Man claims to have cracked unsolved Zodiac Killer cipher | Hacker News Reader

Man claims to have cracked unsolved Zodiac Killer cipher

fostercity.patch.com

43 pointsmztwo19 comments

So a cryptographer dismissed this result and the police aren't looking at it. Third or fourth time someone's cracked this, this year. Why is this special? Seems he took a lot of assumptions.

Forgive me. But I've seen Glenn Beck and Jon Stewart (satirically for Jon) make ridiculous connections using numbers. That's what I saw when I read, right after the Virgin Island 340 area code:

This is where it gets even creepier. 3+4+0=7. Right. So you get 7+0=7. 707...707 are the area codes for Vallejo, Napa, and Solano.

Also, is the message decoded supposed to look that nonsensical? What did the other Zodiac decoded messages look like? Were they more coherent?

This seemed fishy to me, I did some digging and I found a posting on the zodiackillerfacts.com forums which debunks this forced "solution".

It turns out that the 340 area code was not used for the Virgin Islands until 1997, which to me seems pretty damning.

Agreed. A quick check of NANPA (North American Numbering Plan Administration) shows an in service data of 06/01/1997

http://www.nanpa.com/nas/public/npa_query_step2.do;nanpaid=r...

His letters weren't particularly coherent and infamously contained numerous misspellings. Example: http://www.zodiackillerfacts.com/gallery/displayimage.php?pi...

I like how the "e" is taken out of some words but included in nonsense like "Aeiour." What's that even supposed to mean?

Third or fourth time someone's cracked this, this year.

Couldn't find those. Where did you read about them?

Here's one: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2686825

If that's considered a solution [1], this answers @kloncks' "Why is this special?" question.

[1] http://imgur.com/lQuYT

don't know if anyone else is having the same problem, but the decoded message is not displayed for me (it's truncated because it's longer than a line; chrome on linux). the entire message (from page source) is KILL/SLF/DR/HELP/ME/KILL/MYSELF/GAS/CHAMBER/AEIOUR/DAYS/ QUESTIONSABLE/EVERYY/WAKING/MOMENT/IM/ALIVE/MY/PRIDE/LOST/ I/CANT/GO/ON/LIVING/IN/THIS/WAY/KILLING/PEOPLE/I/HAV/ KILLD/SO/MANY/PEOPLE/CANT/HELP/MYSELF/IM/SO/ANGRY/I/COULD/ DO/MY/THING/IM/ALONE/IN/THIS/WORLD/MY/WHOLE/LIFE/FUL/O/ LIES/IM/UNABLE/TO/STOP/BY/THE/TIME/YOU/SOLVE/THIS/I/WILL/ HAV/KILLD/ELEVEN/PEOPLE/PLEASE/HELP/ME/STOP/KILLING/ PEOPLE/PLEASE/MY/NAME/IS/LEIGH/ALLEN/ (i've added some line breaks)

which also explains why the article after that point is discussing leigh allen...

It doesn't display right for me in Chrome/Mac but clicking on the images shows a picture of a solution sheet with that same text.

It puzzles me how anyone can think solving this cipher will reveal who the killer is. Morality aside, to have eluded police or so long, it's undeniable this was an extremely intelligent individual. More, he was not rash. Intelligent people who do these kind of things, do not leave evidence lying around, because they realize even they can make mistakes - it's not worth the risk.

If the Zodiac is dead, my bet is he never intended this cipher to be solved - and therefore it's probably gibberish. I can't see a man who has waged this kind of crusade letting himself fade into history without a single reminder of his legacy.

I always assumed it was gibberish, too. It's pretty good way to waste manpower.

Yep. Assuming (I'm not) I was a psychopathic killer, that's what I'd do... for function and for lulz.

I dunno... That is a lot of leaps of logic there. If had remained the same pattern, then definitely, but I'd like to see his justification for switching up the pattern.

it's huge stretch. using two separate patterns in the same cipher doesn't seem very probable.

knowing nothing about this particular one, it'd seem more likely that it's been encrypted with and then that was encrypted.

Third time someone crack it this year.

Links to other solutions?

I've not seen a full crack before. Links?

That's pretty cool, if it is correct.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com