I definitely agree. If only a single cryptographer would have been part of the equation, no one would have had a reason to write “Bit shifting isn't encryption” . Looking at my comment again again, I guess it was simply too short to be understood as a cinical “read it with a smile” kind of thing. Just to be sure no one gets me wrong: I surely did not want to hype any of the bad guys, nor make fun of the victims… the innocent Turkish citizens involved. Yet, I can’t help to shake my head that a Turkish governmental agency was stupid enough to use a near to “xor-by-one” snakeoil crypto thingy instead of well-vetted and security proven cryptographic algorithms and protocols. If they would have, there wouldn’t be a problem – just a blob of encrypted data. Which is why I said: “cryptographers 1 – Idiots 0”… which was merely meant to be interpreted as “roll your own crypto, eat your own poison – no cryptographer would have stepped into the stupid pitfall of using home-brew toys instead of well-vetted algos & protocols”. Hope that somewhat is able to explain what I meant with my comment. If my cynical comment was misunderstood due to its minimalism – my bad. Downvotes correctly punished me accordingly for my comment being too short to be understood upon first glimpse – next time, I’ll be sure to be clearer.