All Ciphers

[Nieno69]

"The castle"

I think it's nothing but at the cipher "yoirntin" the first dot of the "i" is missing.... 

[certainpersonio]

Posting my spreadsheet with the data on Vigenere probable word attack of the Clock Tower cipher. I wanted to fill it out with data on Beaufort as well, but I've gotten busy with school and TheGiant cipher. Perhaps someone will find this useful in the meantime, it's just too much to sift through on my own. If you're unsure how to use this to get a keyword for a Vigenere cipher or an autokey cipher, I can add a little tutorial to it. 

Also, I'm not sure that the cipher is actually a Vigenere cipher, but my gut is telling me that using the spacing in the cipher will allow us to guess the words being used. The probable word attack is the way to do it with Vigenere ciphers (and Vigenere autokeys). 

[Nieno69]

About Clock tower:

 "VUVYSOV" 

Can be "transform" to "agartha"

Coincidence? Dont know

I tried today but cant get a working Algorythm with the rotations...

 

[Firestar82]

For the clock tower cipher. The VUVYSOV has a pattern that could be AGARTHA in its normal form, and EXTREME if reversed. The few clues this one solve gives us, leaves it hard to get any of the short words. Perhaps there is some shift in the code for each word or new line. 

Thoughts, anyone?

[Shootinfish]

It maybe be nothing but I think this may be something

[Nieno69]

3 hours ago, Shootinfish said:

It maybe be nothing but I think this may be something

Ok ok...that could be something... where is this exactly? 

[Shootinfish]

@Nieno69 Its in front of the fireplace in the mission control room there is another number on the same type of gauge

I have some other things that are out of place, is there a DE thread for unexplained items numbers gauges equipment etc ? would be good if someone could start one,

[Tac]

These ciphers can certainly be difficult, but I don't think we're going to need anything that isn't painfully obviously necessary.

[Zelkova]

My grandfather was a analyst for the U.S. during WW2. Sadly he passed away last year and he was the one I used to have me help decrypt these things. If someone has a relative who had the same job then we could probably get these answered faster as they usually didn't have a key to decrypt things like this in those days.

[Firestar82]

On February 13, 2016 at 9:43 PM, certainpersonio said:

There are two unsolved ciphers on DE currently. The one up in the clock tower on a desk and then "The Castle" cipher which is under the desk across from quick revive.

The Castle: http://imgur.com/MJ8mw8j

(The Castle) o yo l rrgnrdcyhea thsyar a p w sryy c auM ag ,naaca ldwylnmrphoto... llulf yoirntin teop noekuaoku Zyiooy.ee ulZ

 

The Castle cipher I have done less work on it because it has initially stumped me. Index of coincidence suggests its polyalphabetic and the presence of capital and lowercase letters seems to confirm that for me. At the very least it's not just a standard 26 letter alphabet. I also doubt the reliability of the spacing and punctuation for two reasons. For spacing, the most troubling part for me is the "a p w" section. I can't think of a realistic sentence that has 3 single letter words in it. I see three options. They're someone's initials; they're actually numbers (ex: 935); or the spacing is actually wrong. The punctuation is troubling because of the ",naaca" and "Zyiooy.ee". If the text was substituted around the punctuation, it would come at the end of the words, not at the beginning or in the middle. This leads me to suspect either that 1) the cipher text includes both capital letters, commas, and periods in it, or that 2) there has been a transposition. 

 

The clocktower cipher: http://imgur.com/vtQBAGC

EFZIL COVNITF KUN ER GYYWKJOLC FEEKUBY XTRXAANW PA VUVYSOV QY DEY FO AZ IT IUIB SYNWM DOQ MIMR JOAB EQ

The Index of coincidence for this one also suggest polyalphabetic. The only missing letter is H. I also am feeling that we can trust the spacing on this one. I personally don't see any odd patterns in word length. Honestly my gut tells me that this is something in the Vigenere family of ciphers. I think the best way to attack this guy is with probable words in the 2 and 3 letter words of the cipher. Specifically the best place to do this would be in the "QY DEY FO AZ IT" section of the cipher. This is because there are only so many probable 3 and 2 letter words and this is a long string of them. Using this we could either solve a periodic Vigenere cipher or a Vigenere auto-key cipher; we just have to look for the keyword/message. I have already made a probable word list for Vigenere decryption of the text, and once I finish it for a few other variations I'll post it on here so I can get help combing through all of the possibilities. 

Also this thread has the decryptions for all of the ciphers (I think) but doesn't have all of the methods that were used. I have been keeping track on a reddit post https://redd.it/44gzsn for those who are interested. I contains links to explanations.

As for TG, there are still the three unsolved ciphers. The only one I have any strong opinions on is TheGiant cipher. I'll keep it brief bc we're on the DE cipher thread, but basically I'm convinced it's in base64 alphabet. Clearly if you put it into a base64 decoder you get gibberish, but my thoughts are 2 fold. 1) they made a classical cipher using the base64 alphabet 2) they took the message, converted to base64, and then did a 3rd step using the "TheGiant" key. 

 

 

We found something that works on a cipher in the giant very quicly, like 2 searches on google and we got a potential start to a solution, which remains our method to solving this. Some problems using this one site, meant it took my guy 3 weeks, but actual message deciphering would be 5 to 10 minutes. Everytime a new cipher was solved, we thought it would be this one, but as of yet, no one even discusses the particular message anymore. He tried giving his findings to various people including someone who writes on here. Due to everyones ignorance, he is reluctant, at this time to share. 

[certainpersonio]

@Firestar82 It sounds like you and your colleague have been putting in a lot of work with the ciphers. I'm sorry that you feel hesitant to share your findings here. I would hate for this to be a place where people are reluctant to contribute. If you feel you have a good start on some ciphers and would like some input on finishing them, it would be great to see your work. If you believe you have fully decrypted it, that's even better!

Which cipher in particular do you feel you have a partial/full solution for?

[certainpersonio]

I have some new thoughts on The Castle cipher:

Originally I thought it was probably a polyalphabetic cipher, mostly because there are upper and lower-case letters in addition to different types of punctuation. The spacing was odd too, suggesting a transposition was included with the substitution.

However, after a conversation with /u/FROY1O8 on reddit, I was left unsure. He pointed out that the letter frequencies are in the ballpark, but not perfect, for standard english. He also pointed out that a transposition cipher could eliminate problems with spaces and punctuation if you move them around too. 

So I went back and ran some tests on the cipher, and the IoC (0.056) was in the middle between polyalphabetic and monoalpahbetic, perhaps even leaning towards monoalphabetic. I did a further test called a Phi test, which definitely showed monoalphabeticity. However, the test did ignore case-sensitivity and the punctuation, which is an arguable point. 

My conclusion is that this could be some kind of transposition or simple substitution cipher, and is something that people should look into.

[Firestar82]

@certainpersonio I was watching an episode on NCIS today and they mentioned something like a cryptographer, then either in that episode or the following one I noticed on a computer the grid that runs A to Z along the top, and A to Z down the side. What I noticed in the 2 seconds or so that it was on the screen was that the approach to decoding this was to take the first code letter and find it on the top row, then they went down this column to the second code letter, and the result they were trying to get would have been the letter in the left hand first column.

[certainpersonio]

@Firestar82 Sounds like they were using a tabula recta. This is used to create a polyalpahbetic cipher, like the Vigenere cipher. You start with plaintext at the top (the message you want to encrypt) and the keyword down the left side. The cipher text is the the letter where the two meet in the middle. To decrypt, you reverse the process. In fact, I think that a similar cipher is used for the Clock Tower cipher. I'm making a post on it that should be up soon.

[certainpersonio]

Update to the Clock Tower Cipher analysis:

I believe this could be a periodic, polyalphabetic cipher. Because Treyarch was kind enough to give us spaces in the text (which I believe are true spaces) we can use this to launch a probable word attack. Here is the link to my data of the most common 2 and 3 letter English words using Vigenere, Beaufort, and Variant cipher blocks.  Also included is a tutorial on how to use a probable word attack on these ciphers.

I'm looking for help sifting through all of the data. If people want to help, just look to see if any words pop-out to you from the jumble of text. Another way to help would be to generate a full list of all possible arrangements of the 6 word phrase in the cipher "QY DEY FO AZ IT". We could then examine that list in it's entirety. The list can be narrowed down by removing impossible combinations of letters. Ex: a "U" must always follow a "Q". If you want further clarification I can post again explaining it or feel free to message me.

[Nieno69]

@certainpersonio

Take a look at this..."The Castle" ~n=9  a railfence cipher??

The castle has 9 letters so n=9

You get

OGSCLTNKYU TODAY NYRAUWLIAE ONLY MRDOCAALUTKEUELNGPYLH WNMFOZUYPYRASERARAPONILOO IHCYTRHYAOREOZ

You clearly get: today - only- ...

 

only letters without spaces and punctuation 

 

 

 

 

[Firestar82]

I thought of trying to search a group of leters in a cipher, and see if they came up in a web search that was not related to Black Ops 3 zombies. FEEKUBY from the clock tower cipher came up on this page. http://easyciphers.com/bukeyef

It is in the info on Permutation ciphers. If the smarter people on here can read and make sense of this cipher, there a chance it may help us crack the clock tower cipher.

[Nieno69]

42 minutes ago, Firestar82 said:

I thought of trying to search a group of leters in a cipher, and see if they came up in a web search that was not related to Black Ops 3 zombies. FEEKUBY from the clock tower cipher came up on this page. http://easyciphers.com/bukeyef

It is in the info on Permutation ciphers. If the smarter people on here can read and make sense of this cipher, there a chance it may help us crack the clock tower cipher.

Hm..if you take the plaintext "bukeyef"...you sure get feekuby in "permutation"  But it sadly make no sense...

[certainpersonio]

@Nieno69

I've had this exact same thought!! I spent some time working with a Redefence Cipher last week, but couldn't get it work (maybe see if I overlooked something?). I'll look back at the Railfence stuff though. There were so many things about the length of the cipher that correlated well with the rail fence ciphers. 

[lllpasswordlll]

On 2/4/2016 at 7:17 PM, The Meh said:

I know it's not related, but has anyone told you just how lovely that Signature of yours i
(Honestly, I think it's funny)

I'm currently working on the following cipher 

Spoiler

Spoiler

.

 

 

[lllpasswordlll]

im currently working in this cipher any tips ideas?, anything will do :)

[certainpersonio]

@lllpasswordlll Well you've come to the right place. I think a few things need to be answered/considered about The Castle cipher:

1. We have to use "The Castle" key during the decryption process. They always give it to us if we need it. A basic but important observation.
2. Is it polyalphabetic or monoalphabetic? At first glance it looks like a polyalphabetic cipher, or at least a cipher with an expanded alphabet. I say this because there are 2 different letter cases, as well as periods, comas, and spaces that seem suspicious to me. However, when I ran stats on it, it suggest that it might be mono alphabetic. This would probably mean that there a substitution process occurring. 
3. Is there a substitution? If you look at the letter frequency, it's not terribly far off from standard frequency, but it's certainly not spot on. I can't decide yet if this means there is a substitution that's occurring, so I'm leaving it open as a possibility.

I know @Nieno69 has gotten some words to appear using rail fence cipher. Maybe he can comment if he's gotten any further along with it?

[Nieno69]

Sadly nothing more....

 

By the way glitching queen gives 100 Dollar (50 each) for solving the ciphers...she uploaded a vid on youtube

[lllpasswordlll]

@Nieno69 i heard about that but honestly im not doing this for the money, i love learning more things abiut the storyine. @certainpersonio also if you notice how certain letters are upper cased (k k and z) and you are right about the monoalphabet and the conjoined letters im guessing its L and i, i feel we are getting a little closer lets keep workibg in it and im sure we can solve it :) 

 

[Nieno69]

The clocktower cipher: What about a null cipher? Of course i know it's not the normal case of this ciper because you normally get a plaintext and pick the letters or words.....but i will share my thoughts...maybe only coincidence because i dont found other words maybe you have more luck? 

 

every second letter of the words

EFZIL COVNITF KUN ER 

"FOUR"

 

GYYWKJOLC FEEKUBY XTRXAANW 

"YET"...