FBI Wants You To Solve Encrypted Notes From Murder 466
coondoggie writes "The FBI is seeking the public's help in breaking the encrypted code found in two notes discovered on the body of a murdered man in 1999. The FBI says that officers in St. Louis, Missouri discovered the body of 41-year-old Ricky McCormick on June 30, 1999 in a field and the clues regarding the homicide were two encrypted notes found in the victim's pants pockets."
I've cracked it! (Score:4, Funny)
The first note just looks a list of IP addresses associated with Twitter accounts communicating with a "Julian_Assange" and the second note appears to be in Arabic (which I can't read).
I don't understand what either of those have to do with a 1999 murder in Missouri though.
Link to the notes: (Score:5, Funny)
Here is a link to the notes:
http://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/2011/march/cryptanalysis_032911/image/gallery [fbi.gov]
Of course, what I got out of it was:
"You are a stupid square idiot bald git aren't you? eh? I'm pointing at you, I'm pointing at you, but I'm not actually addressing you, I'm addressing the one prat in the country who has bothered to get a hold of this recording, turn it round and actually work out the rubbish that I'm saying. What a poor sad life he's got! Frankly your acts crap, anyway anybody could've done it, I hate the lot of you, bollocks to you!"
And the coded message is... (Score:5, Funny)
DRINKYOUROVALTINE
Hmm... (Score:4, Funny)
There are a lot of nested parens in those notes. It's clearly Lisp code. They should bring Alan Turing in for questioning.
Re:I've cracked it! (Score:5, Funny)
No, no, no! It appears to be a conspiracy between Slashdot users ganjadude (952775) and elrous0 (869638) to deflect suspicion.
I'd like to, but... (Score:5, Funny)
I can't violate the DMCA. Sorry.
It's not encrypted (Score:4, Funny)
it's Welsh!
Re:I've cracked it! (Score:5, Funny)
Unfortunatelly it's something darker. I don't dare to put the message here in plain text for all search engines to find so here's a ROT13 version of the decoded message:
Jr'er ab fgenatref gb ybir
Lbh xabj gur ehyrf naq fb qb V
N shyy pbzzvgzrag'f jung V'z guvaxvat bs
Lbh jbhyqa'g trg guvf sebz nal bgure thl
V whfg jnaan gryy lbh ubj V'z srryvat
Tbggn znxr lbh haqrefgnaq
Arire tbaan tvir lbh hc
Arire tbaan yrg lbh qbja
Arire tbaan eha nebhaq naq qrfreg lbh
Arire tbaan znxr lbh pel
Arire tbaan fnl tbbqolr
Arire tbaan gryy n yvr naq uheg lbh
Re:I've cracked it! (Score:5, Funny)
So chances are we'll never be able understand it. Shaka, when the walls fell.
Re:Hmm... (Score:5, Funny)
"The more than 30 lines of coded material use a maddening variety of letters, numbers, dashes, and parentheses"
It's obviously a port of sendmail written in Perl.