Signature Simulation and Certain Cryptographic Codes

Three cyphers allegedly authored by Thomas
Jefferson Beale in 1822 have been the subject of 
intensive study for over 100 years.  Generations of
cryptanalysts have expended untold man-years, thus 
far without success, attempting tode code them; vast armies
of fortune hunters and treasure seekers have 
devoted Herculean labors to digging up the rolling hills
of Virginia trying to locate the promised bonanza. 
 The history of pertinent activities would fill volumes,
yet serious students of cryptography have always 
had nagging doubts about the cyphers' authenticity.
 It has been alleged that the "known solution" to 
Cypher Number Two: 115, 73, 24, 818, 37, 52, 49,...("I
have deposited in the County of Bedford about 
four miles from Buford's in an excavation or vault...")
with the aid of an unsanitized version of the 
Declaration of Independence was merely a superb, imaginative,
and grandiose hoax perpetrated ages ago 
for whatever reasons.  Modern computer technology could
obviously perform signature analyses the process 
of encoding itself so as to yield new clues and deeper
insights into their construction.  For the benefit 
of the uninitiated, the encoding method used in the
second cypher employs a specified document whose 
words are simply numbered consecutively, and first letters
of these words are sought out at random to 
match the letters of these words are sought out at random
to match the letters of the clear text or message. 
 The sequence of numbers corresponding to these matches
is then written down as the final code.  While 
primitive, the process has the advantage of relative
security until the source document becomes known; 
at that moment the cypher can be decoded even by second
graders.  The work now completed with the help 
of our UNIVAC 1108 includes numerous analytical studies
of the Beale cyphers and various types of simulations. 
 For example, we have turned the entire process of
simulated encoding by various schemes over to the 
machine and analyzed the signatures of these synthetic
codes; we have also encoded various messages by 
hand, using different texts and a variety of methods to
obtain their signatures. These simulations provide 
convincing evidence that the signatures are both process
and data dependent; they indicate also very 
strongly that Mr. Beale's cyphers are for real and that
it is merely a matter of time before someone 
finds the correct source document and locates the
right vault in the common-wealth of Virginia.

CACM January, 1971

Hammer, C.

Thomas Jefferson Beale, codes, cryptanalysis, cyphers,
decoding, Declaration of Independence, encoding, 
Magna Carta, pseudotext, signature, simulation

3.42 3.63 3.65 3.71

CA710101 JB February 8, 1978  1:15 PM

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