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The solution to one of the Zodiac Killer’s ciphers, unsolved for 51 years, was cracked by a team of citizen code breakers earlier this month, and the FBI confirmed the authenticity of the decoded message.
The message “Z-340”, coined that since it contains 340 characters, a mixture of letters and symbols, was first sent to the Chronicle of San Francisco in November 1969, amid a series of figures, threatening letters and evidence (samples of a victim’s shirt) that the Zodiac Killer sent to the newspaper.
While some of the Zodiac Killer ciphers were decoded at the time, the “Z-340” message remained unsolved for 51 years, until codebreakers David Oranchak from the USA, Sam Blake from Australia and Jarl Van Eycke from Belgium, they checked the encryption. using Blake’s decryption software; In a YouTube video posted on Friday, Oranchak detailed how the message was decoded and why it took so long. (In addition to the bad spelling of Zodiac Killer, he also misplaced characters in his own code.)
Ultimately, codebreakers translated the encryption as:
“I hope you’re having a lot of fun trying to catch me who wasn’t me on the TV show, which brings up a point about me. I’m not afraid of the gas chamber because it will send me to paradise sooner because now I have enough slaves to work for me where everyone else has nothing when they arrive in paradise, so they are afraid of death. I am not afraid because I know that my new life is life will be easy in the death of paradise. “
(The line about the TV show refers to an October 1969 incident in which someone posing as the Zodiac Killer called a San Francisco morning show to speak with attorney Marvin Belli.)
Oranchak presented the trio’s findings to the FBI earlier this month, and the agency acknowledged that the code had been cracked on Friday:
#Break – Our statement on the #Zodiac code: pic.twitter.com/cJCtlDEbMw
– FBI SanFrancisco (@FBISanFrancisco) December 11, 2020
Talking with him New York Times On Friday, Oranchak said: “The message in that code. I don’t see it useful for them. It’s more of the same crap the killer liked to write about. It’s only meant to hurt people and make them afraid. “
Blake added: “It is considered one of the holy grails of crypto. At the time, the encryption had withstood attack for 50 years, so any attempt to find a solution was truly a shot to the moon … lucky to pick the right haystack to start looking for the needle. “
The Zodiac Killer is confirmed to have killed at least five people in the Bay Area in the late 1960s and early 1970s. His identity remains unknown, and an April 1970 cipher containing 13 characters – “My name is _______” precedes the message – is not yet resolved.
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