Monday 19 October 2020

'SOMERTON MAN CODE CRACKED' : UPDATE 21st OCTOBER


SOMERTON MAN CODE CRACKED

'COMMUNICATION MR SHOT SL REPEAT SLOWLY'


Spent a fair few hours looking through various codes and thought that it might be an idea to revisit the 
https://www.dcode.fr/shift-cipher website and chose, as you can see in the image below, a 'Shift Cipher'.

The technique is to, first of all, translate any numbers to the equivalent numbered letter in the alphabet. 

You enter those letters into the Decoder and it automatically 'shifts' the letters according to its algorithm. For example, this decoder setup is for a 13 letter shift which is quite a common code. The letter A moves from number 1 in the alphabet to number 14, the letter N but then it uses other combinations in addition.

We had the first set of 15 characters from the left-hand upright of the letter M, the first letter, the first line of the Somerton Man code page. Here are the original characters:

135032 X 35432 72343 R
I removed the number 0 as null, the X as a null, and the letter R  in Prosign terms means RECEIVED.

There are 5 sets of characters from within that letter. The first characters fed into the decoder were: ACECB CEDCB GBCDC. Again, they came from the left-hand upright of the letter M, first letter, first line of the code page. In other words the very first set of information on the code page.

Here's the screen capture:
 

The decoder churned through the letters in a matter of seconds and delivered 820 decrypt lines many of which were duplicates.

The highlighted line as you can see in the image above reads:

QSO MR SHOT SL then QRS NMH

My reading of this is that the first 3 letters, QSO are a prosign. QSO translates to 'COMMUNICATE WITH' or Communication.

Then follows the message body: MR SHOT SL, if the decrypt is correct, then someone with the initials MR may have shot another person with the initials SL.

We then move to the second Prosign which is QRS, this translates to 'REPEAT SLOWLY', the message body that follows comprises of  3 letters NMH. 

At this stage, I do not know what NMH may stand for, whether they're initials for example ('not much here' came to mind!) More dramatically, they also stand for 'Nuclear Microprobe for Hydrogen'. Whether such a tool existed in the 1940s I really don't know.

The good thing is we have made a start with much more to follow.

There are more codes to test out so best not to totally confirm this first cut as yet.

The next part of the letter to be decrypted will be posted in the next few days time permitting, I will have included some source images by then.


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3 comments:

  1. All of this rather assumes that the code relates to plaintext in English. So who is communicating here? And with whom?

    ReplyDelete
  2. That's correct, it does make that assumption. There's a couple of reasons. Firstly, the larger letters on the code page are from the English alphabet which sort of suggests that anything else found will also be in English but that isn't a given as you correctly infer.

    The next reason is that the other likely group that could be involved in this would be the Russians. As some, but not all. would know, the Russians always used the English Alphabet in block capitals when communicating with English speaking agents in the field, the same rule, albeit presumably, would apply to communications between agents. An example would be the recent post about the ASIO double agent, SYLVIA. Skripov, her handler, wrote messages to her in secret, invisible, ink on paper which when developed was in English and in block capitals, there are other examples and happy to dig them out.

    More about the Sylva incident, and PeteDavo, you might be interested in this, little known is the fact that ASIO placed a small scratch mark on the 'burst' transmitter that she was supposed to handover to another agent in Adelaide. That was to positively identify the item in the event it went to court.

    To finish this comment, the excrpt shown here is from one part of the first letter M on the Somerton Man code page, there is much more to be done and it is possible that another code was in use. Another possibility is that this code is double layered, in other words, the output we find may need to be decoded yet again with another decoder type. To add further complexity, in that same decrypt with 820 lines, one of those lines contains the sequence, ABABD. Being the last letters in the first line on the code page. Another decode attempt produced the sequence : SOMRSON which was close but no cigar!

    Apart from the Decoder used here, there is a fascinating series of code discussions in the final two minutes of each episode in a set of a WW2 Spy serial produced in the US. Here's the link: https://tamamshud.blogspot.com/2020/09/ww2-codes-and-code-breaking-technqiues.html

    Thanks for the comment, I trust that all is well with you and yours.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Thanks for the message Gleeso, the code page copy used is from an impeccable source and O wo;; post it againe shortly, you will be able to make use of it and see the micro code quite clearly in a number of locations and little more difficult to make out in others. All things being equal, we should be able to get better than 90%, the challenge now is to make sure we have the right decoder.

    As for your second point, I am inclined to think that these letters and numbers could be from a transmission, then again!

    Thanks for the other input and yes, I was aware.

    ReplyDelete

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