GC HQ Needs you !!!

Some basic cryptography principles that were in use at the time, in case it helps.

Single key (which it is unlikely to be)
1. Give each letter of the alphabet a number.
2. Translate that number into binary notation (so that, for example, 2 = 10, 3 = 11, 4 = 100 etc)
3. Take a word or phrase to use as the key, and represent that in binary as in step 2.
4. Get the binary representation of the first letter of the coded message.
5. Get the binary representation of the first letter of the key word/phrase
6. With the binary number from 4 stacked on top of that from 5, go through each digit. Where both corresponding digits are the same, write 0, and where they are different, write 1, so that you end up with a new binary number.
7. Move to the next letter in the code, and the next letter in the key word/phrase and repeat from step 4. When you run out of letters in the key word/phrase but still have more message, start back at the first character of the key, but continue working through the message.
8. When you've done the last character of the message, you will have a load of binary numbers written down. Match them to your binary encoded alphabet, and there's your message.

The trouble is, without knowing the key, you will end up with gibberish, so the trick is to guess the key.

Dual key.

Same as above, except that you'll need to do it twice, once for the first key to get an intermediate cypher, then again on the intermediate to get the final message.

The dual key technique was more common, because it meant that to decipher it you needed to capture info from both sender and receiver.

It is most likely that neither of these techniques were used in their most basic form, because although at the time it would have been pretty strong, nowadays your average home computer has enough processing power to crack it by brute force of just trying different keys in sequence, within minutes or seconds, so the fact it made the news suggests that the encryption technique used is probably a variant of the more common techniques of the day.

Also, don't overlook foreign languages. For example, the US military used an extinct native American language in some of their communications during WW2.

Good luck, its too much for my brain at this time of night

 

I can't even do sudoku let alone this...

good luck

 

If you believe GCHQ can not decypher this, then you are very gullible

It is basic onetime pad key

Jack McH

 

I had to look up the name you used, but its basically the same as the single key algorithm I described. That being the case, it would have taken seconds on good hardware to decrypt. Even with the dual key version, it would have been no more than a few hours on good kit just to brute force it.

This begs the question, why has it made the news? Maybe because its just not considered worthy of the attention of the other GCHQ? Maybe it reveals something embarrassing? Maybe it is a hoax and the cypher is not a cypher at all, but a random collection of bytes?

 

Cor, that looks rather complicated. I was thinking of googling it

 

It's a Germans one, sent over to confuse the Engish

 

I've got an Enigma code breaking machine in the loft but it needs new elastic bands, would it help ??

 

Yep and I was a cypher officer I did the Wilson talks from Lagos and Gibraltar On HMS Fearless. "Before" boats

It would have been a good exercise for new recruits to GCHQ, I think the answer is they can not be bothered to waste time
The first and last five digits are the code used to encrypt it the figures are the Page/Chapter, start letter and paragraph IMHO

Jack McH

 

MS Office Version 0.1 license key?

 

If it's a one-time code then without further receptions on same date it's virtually undeciperable without access to the key text.
Whatever encryption used in this instance, it's a VAST improvement on the "slidex" method of encoding used in the latter years of WWII and early years of the cold war.