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Subscribe to RSSA World War II code delivered by carrier pigeon is stumping today's cypher specialists. Can you break it? NBC's Brian Williams reports.
LONDON — A coded message from World War II found on the leg of a dead carrier pigeon in an English chimney cannot be deciphered, according to British intelligence agents.
The handwritten message on a small sheet of paper headed "Pigeon Service" was found earlier this month in a small red canister still attached to the pigeon's leg, the GCHQ agency said in a statement posted on its website.
The pigeon is thought to have been one of the 250,000 used by British forces — including secret agents working behind enemy lines in German-occupied Europe — during the 1939-1945 war.
The message was signed and appears to say "Sjt W Stot", GCHQ said, adding that nothing is known of this individual or their unit. Sjt is an abbreviation of the old-fashioned "serjeant" spelling of the army rank.
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Royal Pigeon Racing Association, courtesy Bletchley Park Trust
This coded message from World War II was found in a canister still attached to the leg of a dead carrier pigeon.
'Tribute' to code-makers
It was destined for a place code-named "X02," but it is also not known what this means. It contains 27 five-letter code groups, but GCHQ said it was impossible to decipher the message without the relevant code book.
"During the war, the methods used to encode messages naturally needed to be as secure as possible and various methods were used," the agency's statement said.
"The senders would often have specialist code books in which each code group of four or five letters had a meaning relevant to a specific operation, allowing much information to be sent in a short message. For added security, the code groups could then themselves be encrypted," it said.
"Although it is disappointing that we cannot yet read the message brought back by a brave carrier pigeon, it is a tribute to the skills of the wartime code-makers that, despite working under severe pressure, they devised a code that was undecipherable both then and now," it added.
Courtesy Bletchley Park Trust
This coded message from World War II was found in a canister still attached to the leg of a dead carrier pigeon.
It is thought a "one-time pad" may have been used to encrypt the message.
"The advantage of this system is that, if used correctly, it is unbreakable as long as the key is kept secret. The disadvantage is that both the sending and receiving parties need to have access to the same key, which usually means producing and sharing a large keypad in advance," GCHQ said.
The pigeons carried a wide variety of messages, "flying the gauntlet of enemy hawk patrols and soldiers taking potshots at them to bring vital information back to Britain from mainland Europe," GCHQ added.
Each had its own identity number and the Bletchingley message contains two such numbers — NURP.40.TW.194 and NURP.37.OK.76. Either could be the dead pigeon's number.
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Leave a Comment:
Somebody did a good job. It probably tells where the gold is.
"All the gold, in California, is in a bank in the middle of Beverly Hills, in someone else's name".
This is just really cool, the whole thing skeleton and all should be in a museum, good luck breaking the code without the key.
I really do hope there isn't a dwindling platoon of elderly British gentlemen sitting tight in a Belgian forest awaiting a reply, with a corporal assuring them, "any time now lads, just hang on."
Scott - you are typical of new-age progressives that have not one iota of knowledge about world history and what is required to maintain a stable world. Mubarak and Sadat were 1000 times better than these fundamentalist backed "Arab Spring" goons that we encouraged (read Obama and Clinton) to over-throw allies and governments that maintained stability in the Middle East and supported OUR national interests. When Morsi and others get out of control, initiate land warfare with Israel AND us, and return the Middle East to the slaughter of the 1960's and 1970's, you of course will be blaming conservatives. What a crock!
I think you are in the wrong story.
Yes, the pigeon was sent back in time by the Muslim brotherhood. :-)
No he's not, everyone knows that liberal left wing carrier pigeons overthrew Mubarek and Khadafi. If it was a right wing pigeon they would still be in power and it would be raining $10.000.00 bills.
There is so much about war and what goes on around it, which is lost to those who don't personally have to endure the experiences of living through it. Aside from the actual field experiences of battle front fighting which most people think of when war is mentioned. Different and sometimes unexpected kinds of stories and details from the supporting roles which take place, most often which is hidden behind the scenes.This is even more so in historical battles.
In today's modern conflicts and wars, we have the benefit of modern technology from cameras, videos, satellites and other sources which can inform the world about what is happening today.Yet as this intriguing tiny time capsule from the past reveals, there were really so many layers of support playing a critical role in helping the allied war effort. Here is one more, that civilians probably never imagined taking place during WW2. A tribute to those who risked their lives, trained the pigeons and believed in doing all they could to stop Hitler and his forces from winning.
Who would have imagined, really, pigeons enlisted into WW2? I know there are some who call them flying rats, but seriously, if they realized 250,000 flew against hawks to help stop Hitler from winning the war, maybe they would hold them in higher regard. It is always terrible when man needs to ever fight in a war. Looking back at that horrific war, who is to know how much these animals truly made a difference. We owe the code makers and pigeons a humble debt of gratitude.
Obviously something they don't want to be known. Japan broke every code with the exception of the Indian code. To beleive that today with the history documented that no one can break this code is not believable.
@Ross -
One-time-pad ciphers were and now still are completely and totally unbreakable. The possible combination are basically limitless. There is no modern computer now or in the future that can break a one-time-pad cipher without the key.
And you are incorrect about the Japanese breaking 'every' US code. The IJA was focused on breaking Chinese and Soviet codes, the IJN did US and British codes. They were able to break some of the State Department diplomatic ciphers, and the IJN broke several of the Navy ones. But most of the significant US military codes eluded them during the war, and the Japanese military made very little use of what knowledge they gained from what they did break.
Given enough time and a super computer any code is breakable.
@Eric:
Breaking a modern encryption, such as AES, requires "brute force" - merely trying all possible keys. For a key length 128 bit, you need to try 3.4E38 keys. If you have a billion computers each trying a billion combinations per second, it will require as little as 3.4e20 seconds. It's only 10780 billion years, which is just 770 times age of this Universe.
You are correct. However, a good code does not have to be unbreakable. It just has to be unbroken long enough for the information in the message to be useless after it is broken.
Sorry Eric, this type code does not use the same type encryption that a computer uses, it is much simpler but without the key and the exact book, which may or may not be in print, there may be no copy's left or if it has never been scanned into digital form it may well be unbreakable, even with a super computer.
@denver bill:
You only have enough time, if you have more time than this Universe will last.
Whether the code is breakable or not completely depends on the type of code used, which no one knows. Certain codes that rely on an algorithm and a short key are always theoretically breakable, given enough time and computing resources.
However, as the article states, if the code used was a one-time pad, then it IS NOT BREAKABLE, now, then, or ever in the future, period, end of story, even if you have infinite computing resources and infinite time. The reason for this is that with a one-time pad, every possible decryption and every possible message is equally likely. It could decode to "THE GERMANS ARE ATTACKING" or it could decode to "THE GERMANS ARE RETREATING". Both are equally likely and equally possible if the coding system was a one-time pad. So you have no idea which is the correct decryption, and that's just with two possibilities. Imagine having to select from an infinite number of possibilities, and you inherently have no clue what the message says.
For people who think any code can be broken, you are wrong simply because you assume the word "code" implies an embedded pattern that could be detected. Dan (above) is completely correct but to highlight hispoint, here's a simple message: 11, 32, 93. Now - if the one-time-pad says: 11=yes, 32=you, 93=can. then the message is "yes you can". Alternatively, the pad could read 11=get, 32=a, 93=life. then the message is quite different. The main thing about a one time pad is the "one time" part. Since no future message will ever use the same values from the same pad and even in a long message, the same values are never repeated there is simply no information to be gleaned. It has nothing to do with compute-power, this message could be absolutely anything.
You might point out that in my example, I have three values so that means three words... which is information. In reality, all messages would be extended to be of equal length to take that last piece of information away. Ultimately, if you intercept a properly one-time-pad encrypted message you only know that a message was sent.... so of course, you can obscure even that by sending messages on a regular basis whether you have something important or not.....
With the discovery of such historical documents, I am always fascinated. One can only wonder what secrets the document holds. I don't know if the old code books were preserved or discarded, but it would be fun to try to trace it back. Who knows, it could be a key to a great battle, or it could be a menu for deli carryout. Nevertheless, only time will tell. (And at this stage of the game, time is all there is.)
One BLT, hold the mayo!
looks like a good password
Bletchingley?
It is Bletchley, I think. i.e., Bletchley Park.
You are correct.
It appears they don't use their fireplace very often.
deleted
Have they excluded the possibility that Sjt W Stot and his pigeon served in WW I?
There are two W Stot names that could actually be "Stott." One was William Gordon Stott that died in Tunisia in 1942, and another is William Leslie Stott, who was a sergeant in the Royal Air Force (no info on where he served and died, but it was in August 1945).
It's OK folks, because we actually know the outcome of that war, for the most part.
But not what went on behind the scenes...
It's good that they found him in the chimney. If they found him in the bathroom,
he was probably a stool pigeon.
I imagine that someone on the internet will solve it. Government records were destroyed for a lot of the coding stuff that went on. Ultra itself was secret until the early 1970s. But someone on the internet, who is really into this stuff, probably has relevant info in their private collection and can figure it out. Its happened before.
Note that the message is printed in code, but at the bottom of the sheet, near the 'Time of Origin' area, is a cursive writing that looks like lile 1625
That looks like a hastily written reference to the point of origin being Lille, France, which figured signifcantly in the whole Miracle at Dunkirk' thing.
Also, the msg. notes that 2 copies were sent by 2 different pigons. This is only one. Maybe the other got through to Allied command.
Perhaps a message about the withdrawal of British Troops to the beaches around Dunkirk, and might have been a key message that allowed the "Miracle" to happen.
Brave men, in bad times. Let's just honor the memory of them and this reminder of just what they went though.
Let's not forget that the evacuation of the BEF from Dunkirk happened because Hitler 'allowed' it to happen.
A mistake that eventually cost the Germans dearly.
Actually, Hitler deciding to invade Russia is what cost Germany dearly in teh end.
I'm pretty sure that's a Windows 8 activation key...
HAHAHA good one froggy! :D
The folks at Microsoft may have the decryption methods!
In the article....they just mention GHCQ...wtf....more encrypted BS!
LOL with the comments; another one to consider is
that the pigeon should receive knighthood from the Queen.
he's dead Jim....
I'll give it a shot. May take some time.
Perhaps the numbers NURP.40.TW.194 and NURP.37.OK.76 represent two different birds the message was carried on. For example, the first bird leaves it's origin towards a sort of "transfer station" where the message was then placed onto the 2nd bird which would complete the journey.
The message is also started with AOAKN as well as ended in such. This may hold some significance.
Codes and Ciphers are two different things. The "one time pad" was printed somewhere, so they should have a record of it somewhere.
27 1525/6 might be June 27 3:25pm or June 6th.
Both dates have a history on those days in WW2. Just a clue i guess.
D-R-I-N-K-BREAK-M-O-R-E-Break-O-V-A-L-T-I-N-E
The codes tell us where Jimmy Hoffa is buried.
I'm surprised there was no mention in the article of the fact that some aspect of the war, however big or small, might have turned out differently if the pigeon had completed its journey. Also, it says 2 copies were sent. Have they looked to see if the other one got through? Really a fascinating twist on history. I hope the message is eventually deciphered.