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Codes

Knowledge is Powe(r) – A Crash Course in Ciphers, Codes, and Cryptography

By Ben Stark on January 28, 2020 0

Knowledge is Powe(r) – A Crash Course in Ciphers, Codes, and Cryptography (Feat. Simon Bacon & William Friedman)

This photo contains a hidden message. A hidden code in plain sight!

knowledge is power - hidden messages in plain sight intelligence101

Click to View full image here

This week I stumbled across a little known photograph that took me down a rabbit hole of codes, ciphers and cryptic messages  –

  • A quick lesson into how codes, ciphers and cryptography work
    • How Ciphers Work?
    • Famous Ciphers
    • Bacon’s A/B System
    • Bacon Binary System (Advanced) –
    • Other Ciphers and Ways to Code Messages
      • The Pigpen Code
      • Morse Code
      • From Information to Intelligence
      • Want More?
      • Activity

      For context, the photo is of U.S. Army code breakers trained by William Friedman and his wife Elizebeth during WW1.

      William and Elizebeth Friedman had astonishing careers in cryptanalysis, and William is known today as the father of modern American cryptology.

      If you look closely, you’ll note soldiers are either facing forward towards the camera, while others are facing to the side –

      – a hidden code in plain sight

      Using the Baconian Cipher (or Bacon’s Cipher) the soldiers can be divided into groups of 5, and the secret message decoded using the A/B system.

      Before I give away the secret message however, let’s learn a little more about secret messages.

      A quick lesson into how codes, ciphers and cryptography work

      Codes

      Codes are used to translate whole words into other words, phrases or numbers.

      Ciphers

      Ciphers change the individual characters into numbers, alternative letters or symbols.

      Cryptography

      Cryptography is the art / science of writing and deciphering codes.

      Cryptanalysis

      the term used for the study of methods for obtaining the meaning of encrypted information without access to the key normally required to do so. I.e. the study of how to crack encryption algorithms or their implementations.

      How Ciphers Work?

      Ciphers have three parts,

      1. the plain text – the letters or words revealed after the cipher is decoded
      2. the cover-text – the message used to conceal the plain text
      3. the key – used to decode the cover-text to reveal the plain text.

      Famous Ciphers

      The most famous of these is the enigma machine – which encoded German communications during WWII.

      Enigma Intelligence101

      Bacon’s A/B System 

      Within the Baconian Cipher each letter of the plain text is replaced by a group of five ‘A’s, or ‘B’s – according to the key below:

      Codes Ciphers and Cryptography - Intelligence101

      In our context, Friedman employed the Baconian cipher with soldiers facing towards the camera, and others facing away.

      The crucial part about Bacon’s system is that the a’s, and b’s do not actually need to be represented by the letters explicitly.

      In his system, the a’s and b’s could be divided into any two distinct classes – such as fruit (e.g. apples & oranges) or open and shut windows in a photograph.

      The secret message, hidden in plain sight was the famous Baconian motto “Knowledge is power,” but there were insufficient people to complete the ‘R’ (and apparently one soldier in the ‘W’ group looked the wrong way) –

      William Friedman was particularly fond of this photo and kept this picture on his desk at home and in his office.

      Friedman Desk at home

      Bacon Binary System (Advanced) –

      If you check out the Bacon system on Wikipedia it explains about using a binary set of numbers rather than the A/B system as described –

      An advanced method of this cipher involves converting your coded message into binary code (1’s and 0’s) and overlaying it with a corresponding block of cover text.

      Binary Intelligence101

      Secret Message: “BACON TAUGHT ME HOW TO THINK”

      Becomes:

      00001 00000 00010 01110 01101 10011 00000 10100

      00110 00111 10011 01100 00100 00111 01110 10110

      10011 01110 10011 00111 01000 01101 01010.

      Which can be hidden in a sentence of corresponding letters (23 blocks x 5 binary numbers = 115 characters).

      I found a corresponding sentence from a random Wikipedia page on Selective Hearing:

      “Selective auditory attention is a type of selective attention where ones auditory directed at things people are interested in hearing.” (115 characters)

      Which looks like this when it’s broken up the text into blocks of 5 (to match the binary code):

      Selec | tivea | udito | ryatt | entio | nisat | ypeo | fsele | ctive | atten | tionw | hereo | nesau | ditor | ydire | cteda | tthin | gspeo | plear | einte | reste | dinhe | aring

      And then overlay the blocks of text with the binary blocks:

      0000100000000100111001101100110000010100
      Selectiveauditoryattentionisatypeofsele
      001100011110011011000100001110111010110
      CtiveAttenTionwHereoNesauDitorYdirecteda
      10011011101001100111010000110101010 
      TthinGspeoPlearEninteResteDinhearing 

      And finally, put it back together making the 1’s boldface within the sentence.

      The cover-text is written as:

      Selective auditory attention is a type of selective attention where ones auditory directed at things people are interested in hearing.

      (Use the Bacon binary method to decipher the plain-text code from the cover-text)

      Other Ciphers and Ways to Code Messages

      Replacing letters with numbers

      Replacing letters with numbers or a simple cipher like -e.g. A=1, B=2, etc,

       or a simple cipher like -e.g. A=1, B=2, etc,

      The Pigpen Code

      Pigpen Code Intelligence101
      Pigpen decipher

      Can you decipher this code?  

      or perhaps most famous;

      Morse Code

      International Morse Code, used for communicating via electronic communication, with lights or sound – Morse code is probably the most well-known form of code / cipher.

      1. The length of a dot is one unit, whereas the dash represents three units.
      2. The space between parts of the same letter is one unit.
      3. The space between letters is three units.
      4. The space between words is seven units.

      Can you decipher: – .. – / — ..- … – / -… . / …. .- .-. -.. / .-. . — . — -… . .-. .. -. –. / .- .-.. .-.. / – …. . … . / -.. .. – … / .- -. -.. / -.. .- …. …

      From Information to Intelligence

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      Want More?

      For more on Wiliam Friedman’s Famous Photograph (and analysis) by the GC Marshall Foundation see the below video (5 mins)

      Activity

      Ok, you’ve got the brief –

      You’re now an expert in codes so decipher the Pigpen code above – post in the comments once complete.

      Happy code-breaking.

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