Jason Sidabras

Encryption and Fermilab in the same /. article. I’m in.

Thanks to Geoff’s work on decrypting the first and third part, I’ve been spending my entire day (and night) trying to figure out the middle part. I highly recommend reading his work to get a feel for what has been done so far.

The background is Fermilab received this letter in the mail last March 5th:

In which they tried to decrypt it and had no success. A few days on the internet and bam two individuals decrypted the first and third part independently.

FRANK SHOEMAKER WOULD CALL THIS NOISE

EMPLOYEE NUMBER BASSE SIXTEEN

Also to comment on the Frank Shoemaker would call this noise, could be reference to particle physics.

Interesting note, if you convert the second part to music (Thanks to Alou Fingal for that work)

Sounds like noise to me also, beautiful though.

The last part yet to be solved seems to be base sixteen. Also the “signature” on the bottom says “SFC”, but Frank C. Shoemaker has denied writing the letter.

It could be the key as in “FC = S”. By shifting the numbers by one you get:

 

You could bring that first 6 to the end but I’m not sure you want to yet. Some further thought is that it spells out the employee number.

If this is the case you could say that either A or 1 (which aren’t mapped) go into the beginning and end. This gives you:

16 (basse 16?) for V or N (since others have said that each employee number starts with V for “visitor” i.e. grad students or N for others) This is from a guy who worked with Frank Shoemaker and is still a V there. They are up to 5 digits now. But i think this is a 4 digit or less number.

So spelling the numbers 0-9 and assuming FC=S I am in the middle of writing a program that will brute force all of the combinations. The problem is 0×00-0xFF gives 255 combinations for 26 letters.

NOTE: it is interesting that those 3 vertical dots that people are referring to as “noise” line up perfectly with the shifted 3, while a few other combinations don’t line up so well (similar to the spacing plotted by Geoff).

A solution?

BUT! If you don’t shift the numbers:

The problem is 0×00-0xFF gives 255 combinations for 26 letters.

234 is the first number to be divisible by 26, 9 times. So assume each letter is repeated 9 times.

The largest number in the sequence is 0xF6, while the smallest is 0×0C. What is 0xF6 - 0×0C in decimal 234!

Its my thought that the letters repeat 9 times between 0×0C and 0xF6 and you can spell out a four digit employee number with the numbers:

ONE, TWO, SIX

With at least one repeated once. Using these numbers the ‘O’ and the ‘E’ are repeated. That may give some help with frequency counting.

More later!

SHIT! I can’t put this down.

I think I figured out the sentence!

Frank Shoemaker would call this noise (first part)

BUT _ _ _ _ (guessed second part + base 16 number)

SI (’is’ backwards i.e. the middle part should be in reverse and CF is ‘I’)

Employee number base 16.

SO! the employee number is either

0×126 = 294 (unlikely)

0×162 = 354 (unlikely)

0×216 = 534

0×261 = 609

0×612 = 1554 (most likely)

0×621 = 1569 (most likely)

From Fermilab about the Wilson Hall 16th Floor:

The Cathedral (A.D. 1225-1568) was never completed westward of the choir and transepts, and the site of the proposed nave is partly occupied by the Romanesque church known as the “Basse oeuvre” (”low work”)

I believe it is employee 1569.

You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.