Crime Zodiac killer code cracked by Australian mathematician Samuel Blake more than 50 years after first murder

Melbourne mathematician Samuel Blake and two fellow cryptologists have been officially recognised by the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation for solving a 50-year-old cryptic message written by an as yet unnamed serial killer, known only as the Zodiac.

Dr Blake worked on decoding the message known as the "340 cipher" with two other cryptologists and a University of Melbourne supercomputer called Spartan to eventually reveal its content.

The cipher bears a distinctive circle with a cross through the middle and was sent to the San Francisco Chronicle newspaper on November 8, 1969 by a man who called himself "Zodiac".

The correspondent killer sent letters to newspapers over several years up until 1974, including proof he was responsible for the deaths of at least five people in the San Francisco Bay Area.

The official cracking of the 340-character cipher provides insight into the killer's thoughts and actions but does not reveal a name as promised in separate letters sent to newspapers.
Dr Blake told the ABC he had been working on finding a solution to the 340 cipher, considered one of the holy grails of cryptography, since contacting Zodiac cryptologist David Oranchak early in 2020.

Mr Oranchak hosts a website dedicated to cracking the Zodiac ciphers and has posted several YouTube videos detailing the work he has done over 15 years trying to solve them.

In a statement released on social media Dr Blake paid tribute to US-based Mr Oranchak and software programmer Jarl van Eycke, based in Brussels.

"During the year we tested, by trial and error, around 650,000 different reading directions through the cipher. This search turned up — more or less — nothing," he said.

"However, one of these searches uncovered a surprising combination of words: GAS CHAMBER. That such a macabre phase should pop up in a sea of noise warranted further attention.
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"From this fragment, David, Jarl van Eycke and I reworked the key and corrected an error Zodiac made in his diagonal enumeration of the second vertical segment of the cipher.

"Jarl's fantastic program, azdecrypt, was essential in this process."

A deciphered section of the code​

I HOPE YOU ARE HAVING LOTS OF FUN IN TRYING TO CATCH ME

THAT WASNT ME ON THE TV SHOW

WHICH BRINGS UP A POINT ABOUT ME

I AM NOT AFRAID OF THE GAS CHAMBER

BECAUSE IT WILL SEND ME TO PARADICE ALL THE SOONER

BECAUSE I NOW HAVE ENOUGH SLAVES TO WORK FOR ME

WHERE EVERYONE ELSE HAS NOTHING WHEN THEY REACH PARADICE

SO THEY ARE AFRAID OF DEATH

I AM NOT AFRAID BECAUSE I KNOW THAT MY NEW LIFE IS

LIFE WILL BE AN EASY ONE IN PARADICE DEATH
Dr Blake is a visiting fellow at the University of Melbourne and described how the university's supercomputer, Spartan, solved the cipher after processing 650,000 other possible solutions.

Eventually a solution that drew out a message that included the phrase "GAS CHAMBER" was revealed.

Mr Oranchak sent the proposed solution to the Cryptanalysis and Racketeering Records Unit of the FBI and within a day they officially approved the solution.

In a statement released on Friday, US time, the FBI confirmed that the cipher attributed to the Zodiac Killer was recently solved by "private citizens."

"After 50 years of active research, this cipher has finally been solved. We now understand why it resisted attacks for so long," Dr Blake wrote on social media.

"The reading direction through the cipher was so obscure, that the only way it could be found was with a massive search through many candidates using sophisticated software which can efficiently solve homophonic substitution ciphers.

"Not only were we lucky enough to find the needle in the haystack, but we were lucky enough to pick the right haystack in order to start searching for the needle."

Dr Blake and his colleagues have dedicated their work to the murder victims and their families.

The Melbourne mathematician now hopes the solution he and his colleagues have revealed will help crack the two remaining unsolved short ciphers: one with 13 symbols and the other with 32.

In correspondence, the killer hinted that these ciphers contain his name.

"I find the Zodiac case intriguing, but I'm far from a Zodiac killer expert," Dr Blake said.

"Perhaps my lack of knowledge of the case helped as it wasn't a distraction.

"It would be fantastic if this helps the investigation in some way, now it's over to the experts in interpreting the meaning of his message."
www.abc.net.au

Australian mathematician helps crack 50-year Zodiac serial killer mystery

Sam Blake, together with two other cryptologists and a supercomputer, is recognised by the FBI as having cracked a code used by the infamous Zodiac killer.
www.abc.net.au www.abc.net.au
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ArthuriusMartyrius said:
So they ran the cipher through a super-computer until they got a hit? And here I thought they used some mega-complex, quadruple-layer polynomial formula or some other mathematics whizz shit to solve it. Turns out they just brute-forced the damn thing.

Also, it's likely this solution is incorrect. It's not unusual for ciphertexts to have several "plaintext solutions" which seemingly make coherent sentences but they usually have some small errors in them which out the "solution" as false. In this case, as Not Really Here pointed out above, they "fixed" the errors to make the solution fit.
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I would agree with you except the killing people to collect slaves for the afterlife is something the Zodiac killer previously in the first letter that was decoded.

It too had grammatical and spelling errors.
 
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ShortBusDriver said:
I would agree with you except the killing people to collect slaves for the afterlife is something the Zodiac killer previously in the first letter that was decoded.

It too hard grammatical and spelling errors.
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Fair enough. I haven't delved deep enough into the whole Zodiac phenomenon to know the full story.
 
ArthuriusMartyrius said:
Fair enough. I haven't delved deep enough into the whole Zodiac phenomenon to know the full story.
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I mean I agree with you stuff like the Bible code or Nostradamus codes are using the methods you describe are nonsense, you could probably get the same results from a phone book.

Least of all because the Bible wasn't even written in English nor formatted the way it is today making the idea someone hid a secret message in it 2,000 years ago pretty silly.
 
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Lou’s Biggest Fan said:
>PARADICE

Lord have mercy, six decades and this is what we get. Leave it to Ted Cruz to prove yet again that all serial killers are autists :story:
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He spelled shit wrong in his prior uncoded/decoded letters too. As a matter of fact, speaking as someone who has watched far too many serial killer documentaries, the news that he fucked the cypher up isn't even surprising. Its been the standard line for years and is a possibility that gets brought up in every serious documentary.


As to where he went to, probably prison on unrelated charges and its likely he died there, too.

SiccDicc said:
"Paradice" is also a surname.

That said he could also be an idiot... an extraordinarily lucky idiot. If having enough slaves is true in his letter then that explains why he suddenly stopped.
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Yeah..... he was actually jerking off while killing people, it wasn't about getting slaves in the afterlife. They are all about jerking off. The only "serial killers" who aren't doing it for sexual reasons are gangsters/hitmen who are just doing their jobs.
 
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Not Really Here said:
:story:
The killer fucked up his own code.
I'm dying, 50 fucking years 'man this is a hard code to break' and the guy was a retard.
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You assume he didn't include "errors" to make the job of decoding harder.

I'm not saying the Zodiac Killer was a supergenius. He was never identified because he got incredibly lucky. But it's possible he was smart enough to make his ciphers hard to solve if he was smart enough to create ciphers in the first place.
 
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whatever I feel like said:
Yeah..... he was actually jerking off while killing people, it wasn't about getting slaves in the afterlife. They are all about jerking off. The only "serial killers" who aren't doing it for sexual reasons are gangsters/hitmen who are just doing their jobs.
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If that were the case he would have kept it up for much longer than he supposedly did -- it's no different than a sex addiction. My point was that if it's true that he believes he had enough slaves, then he'd likely have stopped. Some killers are just unwell.
 
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In addition to Cruz who is considered the prime suspect?

Also I wonder if Jake Gyllenhaal reacted
 
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