A team of code breakers has solved a cipher attributed to the Zodiac Killer, a serial murderer known for a Northern California killing spree in the late 1960s who has still not been identified or apprehended.
David Oranchak, a US-based software developer, Sam Blake, a mathematician based in Australia, and Jarl Van Eycke, a programmer based in Belgium, managed to crack Z340, a 340-character cipher that’s one of four such codes attributed to the Zodiac Killer.
Z340 was sent to The San Francisco Chronicle on November 8, 1969, and was provided to the FBI shortly thereafter. It remained unsolved for 51 years until Saturday, December 5th, 2020, when Oranchak, Blake, and Van Eycke submitted their solution to the US Federal Bureau of Investigation and had their solution validated.
See FBI confirms Zodiac Killer’s 340 cipher solved by trio of amateur math and software codebreakers
#technology #cipher #codebreaking
Mysterious message, unread for 51 years, turns out to be a bit dull