Be Excellent To Each Other

There must be some Crypto Nerds on this forum.

http://www.gchq.gov.uk/Press/Pages/Pige ... grave.aspx

Man finds secret code from a dead pigeon in his chimney - probably sent over from Europe by the British Army. However, the boffins at GCHQ are flummoxed! Can you, dear reader, apply your skill and judgement to help solve this tricky problem that has flummoxed the best minds in the business? Can you decipher the crappy, low-res scan that GCHQ have stuck up? Can you solves the clues and find the Golden Hare?

I'd take it down the bookies and see if they'll pay out, if I was them.

Enemy.. Hawk.. Patrols

Woo!

Malc

I reckon they've got the signature wrong - I don't think that's "W Stot Sjt", but rather "W Stf Sjt" - as in Staff Sergeant. That doesn't help decode it at all though.

Also, if the pigeon was registered in 1937 as they suggest, that would mean it had been about for 7 years by D-Day. Isn't that quite old for a pigeon?

When I first saw this reported, I didn't understand quite how they expected to break the code. You need mistakes and comparisons to allow you to crack these codes, a single short coded message on it's own is impossible I suspect.
The enigma code, for examples, was cracked because the German operators were lazy and didn't always advance the wheels, and one of them sent the exact same message twice in a row. Plus they used key repeated phrases so there were patterns to look for from each operator.

Coo! Coo!

It says "We should stop using this pigeon - it seems lazy."

You could probably brute force a WWII code nowadays if you new the encryption type. The British used a enigma-like code called TypeX, although I'm not sure if that message would be long enough to be certain. If it's a One Time Pad they're stumped though.

Yeah, surely we knew what sort of codes we were using, i am amazed that we GCHQ can't crack it, and slightly perturbed that they would admit to such!

I thought this was going to be another Scum thread

It's in no way a long enough code to crack though, without known keys, comparisons and errors, all you can do is brute force, and for that you need a lot more characters.

The woo was because Kalmar had posted for the first time in about 6 months!

Malc

Yeah, looks like a one time pad, which is unbreakable for messages of this length.

It also looks like a recruitment drive from GCHQ.

Also, also... KALMAR!