3 ms·
Amateur sleuths crack one of the Zodiac Killer's ciphers after 51 years
- mellosouls 6y agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25390941 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25390941 fwiw
- blindm 6y agoThis is what will happen to all the encrypted Internet traffic in another 50 years. NSA is collecting encrypted comms so that they can crack it at a later date using quantum computers.
- onethought 6y agoWe could use quantum resistant cryptography if this is an actual concern.
- BelenusMordred 6y agoCare to note how much traffic transverses the internet each day and then how much harddrive capacity is produced globally? Bit of a mismatch there but I don't doubt some salty Americans to get upset about me pointing out the plain truth. Spoiler: You are far from omnipotent. Sorry guys. Hopefully your women and men in the hotseat can focus on what is important and narrow down what to save and what to trash. I'm sure they have that in the bag being the best, the brightest and best compensated software engineers in the country. Ignoring that, asymmetrical handshakes for the underlying symmetrical keys, yeah sure, completely at risk from a quantum computer that can actually perform, that's a massive threat for anyone wanting to keep their credit card number and dick pics safe. Anything symmetrical in nature is likely fine for a very long time and will not be touched by <QUANTUM SUPREMACY>. As dangerous as it is to bet against the future, the engineering challenges involved with quantum computing are looking very much like fusion energy, it's a great if they can do it, but fair chance they won't get there long after we are all dead. A neverending stream of scary soundbytes that leads to perpetual funding for groups of people who are proven to be failures is very much guaranteed though :)
- ColinWright 6y agoPrevious submissions and discussions: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25390941 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25390941 (129 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25387216 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25387216 (8 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25391319 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25391319 (3 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25389209 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25389209 (3 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25389164 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25389164 (2 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25397833 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25397833 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25397787 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25397787 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25397630 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25397630 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25396056 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25396056 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25393783 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25393783 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25392966 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25392966 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25392695 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25392695 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25391797 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25391797 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25391450 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25391450 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25391065 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25391065 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25390960 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25390960 There will probably be others that I've missed.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- MrEngineer13 6y agoI am surprised that another ai company didn't solve this problem for marketing boost. I guess Watson isn't smarter than the Zodiac killer.
- lr4444lr 6y agoGiven how easily earlier messages were cracked, there was significant reason to believe that Zodiac did not actually encrypt his message properly. He was a delusional psychopath, and even the current effort, if you look at the details, had to deal with misspellings and out of order values that may not have even been deliberate. The team admits that it got very lucky.
- smt88 6y agoWatson is marketing bullshit. IBM sells services as Watson-enabled and then mostly has typical consultants do basic things like set up regressions. Actual tests of Watson, like in medicine, have been a huge failure. It's nowhere close to being generally intelligent.
- 1cvmask 6y agoWe can finally put to rest (pun not intended) the Ted Cruz Zodiac Killer meme. Although Google had already buried (pun intended) the autosuggest “Is Ted Cruz the Zodiac Killer?”. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Cruz–Zodiac_Killer_meme https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Cruz–Zodiac_Killer_meme
- anamexis 6y agoWhy would this put the meme to rest?
- chokeartist 6y agoFun police showed up! Ted Cruz actually seems like a good sport about the meme: > Ted Cruz acknowledged the meme on his official Twitter account on October 18, 2017, by tweeting an image of one of the Zodiac Killer's encrypted messages.[15] He did so again on October 31 of the following year.[16]
- timbit42 6y agoBecause he knows how to spell paradise.
- awb 6y agoDupe: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25390941 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25390941
- lemonspat 6y agoThis is great work! Every few years I would come back to reading about these ciphers, hoping that I could find a way to crack them. I realize this did not direclty give them clues, but I'm hopeful to see any new connections that might come of these (some other analysis)