Use Some Help Cracing a Code

I have been waiting for this game for a long time. Fallen Earth they are having a contest with a code and you get some good stuff if you can crack it. Can I get some help?

not sure if anyone else plays or not.

www.massiveonlinegamer.com...

There is the code.

I should have said I have been waiting for them to do this code for a long time. I missed the first couple of games they had.

Hmmm.

IF you run the code through a letter frequency analyzer it doesn't seem to conform to being a simple letter substitution code... It's a tough one

Originally posted by davespanners
Hmmm.

IF you run the code through a letter frequency analyzer it doesn't seem to conform to being a simple letter substitution code... It's a tough one

Is it a hill cipher?

I am stumped with these things, I'd love to see the result when it's done however..

here's my guess....the key is fallen earth and it's using the "playfair" cipher....

im going to test this out and see what I come up with

reply to post by badw0lf


i could be wrong, but i think "hill ciphers" are based in numbers that are used for the encoding process

so A=1, B=2 S=3

code 123 = abs

I read Cryptonomican by Neal Stephenson recently, so I'm all psyched up to try and crack this :p I have an engineering background, so hopefully I can figure it out.

edit: I'm going to try substituting various 5-letter blocks for 'earth' and various 6-letter blocks with 'fallen', since it is likely those two words appear in the message somewhere.

Thanks guys I have tried all I can think of(Im not good at cracking these) I want to see if we can get the results.

Originally posted by davespanners
Hmmm.

IF you run the code through a letter frequency analyzer it doesn't seem to conform to being a simple letter substitution code... It's a tough one

Yeah, I did the count and got this:
A - 28
B - 45
C - 81
D - 31
E - 20
F - 21
G - 41
H - 53
I - 82
J - 7
K - 29
L - 41
M - 64
N - 38
O - 49
P - 65
Q - 67
R - 40
S - 64
T - 14
U - 19
V - 77
W - 91
X - 26
Y - 30
Z - 27

That means there are at least 7 of every letter, including Q, Z, etc, *if* it is a one letter to one letter substitution, which seems unlikely, unless some of the message is gibberish.

One thing I did notice is that the letters GHNNCR occur TWICE in the message. I tried substituting GHNNCR=FALLEN, but it didn't seem to work, since then the word 'and' never occurs, and the word 'earth' occurs once. (another one I think might be a good starting point, but without a 'double letter' in the word it is a lot harder to find a 5 letter block guess for that, at least visually)

edit: looking at en.wikipedia.org... another common technique is to use more than one letter to represent the plaintext letter. For instance, hypothetically, maybe both J and Z represent a 'u' in the message. That way, some rare letters like X or Q that might occur zero times can be used to help mask the normal distribution of letters.

reply to post by DragonsDemesne


How does this system work? You're like a code cracking genius? lol I havent figured out anything besides gibberish.

Originally posted by ExCloud
reply to post by DragonsDemesne

 

How does this system work? You're like a code cracking genius? lol I havent figured out anything besides gibberish.

No, I'm not a code cracking genius, but I have a strong math background, and I'm able to do the simple cryptograms that the Sunday newspaper publishes, but those are always one letter swaps for one letter, and I'm about 99% sure that this message is not of that kind.

reply to post by DragonsDemesne


I have the feeling that it might be a simple substitution but with some garbage added in somewhere to counteract frequency analysis.

Originally posted by ExCloud
reply to post by DragonsDemesne

 

How does this system work? You're like a code cracking genius? lol I havent figured out anything besides gibberish.

Any message thats written in English (well mostly anyway) will use some letter more then others the most commonly used letters in English are E and T, so if this code was written by just substituting one letter for another there would be two letters used more then any others for example if you counted every letter in the code and found that R was the most common letter the R would probably represent E.

I don't think i explained that very well


Edit
Here is a message from the site that I guess is a clue
"Techs from all around the Grand Canyon have been trying to decrypt the message using frequency analysis without success. A Traveler by the name of Silas Marock said it looks like a substitution cipher combined with some other method to mess up any frequency analysis…
*

reply to post by davespanners


I understand what you are saying. Ugh this is tough and frustrating.

Well, worked on it on and off for the last few days. Couldn't figure it out, so I cheated...

A guy here explains how to do it: www.mmorpg.com...

He doesn't actually give the message, but if you follow his instructions you will get:

the settlements must pay for their support of the factions and the clones we will not forget the atrocities they committed at hoover dam they will all suffer greatly we will invade key locations in the plateau northfields kaibab and deadfall and take back control of the territory that should rightfully be ours to command i will send further instructions and locations commander sei

(you also get a Z in every place that there is a space between words, but I took those out)

reply to post by DragonsDemesne


Yea that was a hard one ugh. Thanks for trying man.