Fermilab Code

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The Fermilab Code was broken even before I got a chance to blog about it.

Tags: cryptanalysis, cryptography, encryption

Posted on May 23, 2008 at 6:56 AM • 17 Comments

Comments

aaawww • May 23, 2008 7:33 AM

you’re getting old…

Clive Robinson • May 23, 2008 7:44 AM

Not quite a load of cobblers then 8)

jb • May 23, 2008 8:01 AM

It’s not broken yet. Just some parts are known. The section in the middle for example is still unbroken.

zzz • May 23, 2008 8:03 AM

The only rational explanation, when someone decodes a message before Bruce Schneier, is that that someone is Bruce Schneier 2 seconds from the future.

Anonymous • May 23, 2008 8:10 AM

@jb:

There’s a pretty plausible option for the middle part in the comments for the second article linked to on Slashdot.

andy • May 23, 2008 8:32 AM

I still think there is a reason the symbols are included, and I haven’t seen anyone crack them yet.

Anonymous Employee • May 23, 2008 9:04 AM

A person fired from my place of employment regularly posts rants about Zionist plots and 9-11. He’s ‘intelligent’ enough that I could imagine him encoding some of his stuff and faxing it to anyone he thinks my look at it. And then there’s Unibomber Ted Kazinski.

It amazes me that we are so hungry for a challenge that we will spend untold hours and days decoding and speculating over some random code that shows up on a fax machine.

reaaawww • May 23, 2008 9:32 AM

@aaawww .. thats what I tought too 🙂

chabuhi • May 23, 2008 9:44 AM

Well, the way I pieced the story together in my head (which means little, believe me) ends up with the sender being someone at CERN reporting sensitive info about FNAL’s experiment at LHC.

I LOVED The DaVinci Code!

chabuhi • May 23, 2008 9:50 AM

I meant “Angels & Demons” … DAMMIT – ruined an already lame joke!

xd0s • May 23, 2008 10:29 AM

Bruce Schneier doesn’t break codes, they throw themselves at his feet and beg for mercy! 🙂

Albatross • May 23, 2008 11:07 AM

The space aliens (insert conspiracy target of your choice here) have discovered a way to distract the greatest minds on Earth from their paid fields of research… send them a puzzle!

Chris • May 23, 2008 12:46 PM

Hehe, the code is not yet completely broken.

Consider it an opportunity to demonstrate your abilities, Bruce. If you can… :p

dawgit • May 23, 2008 12:47 PM

It sounds somewhat, that some how Ted Kaczynski (aka- the Unibomber) is somehow in the shadows of this. Perhaps, he is laughing at us all. It is exactly The mockery that he (in his mind) illuminated in his Manifesto. (1) In fact thinking of that reminds me, wasn’t the FBI looking to find a way to de-crypt volumes of his papers found encrypted in a code that no-one has been able to break. (yet). Pointed out by Bruce Schneier a few times. (2) Now, Kaczynski, was at one time a rather briliant mathimatiction, and might still be, in spite of his less than normal social aptitudes. My Question then would be did he have, at any time, any connections to the Fermilab? Or a Prof. Frank Schoemaker? Hummm. But I bet “FRANK SHOEMAKER WOULD CALL THIS NOISE”, indeed, I’m sure he would. -d

1*- a bit of which can be found here: [ http://www.kurzweilai.net/meme/frame.html?main=/articles/art0102.html ]

2*- a little memory refresher: [ http://www.schneier.com/cgi-bin/search/search.pl?Realm=whole+site&Terms=Ted+Kaczynski ]

old guy • May 23, 2008 4:41 PM

At first glance I thought the middle part was a Zodiac contribution.

David Harmon • May 25, 2008 7:30 PM

Reading through those Slashdot threads tempted me to add a comment about “hexapodia”. But I controlled myself… 😉

Descartes • August 17, 2008 8:56 AM

Check out Symmetry Magazines Blog under “Code Breakers Wanted.”