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The Return Of Venona

Lamneth

By Lamneth
in West and Southwest

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Lamneth

+Lamneth

Posted
Posted (edited)

On November 23, 2002, a puppet account kidnapped a travel bug from a cache in Livermore California. What happened over the next several weeks has become local Geocaching legend:

 

The Venona Story

The Venona Story (as told by Lamneth)

 

Once again it is time for seasoned sleuths and newbies alike to rise up and band together, for Venona has returned to inflict his evil whim apon us. We will need to work together to vanquish this scourge. This forum will serve as an exchange of information and ideas regarding Venona's "activities".

 

All I know right now is that the FTF! Bug was taken from a cache in early August and somehow ended up in the hands of Venona (Marky may have been a witness to this :lol:). On Halloween, Venona posted a message in the SF Bay Area geocachers forum:

 

Hello greetings for Geocachers Bay Area.

 

We have FTF Travel Bug. Is our hostage. Activities will restore bug to proper rightful owner. You will make group for performing activities and we them give you.

 

Please contact we for activities when ready group.

 

Thank you very kindly.

 

Venona.

 

I'm sending a message to Venona right now:

 

Bring it on... You've been holding that bug too long :-)

 

P.S. Please direct all future correspondence to "The Return of Venona" Groundspeak Forum.

 

Lamneth

Edited by Lamneth
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Venona

Venona

Posted
Posted

Is only opinion for hold too long. In my country we hold people for very long time. Nobody complain.

 

I am almost finish all activities. First activity will post here very very soon. These activities hope to be more harder from last time activities.

 

I recommending getting book of us. Is publication by your CIA. Called "Venona: Soviet Espionage and the American Response." Will help full for activities.

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The Rat

+The Rat

Posted
Posted
I recommending getting book of us.  Is publication by your CIA.  Called "Venona: Soviet Espionage and the American Response."  Will help full for activities.

Other investigative resources quickly come to mind:

NSA's Venona Webpage

However, our squad experience has been that this nefarious malefactor is very specific in his means of communications. It is likely that the original key material will be required. Any squad member who has managed to acquire one of these referenced CIA books should report in as soon as it is available.

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Nazgul

+Nazgul

Posted
Posted

A quick check of abebooks and amazon shows multiple editions of the book, which I know can be a problem with some puzzle caches. I'll gladly defer to experiencedfolks on that matter.

 

One softcover version is listed at 450 pages, exactly the same number that are shown on the CIA site I referenced. The majority of the content appears to be scanned venona documents. Another edition showed a bit over 500 pages.

 

I didn't see a version listed that was still in print. Prices for used copies ran in the $20 range.

 

ISBN is 0894122657 in two different editions that I checked.

 

That link to the venona pages at No Such Agency's site looked handy.

 

I probably won't be much help on this, unless at some point we need to assemble a Kalashnikov while blindfolded or something. :)

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Venona

Venona

Posted
Posted

First activity ready now. Here is instructions:

 

OT5,8X6BNOY VU2CC0V4137RTE2DNNG?0CY0M.YE2ZF3N08?V386FTFVN,2.9TBO ZJE0 DAL N8?4L

ECEYR6E80NL442G20ATCLNAQ EO1LNTND8WNT,OC02V?OZ5VU28,TFVND2XH.?OYO5XD3FPVR2A1PJB

NO9LLEY65AKT5G? V 7OZL4ZCLNZF.IO7PP4NDDL8TN3CAE B NOAU 3.1D4N08?V98FKAVX OGLF4N

08?V386FTFVLOIZMEG35WVV8ODZV6?88Y2EG ZAKXD NLFSN1?0VA2ANQA.?OC02V?RK6A0NH209E28

C0J5.E2ZF3N08?V??IDAK4Y1?7VE79DT4TN02W6E28CT5TNK2.VT7,B5H4??N1KX71N.CA2ANDSFN 7

NJ99E2ZFEY60ZJXD267VED2?YV98FNNJP.5N.23CH8?5E 9BA8TDO2YK4BF.0A 7DNZ7E7 H0V3DZ0P

SEN3CAD5.5IA7 BOIZME9ZC O B?N.J D .0A 7O2YV 5?N6A0N08?EPDOE 6EG YVVT7,B5H42977V

E,3CNM3COC0A.5O6LF9NBEPK4297 VU8CNLKZ280AA?ND8WNX71NNA01 B7VE2DNLD01ZNZF.IO8?VP

5A1LF56 BT4DNOCSG55?NOARD38Y22IOY0LP.5LAG2N7Y53TND1ZM.,OZ?M4?O ZJR?NNAHTB2Y.KEC

EEOQE80NX63CZ0PV413CAEPIO0TNTN22YLE 9BAEP437RV386E0A 7O6ZJTN Y ATBLNA2.D2818WN7

Y53TN880SENDE.H C NZF.IOFPF 7ZN?2,Z37RV48OYO5E96YTF4?IDA7 BO5ZFVN 7ZMV1O6PK3Y1?

AL N7YV6EC951LX88NZ7EY?,TLXF NNA01 BAH CD2MDTKON G.EE2ZFE79DAK N2Y?5E 9BA7X7?2Y

8E9 BS20CLNAOTN28W5E E AL2YG?WVQE1NTFE.95OV05Z.PV57E2WV98FNQA?,LNAG?5JN329NA8 K

XZ6?A7 BO TFSN3CAK 5G2Y8E80NLD.NDDL8TCO8QVP.E22A42 C7VEB 6PEQ?CNLD.NE1TFVCO ?G,

NG?YG?YOGPVWYG?AL 5?N5G5KONOGE79DA7 BO0TNX71N1HB

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TeamJiffy

+TeamJiffy

Posted
Posted

Well, after spending all of two minutes on it... all uppercase and digits and punctuation... makes me think of a UUEncoded file.

 

It's also 79 columns wide... makes me think of punch cards. Perhaps due to the uppercase, using an old BCD code, or CDC 6-bit code...

 

Again, these could be entirely off the mark, or on - who knows? <_<

 

-Jif

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Green Achers

+Green Achers

Posted
Posted

Question to the group. Couldn't this cipher require a key? Sure it should. Any thoughts on what that key could be? Perhaps it's been given or perhaps we should know it already.

 

I've ordered the book referenced and put it on a fast turtle. It should arrive in seven days - the best I could do.

 

How's everyone else progressing?

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WAAS-up

+WAAS-up

Posted
Posted
First activity ready now.  Here is instructions:

 

OT5,8X6BNOY VU2CC0V4137RTE2DNNG?0CY0M.YE2ZF3N08?V386FTFVN,2.9TBO ZJE0 DAL N8?4L

ECEYR6E80NL442G20ATCLNAQ EO1LNTND8WNT,OC02V?OZ5VU28,TFVND2XH.?OYO5XD3FPVR2A1PJB

NO9LLEY65AKT5G? V 7OZL4ZCLNZF.IO7PP4NDDL8TN3CAE B NOAU 3.1D4N08?V98FKAVX OGLF4N

08?V386FTFVLOIZMEG35WVV8ODZV6?88Y2EG ZAKXD NLFSN1?0VA2ANQA.?OC02V?RK6A0NH209E28

C0J5.E2ZF3N08?V??IDAK4Y1?7VE79DT4TN02W6E28CT5TNK2.VT7,B5H4??N1KX71N.CA2ANDSFN 7

NJ99E2ZFEY60ZJXD267VED2?YV98FNNJP.5N.23CH8?5E 9BA8TDO2YK4BF.0A 7DNZ7E7 H0V3DZ0P

SEN3CAD5.5IA7 BOIZME9ZC O B?N.J D .0A 7O2YV 5?N6A0N08?EPDOE 6EG YVVT7,B5H42977V

E,3CNM3COC0A.5O6LF9NBEPK4297 VU8CNLKZ280AA?ND8WNX71NNA01 B7VE2DNLD01ZNZF.IO8?VP

5A1LF56 BT4DNOCSG55?NOARD38Y22IOY0LP.5LAG2N7Y53TND1ZM.,OZ?M4?O ZJR?NNAHTB2Y.KEC

EEOQE80NX63CZ0PV413CAEPIO0TNTN22YLE 9BAEP437RV386E0A 7O6ZJTN Y ATBLNA2.D2818WN7

Y53TN880SENDE.H C NZF.IOFPF 7ZN?2,Z37RV48OYO5E96YTF4?IDA7 BO5ZFVN 7ZMV1O6PK3Y1?

AL N7YV6EC951LX88NZ7EY?,TLXF NNA01 BAH CD2MDTKON G.EE2ZFE79DAK N2Y?5E 9BA7X7?2Y

8E9 BS20CLNAOTN28W5E E AL2YG?WVQE1NTFE.95OV05Z.PV57E2WV98FNQA?,LNAG?5JN329NA8 K

XZ6?A7 BO TFSN3CAK 5G2Y8E80NLD.NDDL8TCO8QVP.E22A42 C7VEB 6PEQ?CNLD.NE1TFVCO ?G,

NG?YG?YOGPVWYG?AL 5?N5G5KONOGE79DA7 BO0TNX71N1HB

Here is some quick frequency analysis on the characters in the message:

 

Character Count

N 88

<Space> 59

E 57

2 52

A 51

O 47

V 45

? 45

8 44

7 39

0 39

D 38

5 36

T 35

Z 33

Y 32

C 32

L 31

F 30

. 29

3 25

B 24

9 23

1 23

6 22

4 21

G 20

P 19

K 17

X 14

<Break> 14

, 12

J 10

I 10

H 10

W 9

R 8

M 8

S 7

Q 7

U 4

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The Rat

+The Rat

Posted
Posted

Federal authorities are not working today. Respect Veteran's Day. Fly your flag. Spies and criminals can go uncaught on federal holidays.

 

I haven't had a chance to look at the ciphertext yet, other than skimming it on the web page. The posted frequency count doesn't suggest too much to me. I'll check for periodicity. His last cipher was XOR'ed with a repeated keyword or phrase, as I recall, which resulted in an elevated Index of Coincidence (IC) at 10 or whatever the length was. My tools aren't set up for analyzing ct with spaces and punctuation included. I'll have to improvise something.

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The Rat

+The Rat

Posted
Posted

The first two possibilities that come to mind are:

1) The letters of VENONA are dummies - possibly as spacers, or markers of some kind (e.g. signifying a new sentence or section), or possibly just randomly inserted repeatedly to disguise frequencies or patterns;

2) The letters of VENONA are part of the key, such as the substiitution scheme replaces the most common plaintext characters with the letters of VENONA, followed by the rest of the alphabet. This might explain the elevated frequency of those letters.

 

If 1) is right, then we should just remove all the VENONA letters and try to decrypt, or at least analyze. I tried this and the distribution looks more even, but still not completely even. If 2), then it strikes me as odd that the N would be much more frequent than the other letters. If the most frequent letters were replaced directly by VENONA, then the V would be most frequent, E next, etc., but that's not the way the frequency count comes out.

 

It seems more likely that the letters of VENONA are inserted in some regular fashion, probably in order. This would result in the letter N being inserted twice as often as the others, and match the frequency count. It is possible that there are "legitimate" V's, E's etc., and null ("camouflage") VENONA letters. I tried looking for them at evenly spaced intervals, e.g. every 13th letter, etc., a V, then and E, but I couldn't find a pattern.

 

In either case, I doubt this is a simple substsitution, even with spaces and punctuation put in.

 

I also checked the IC, and it is very even - no periodicity shown for periods 4 - 15.

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WAAS-up

+WAAS-up

Posted
Posted (edited)

The string OC02V? appears twice in the message.

 

NO8? occurs 5 times and is in the long string E2ZF3N08?V 2 times and in the string N08?V386FTFV 2 times.

 

There area bunch of double letters in there as well.

 

I'm thinking Lameth is probably on the right track that this is a "simple" (a relative term) substitution cipher. I think he should know better than me :unsure: The reason I say that is because if the cipher was more complex I don't think you would have all those letter patterns.

 

BTW, When I first saw the message I thought it looked like the Russian text that is shown on the cover of the Venona book I have. I did think that would be a cool twist to this mystery but I'm not sure that idea is any good now that I've looked at it twice. Just thought I'd through that out to send someone on a wild goose chase.

 

Also, If someone needs information from the book just let me know.

Edited by WAAS-up
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The Rat

+The Rat

Posted
Posted

This can't be simple substitution in its current form., even including punctuation and spaces. In English spaces should take up about 23% of the characters, including punctuation. The most frequent character in this ciphertext, N, only represents about 8% of the total. Furthermore, it is a simple matter to try all the most frequent chanracters to see their distribution, and quickly see that there is no character that "breaks up" the strings into possible word lengths. Of course there could be a combination of characters that will work, but I believe it is some other system.

 

I think the key is to figure out why the letters of VENONA appear as the highest frequency, and why the N appears approximately twice as often as the others. If all the VENONA letters were nulls inserted regularly, presumably in order, then there should be exactly the same number of each of them (except the N double that), which there aren't. If they were randomly inserted as nulls, then there should be about as many N's as the others, which there aren't. It also seems non-coincidental that the frequency of the VENONA letters is also in approximately the same order those same letters in ordinary English, i.e. The E and N most common, the V least common. It suggests that some of the VENONA letters are nulls, while another set of them are unenciphered English, or at least appear in some key alphabet or cipher system where high-frequency letters tend to sustitute for other high feq ones, and low for low. This may be a random artifact, but it also may be a clue to the system used. The rest of the characters do NOT follow normal frequencies., e.g. URS, all high frequency letters, are among the lowest. I am not familiar with any system that uses some plaintext letters mixed in with some enciphered with a sustitution system. Hmmm ...

 

I think I need some help here.

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WAAS-up

+WAAS-up

Posted
Posted

Sorry, Fizzymagic I've been trying to get some other items done in the past 24 hours. I did spend some more time right before going to bed last night but I really did not learn much.

 

I learned that the Russian Alphabet has 33 characters and if you assume venona and <spaces> ? are used as spacers you have 33 remaining characters.

 

I also tried looking at the combination "n o n" in veNONa thinking it was probably in the text somewhere (assumes the substitution idea). The m3coc0 = venona pattern seemed to match the expected frequency table but I did not get very far with that idea.

 

I also looked in more detail at all the double letters. There are 26 occurances of double Characters (in order) CC NN 44 PP DD VV 88 ?? ?? 99 NN VV 77 AA NN 55 22 NN EE 22 88 88 NN EE DD 22. Maybe some one with more experience can speak if this is normal but it seem to me that it might be a flaw to exploit.

 

Those were all the ideas I put forth in my first post that assumed Lamneth was right with the substitution idea. That idea seems to be supported by the data but after reading the background story I'm getting the impression that this probably harder than what someone can do by hand (the only method I know).

 

And to be honest I'm kind of worried about this taking over all my time because it looks like there will be multiple stages and the with the final in CA not TX.

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The Rat

+The Rat

Posted
Posted
I think the key is to figure out why the letters of VENONA appear as the highest frequency, and why the N appears approximately twice as often as the others.

Isn't that just because Venona has two N's?

That's my point. I think there is some system of inserting the letters of the word VENONA in order V, then E, etc. into the ciphertext. This would explain the higher frequency of the N's. This would NOT be consistent with a system that, for example, just designated the letters V,E,N,O,A as nulls and inserted them randomly. I am using both the higher frequency of these letters, AND the fact that N has twice the frequency, as evidence of such a system. This is inconsistent with an ordinary simple substitution, although it could be simple substitution with nulls.

 

As for the doubled letters, I'm at work right now and don't have the numbers with me or time to work on it, but it is easy to tell if the doubled letters are significant or normal. Just take the number of different characters n, (40 I think it was, not counting the line break) and 1/n is the random chance that a character would be followed by itself. You would then expect approximately x/n doubles to appear, where x is the total character count of the message. This method is not strictly accurate where the letters are not randomly distributed, but the distribution here is fairly level, so that number should give you a decent approximation.

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Green Achers

+Green Achers

Posted
Posted

I was up almost all night cramming data into a make shift MS Excel decipher-sheet. I've got all the hard work done and now it's just a matter of fidgeting with the order [assumed simple replacement cipher]. That challenge is not to stay awake, get the new counts and solve it.

 

Question. Is it possible the key is VENONA and all the spaces in the cipher keep the count high for V,E,N,O,A?!

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WAAS-up

+WAAS-up

Posted
Posted (edited)

Could it be possible that the key is "VENONA2?" as in the 2nd coming of venona's puzzle. No one has talked about the high frequency of the number 2. Just a thought.

 

EDIT: This is probably not right that would give us more than 23% spaces. VENOA is closer to 23%

 

P.S. I did Rats' math and it appear that the doubles are within expectation.

 

# Char Count %

1 N 88 7.6%

2 <Space> 59 5.1%

3 E 57 4.9%

4 2 52 4.5%

5 A 51 4.4%

6 O 47 4.1%

7 V 45 3.9%

8 ? 45 3.9%

9 8 44 3.8%

10 7 39 3.4%

11 0 39 3.4%

12 D 38 3.3%

13 5 36 3.1%

14 T 35 3.0%

15 Z 33 2.9%

16 Y 32 2.8%

17 C 32 2.8%

18 L 31 2.7%

19 F 30 2.6%

20 . 29 2.5%

21 3 25 2.2%

22 B 24 2.1%

23 9 23 2.0%

24 1 23 2.0%

25 6 22 1.9%

26 4 21 1.8%

27 G 20 1.7%

28 P 19 1.6%

29 K 17 1.5%

30 X 14 1.2%

31 , 12 1.0%

32 J 10 0.9%

33 I 10 0.9%

34 H 10 0.9%

35 W 9 0.8%

36 R 8 0.7%

37 M 8 0.7%

38 S 7 0.6%

39 Q 7 0.6%

40 U 4 0.3%

1155 100.0%

Edited by WAAS-up
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Lamneth

+Lamneth

Posted
  • Author
Posted
I think that the Web sources you have found will work fine.  From my recent discussions with Venona, I believe he aims to celebrate the anniversary of one particularly notorious missive.

Looks like we need to complete all activities by December 20th

 

From the Chronology:

http://www.cia.gov/csi/books/venona/chron.htm

1946

20 December

ASA's Meredith Gardner translates part of a KGB message containing a list of atomic scientists.

 

From the preface:

http://www.cia.gov/csi/books/venona/preface.htm

Late in 1946, Gardner broke the codebook's "spell table" for encoding English letters. With the solution of this spell table, ASA could read significant portions of messages that included English names and phrases. Gardner soon found himself reading a 1944 message listing prominent atomic scientists, including several with the Manhattan Project.

 

The list:

http://www.cia.gov/csi/books/venona/b74.gif

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The Rat

+The Rat

Posted
Posted (edited)

Unfortunately I won't have much time today to work on this, but I noticed a couple of things that might be useful. I tried eliminating all the letters in VENONA as nulls and then ran a Kasiski test on the remaining text and found that the repeated segments are in multiples of 5, e.g. 125, 130, 135, 145 , 215, 90. It is important to remove the line breaks as characters to do this accurately. This is strongly suggestive of a period of 5. This should result in an elevated Index of Coincidence at period 5, but my IC test didn't show that. I'm not sure why - maybe an error in my program or the nature of the ciphertext not fitting the parameters of my program. Or maybe the text was manipulated to disguise it. Still, there are too many of these to ignore. For example, one long repeating segment is T7,B5H4 at positions 206 and 411 (125 characters apart) and another, 386FTF, is 145 characters apart. The FTF seems suspiciously serendipitous, too. Someone might want to try writing out the text in blocks of five characters and see if anything jumps out as significant.

Edited by The Rat
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The Rat

+The Rat

Posted
Posted
Unfortunately I won't have much time today to work on this, but I noticed a couple of things that might be useful. I tried eliminating all the letters in VENONA as nulls and then ran a Kasiski test on the remaining text and found that the repeated segments are in multiples of 5, e.g. 125, 130, 135, 145 , 215, 90. It is important to remove the line breaks as characters to do this accurately. This is strongly suggestive of a period of 5. This should result in an elevated Index of Coincidence at period 5, but my IC test didn't show that. I'm not sure why - maybe an error in my program or the nature of the ciphertext not fitting the parameters of my program. Or maybe the text was manipulated to disguise it. Still, there are too many of these to ignore. For example, one long repeating segment is T7,B5H4 at positions 206 and 411 (125 characters apart) and another, 386FTF, is 145 characters apart. The FTF seems suspiciously serendipitous, too. Someone might want to try writing out the text in blocks of five characters and see if anything jumps out as significant.

Oops, my mistake. I got this result with the line breaks in (treated as a character). This does not change the significance.

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Lamneth

+Lamneth

Posted
  • Author
Posted (edited)
The FTF seems suspiciously serendipitous, too.

I already looked for "FTF" patterns because I assumed that would be in the plain text, as well as "IVI" & "ITI" (activity & activities), and possibly "ECE" (december). Here are the pattern matches:

2  A2A
2  ECE
2  FTF
2  NTN
2  OYO
1  _B_
1  _C_
1  _D_
1  _E_
1  _O_
1  _V_
1  _Y_
1  0N0
1  1N1
1  2G2
1  5.5
1  5G5
1  7E7
1  7X7
1  818
1  8E8
1  ?V?
1  COC
1  E E
1  FPF
1  ONO
1  T4T
1  T5T
1  TNT
1  ZNZ

The large number of matches suggests the clear text contains spaces. Common space patterns include "_I_", "S_S", "R_R", "T_T"

Edited by Lamneth
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The Rat

+The Rat

Posted
Posted

I went back and did IC analysis and Kasiski on the original text deleting the line breaks but without deleting the VENONA letters and there is a clear period at 6. For some reason my other program did not compute this correctly. All the long repeated segments repeat at multiples of 6 letters. Obviously the word VENONA has six letters. We may be looking at some variant of a Vigenere or Beaufort using an alphabet of 40 characters or so with VENONA as the key.

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Green Achers

+Green Achers

Posted
Posted (edited)

Here's a couple ideas. [a] Alphabet, numbers and those four extras in order. Run the key board 1-0, Q-P, A-L, Z-?, SPACE. He said it was simple! Right?!

 

I think Rat's right about it not being a Variant as that produced almost no spaces

 

Cipher

Enciphering

Deciphering

 

Vigenere

C = P + K

P = C - K

 

Beaufort

C = K - P

P = K - C

 

Variant

C = P - K

P = C+ K

 

FYI, My book arrived today. It should make for some light reading tonight. LOL

Edited by Green Achers
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The Rat

+The Rat

Posted
Posted (edited)

It begins

WELCOME. AS FIRST THING, IS CONGRATULATIONS FOR SOLVING CIPHER FOR GET TO NEXT STAGE OF ACTIVITIES. YOU HAVE SOLVED STAGE BY FINDING SIMPLE ADDITIVE CIPHER. PAT ALL SELVES ON BACKS. ONLY NEXT STAGE IS MORE D...

[ifficult...???]

 

My programs are not designed to work with 40-character alphabet sets, so there is some improvising going on. Also, I am using an old DOS QBASIC program that can't handle strings larger than 255 characters, so I have had to break the ciphertext into pieces. I started at the beginning. How novel. I'll get to work on the rest, but if anyone with better programming skills wants to finish the work for me, I won't mind. I may have some of the punctuation off, since my program only substitutes letters.

 

The key alphabet is in the order A-Z <period><comma><?><space>0-9. The key, VENONA is set so that those letters stand for the space in each of the six columns.

Edited by The Rat
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Green Achers

+Green Achers

Posted
Posted
Here's a couple ideas. [a] Alphabet, numbers and those four extras in order. Run the key board 1-0, Q-P, A-L, Z-?, SPACE. He said it was simple! Right?!

Worked most all day on getting these two options entered and run on my make shift Excel. Now I'm logging into the thread to report it's a failure and I can see why. Great work Rat! I knew you could do it but did my best to beat you. :lol:

 

Thanks Vinona for the encouragement. :blink:

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The Rat

+The Rat

Posted
Posted (edited)
Thanks Vinona for the encouragement. :blink:

IS SPELL "VENONA" MR. FARMER MAN.

Is bad Russki accent More Liver Man.

 

WELCOME. AS FIRST THING, IS CONGRATULATIONS FOR SOLVING CIPHER FOR GET TO NEXT STAGE OF ACTIVITIES. YOU HAVE SOLVED STAGE BY FINDING SIMPLE ADDITIVE CIPHER. PAT ALL SELVES ON BACKS. ONLY NEXT STAGE IS MORE DIFFICULT FOR YOU. IF WANT FOR SOLVING YOU WILL GO TO VENONA WEB SITE AND GET ZIP FILE STAGE2.ZIP WITH iNSTRUCTIONS FOR NEXT STAGE. NOTICE FILE INSIDE ZIP ENCRYPTED USING PKZIP 2.0 ENCRYPTION ALOGRITHM. THEN YOU CRACK PASSWORD FOR GET INSTRUCTIONS OF NEXT STAGE. IS LUCKY FOR YOU PASSWORD PROTECTION IN OLD ZIP FORMAT USE WEAK ENCRYPTION. DISCUSS STILL MANY QUESTIONS FOR ASKING IN SOLVING CIPHER. IS ALPHA ONLY OR ALPHANUMERIC. SHOULD DICTIONARY ATTACK, OR MAYBE SHOULD BRUTE FORCE. PERHAPS STUDY OF MESSAGE THIS MAY GIVE HINT FOR MAKING SOLUTION MORE EASIER, ALTHOUGH MAYBE NOT. SUPPOSE ONLY VENONA RAMBING TO ADD PLAINTEXT FOR LONG ENOUGH MESSAGE TO MAKE SOLUTION OF ADDITIVE CIPHER POSSIBLE. SOLTUION NOT SO HARD FOR FINDING PERHAPS. WE HOLD FTF TRAVEL BUG IN COLD PLACE UNTIL YOU FIND. ONLY WAY POSSIBLE IS SOLVING OF ALL STAGES OF ACTIVITIES. REMEMBER ALL THINGS FROM VENONA WE HAVE TOLD YOU. DO NOT GIVING UP.

 

The word RAMBING was spelled (or misspelled) that way in the decryption. Someone else should check my work. That misspelling may be a clue. OK, now I've done my part, will someone find the cache for me and sign my name? No, I'll send a junior squad member.

Edited by The Rat
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Green Achers

+Green Achers

Posted
Posted (edited)

There's many possible passwords and for some reason I thought I'd be able to quickly get the correct one by chance ('Brute Force'). I think writing a dictionary attack is not going to happen. Since it's either a

ALPHA ONLY OR ALPHANUMERIC
password, the possiblities are limited to a couple combinations (x10^30). This does not rule out case sensitive nor Russian terms nor key agent names nor ket agent code names, etc. We need to follow the clues or we'll never find the zveno. [zveno was not the key either].

 

Any thoughts about the clue(s)?? :lol:

 

Continue Rambling:

 

In doing a search for 'Venona Rambing' I get nothing. 'Rambing' alone produces tons of people that can't grasp the Queen's language. Unless this reflects another word, I believe it could have been a simple mistake by Venono.

 

Further Rambling:

 

Could this be the clue? ''WE HOLD FTF TRAVEL BUG IN COLD PLACE UNTIL YOU FIND.'' Maybe we need the name of a cold location? Russian should be a little chilly right about now. Maybe there's a cold place in Livermore? Perhaps within America??

 

Feel free to chime in anyone. :blink:

Edited by Green Achers
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The Rat

+The Rat

Posted
Posted (edited)

Is having Honey Do list today. Like any good (self-appointed) Counterintelligence squad supervisor I believe organization is the key, especially since it means I get to assign work to others. I suggest we split up the keyword approach. If anyone has the programming skills to make a brute force attack program, please check in. That's your assignment. I may give it a crack later. I think we need one person to read the web or book material to come up with likely passwords, and someone else to try clues from the message and Venona's forum postings. I tried a few guesses, which I will post here. Everyone who tries guesses by hand, please post them here so that others don't waste time on them. For the following I tried with solid caps, solid lower case, and for the proper nouns only, initial caps.

 

[based on cold place clue] SIBERIA REFRIGERATOR ALASKA

[based on "rambing"] RAMBING RAMBLING NOEL (get it - No L?) CHRISTMAS

 

The squad has received reliable source information that "Venona doesn't misspell." Thus, I think the RAMBING is highly significant. I tried anagramming it, but nothing very promising popped out. I repeat my request for someone else to check my work on the decryptiion to make sure I have that word (and all others) right. Here is my worksheet.

 

0123456789ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ.,?_ pt

WXYZ.,?_0123456789ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUV col 1

FGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ.,?_0123456789ABCDE col 2

OPQRSTUVWXYZ.,?_0123456789ABCDEFGHIJKLMN col 3

PQRSTUVWXYZ.,?_0123456789ABCDEFGHIJKLMNO col 4

OPQRSTUVWXYZ.,?_0123456789ABCDEFGHIJKLMN col 5

BCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ.,?_0123456789A col 6

Edited by The Rat
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