes, while others complained that Mr. Ziraoui’s approaches were overly complicated.
In a written exchange, David Oranchak, the team leader who cracked the 340-character cipher, expressed doubt about Mr. Ziraoui’s solution, noting that “hundreds of proposals for Z13 and Z32 solutions already exist,” and that “it is practically impossible to determine if any of them are correct due to the brevity of the ciphers.” Others had come to Mr. Kaye as a possible suspect based on circumstantial evidence as well.
Mr. Ziraoui’s code-cracking methods, according to David Naccache, a cryptographer and professor at Paris’s Ecole Normale Suprieure, and Emmanuel Thom, a cryptography specialist at France’s National Institute for Research in Digital Science and Technology, were sound and should be considered by police investigators.