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Unabomber's Secret Code Cracked

cbs5.com — A decade after the feds tracked him down, CBS 5 Investigates has uncovered exclusive new information about Unabomber Ted Kaczynski, including a secret code he developed, and the confessions revealed as the code was broken.

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  • nero14, on 10/12/2007, -22/+22Although this guy was psycho he was defiantly a very intelligent psycho.
    • coolian, on 10/12/2007, -35/+19You defiantly aren't.
    • masamunecyrus, on 10/12/2007, -21/+16The main difference between a common criminal and a serial anything is usually that the serial criminal is intelligent.
    • Ravatar, on 10/12/2007, -8/+41Genius and madness go hand in hand more often than not. Some even consider genius as a form of mental illness.
    • thetanbark, on 10/12/2007, -18/+5Although the guy above was first to comment, he wasn't a very intelligent commenter.
      http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=definatly
    • ionblue, on 10/12/2007, -12/+5actually he wrote defiantly instead of definatly which makes it even funnier
    • MiddleGirth, on 10/12/2007, -10/+21Don't forget to drink your ovaltine.
    • sockpuppets, on 10/12/2007, -10/+18"The main difference between a common criminal and a serial anything is usually that the serial criminal is intelligent."

      That's got to be the stupidest thing I've read on Digg today.
    • PDAIsAOk, on 10/12/2007, -6/+11How many people does it take to spell "definitely" correctly?
    • NinjaBoy, on 10/12/2007, -1/+16FTA: "Agents discovered the first of many clues to solving the puzzle in one of Kaczynski's notebooks, on a page labeled, "Unscrambling Sequence."

      Why did it take so long to crack this code? I mean didnt they look through his notebooks?? If i see a book of numbers and a book called unscrambling sequences i think im going to be able to put 2 and 2 together.
    • xinit, on 10/12/2007, -0/+9"If i see a book of numbers and a book called unscrambling sequences i think im going to be able to put 2 and 2 together"

      And this is why you're too smart to be a field agent in the FBI...
    • paintist, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Ninjaboy, that kind of math of "putting 2 and 2 together' might work for you and I but Ted Kazinsky has a PhD. in mathematics where he specialized in a branch of complex analysis.
    • parisxv, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3- de·fi·ant·ly : adverb
      Etymology: Middle French, from Old French, present participle of "defier" to defy
      : full of or showing defiance : BOLD, IMPUDENT
  • thcobbs, on 10/12/2007, -1/+17The worlds most elusive criminals are usually some of the worlds most intelligent people.

    Hell, the guy even made his own screws for his bombs.
    • thetanbark, on 10/12/2007, -1/+15Except for the BTK killer, who got owned by the Word Document Owner info property in MS Word when sending a taunting letter to the local police that blatantly left the church's name in the Owner field. I think the rule is: Stick to paper and pencil and don't get caught so easily.
    • Junkyarddawg, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7The worlds most elusive criminals are usually the worlds greatest loners, not previously sentenced, and attacking victims randomly.
    • mikefitz2, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5Seriously. It's much, much harder to trace snail mail than it is electronic mail, even with an anonymous proxy. Hell, they still can't figure out who conducted those anthrax threats from four years ago.
    • patik, on 10/12/2007, -12/+13"Hell, they still can't figure out who conducted those anthrax threats from four years ago."

      That's because "they" are the ones who did it.

      DUN DUN DUN!
    • beotch, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2@mike last I heard they did trace the anthrax back to the original lab due to it being a specific strain, but they didn't bother to prosecute the people that could have had access to it.
  • Kenzan, on 10/12/2007, -6/+20Genius or no, it seems that the bomb is always the first weapon of choice for cowards.
    • sockpuppets, on 10/12/2007, -11/+6Well I used to used barking dogs that had bees coming out of their mouths but it turned out the dogs were allergic. Which was ok because they got lethargic with all that honey in them anyway.
    • venicerocco, on 10/12/2007, -14/+11Or heroes, depending on your perspective.

      Jus saying.
    • hwulykthmapples, on 10/12/2007, -2/+11No wonder so many governments use them
    • zybch, on 10/12/2007, -8/+3"the bomb is always the first weapon of choice for cowards."

      No, that would be the gun! A more girly way to kill someone at a distance I can't think of.
    • xinit, on 10/12/2007, -8/+4The US Commander in Chief is a big fan of bombs...
  • shteinb, on 10/12/2007, -30/+7The guy actually went to Harvard. He's one of the more infamous people with a connection to us.
    • rubicante, on 10/12/2007, -9/+27No one cares where you go to school.
  • camintmier, on 10/12/2007, -2/+9*jokingly*
    If he was really smart, he would have used Truecrypt and Notepad.
  • tomisina, on 10/12/2007, -10/+1Looks like hoffman algorithm... didn't rtfa...
    • armbar, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1If you didn't RTFA, how would you be able to come to a reasonable conclusion? (Assuming you didn't read about it somewhere else, of course)
    • tomisina, on 10/12/2007, -5/+1the picture with the code... i like pictures...
  • ivachen, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Should've used a one time pad to save the many trouble of calculating and encrypting... He wanted people to decrypt it anyway.
    • Beaver6813, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Yup, well he only wanted to keep it encrypted whilst the trial was going on, once he recieved life sentences it didnt really matter whether they decrypted it or not, although if they did then at least he would get the acknowledgment for what he had done.
  • Beaver6813, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4He wrote pages and pages in that code, it must have taken him ages to encrypt by hand.
  • TheSevenDuffs, on 10/12/2007, -0/+27it's not exactly "cracking" the code if you find his own decoding sheets
    • armbar, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5The answers were in the back of the book the whole time, it just took them 10 years to figure that out. Seriously, detectives, it was labeled UNSCRAMBLING SEQUENCE...did it really take a decade for someone to give it a shot?
    • foobar5892, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7But it sounds way cooler.
    • hwulykthmapples, on 10/12/2007, -4/+3lmao, yeah... "We Cracked The Code With The Code Cracking Thing We Found For Cracking The Code... We Cracked It..." "Uhh... Thats Very Good Agent Jimbob"
    • SenatorPenguin, on 10/12/2007, -0/+16I picked the lock to this guy's house.

      Really?

      Well, I actually just found the key sticking out from under the Welcome mat. I'm a genius.
  • tbadge, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1Considering he left a key behind, he either wanted people to read it or he couldn't remember his own system. Although the article makes it sound like it was written to others considering he only talked about previous bombings.
  • mikefitz2, on 10/12/2007, -3/+3WTF, are we supposed to be able to *read* a 300x200 pixel image of his 'secret code'???
  • venicerocco, on 10/12/2007, -4/+184 54 874 6664, 5656... 888!
  • rtphokie, on 10/12/2007, -0/+12"they are actually part of a very complex mathematical code, also called a cipher.", this has been Rick Romero reporting.

    Gawd the media is retarded.
  • drjekelmrhyde, on 10/12/2007, -0/+910 years to Crack maybe they should employ the guy who cracked the DRM in HD-DVD
  • Junkyarddawg, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2Vs ur pbhyq qb gur pbqr va uvf urnq, vg pna'g unir orra nyy gung pbzcyrk.

    It's pretty telling that they say this code was the most complex the FBI had seen since WWII... That'd effectively mean FBI has never had to deal with PGP, which seems a bit unlikely.
    • Wyzard, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I suspect they're quoting Schneier out-of-context and that he actually meant it's the most complex *non-computer-based* cipher since the Enigma machines in WWII. Naturally, computer-based cryptography is much more complex, but that's a whole different class of algorithms.
    • Dotnetsky, on 10/12/2007, -6/+2Please try to avoid using profanity on Digg.
    • thetaco82, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2What profanity? FBI?
  • RichGC, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2I think you must have a screw lose if your going to encode your writings by hand, and keep the key in the same place..

    There is a reason the flying spaghetti monster made someone invent the computer, usb pen, and encryption software ;)
  • pinkgreenblue, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Video doesn't seem to be loading.
  • KernelSandirs, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Yeah not so much cracked. more like "Hey what do you think this document about understanding the secret code means, that would be funny if it was the info on how to read the code we found 10 years ago, the same time we had access to this document as well"
  • cplusplus, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3Wasn't the Unibomber anti-technology! Good thing he wasn't against irony what with using crypto and bombs and all.

    I am sure the NSA decoded this in about 30 minutes. With or without the instructions. They always lie about their capability.
  • tito13kfm, on 10/12/2007, -5/+24 8 15 16 23 42 - Americans will watch anything.
  • MrStabby, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1Now where's the group that can crack the Zodiac letters?
  • duzytata, on 10/12/2007, -2/+91-2-3-4-5? That's amazing! I've got the same combination on my luggage!
  • whisperedlie, on 10/12/2007, -3/+1damn it. duzytata beat me to it.
  • lillepalle, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Anyone has a link to some more of the decrypted text?
  • diggenerate, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1"A decade after the feds tracked him down, "
    The feds didn't exactly track him down, his brother turned him in.
  • Homerr, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Decoded:
    All your base are belong to us.
  •  

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