CODZ 8. sha_paper

I havn't actually played the game, I just like breaking codes.

Apparently there are some new CODZ ciphers, the transcripts can be seen here: http://www.callofdutyzombies.com/topic/183529-all-revelations-ciphers-texture-files/#comment-1759652.

This post will look at the following cipher:

bx re yh zy bf lm kt ut yg se tb sx ky co jh km aq we tx wx
cy ji ut vt kn vc gx aw ij av qn lg ef fj uq bd kn sv cx fn
je wr rk kn cg aw xq vn zf li fh vz wt ta ia ij zf eh uf tj 
qm yg hl yq cx ij vw ig de qz tg nj rs er vk tm sa yv tw hr 
hs lt vy kr qc tv gh hb jn yb qh er ut gk et cs wv jl rh xo 
wr ex hr xt zi kc xs qs fd wd cm ku ah fh fj lf ui ly sh vf 
au xm hx qw dl gi cx vb dh wt xm kv un ej kt kt ye cq jd ef 
eh zv xt he uz tg cl jw nr tw ur vo jt jo ru iq iy rz ey ho 
gd nq yn bq ul ai fh bu ji ho nw qg yg vj if yv zu id jc gh 
ke xr qf cq ra it gw dl fc gq ti iu qu ny vr gy sj rh iu hi 
wr mv ym zi lk re vk xu ry uq gs ve gd yn bq ch ky er qh jr 
ho ya el ky zj ei hz cb if dk

There are 460 characters total, 25 distinct characters, IC is 0.0418. Counts:

a: 12, c: 18, b: 11, e: 23, d: 12, g: 20,
f: 19, i: 24, h: 29, k: 21, j: 23, m: 9,
l: 14, o:  7, n: 15, q: 23, s: 12, r: 24,
u: 20, t: 26, w: 18, v: 23, y: 25, x: 19,
z: 13

Since this cipher uses pairs of characters, and there are 25 distinct characters, it is highly likely to be foursquare, bifid, playfair or some other digraphic substitution cipher based on a 5 by 5 grid. Usually I and J are combined, but it looks like in this cipher P is missing, so It was combined with something else.

Other ciphers that use a 25 letter alphabet include BAZERIES, BIFID, CADENUS, CHECKERBOARD, CM BIFID, FOURSQUARE, PHILLIPS, PHILLIPS-C, PHILLIPS-RC, PLAYFAIR, SERIATED PLAYFAIR, TRI-SQUARE, TWIN BIFID and TWO-SQUARE. Unfortunately this is quite a lot, and trying them all will be time consuming.

I am trying 4 variants of the above the cipher, the original cipher: bkreyh..., the reversed cipher: kdfibc..., forward but with each pair reversed: xberhy..., and each pair forwards, but the pairs from last to first: dkifcb... .

BAZERIES is a substitution + transposition, which means its IC would be that of normal text. Since the IC of this text is ~0.04, I am confident in saying it is not BAZERIES . It also can't be CADENUS because the message length is not a multiple of 25. CHECKERBOARD uses a 5x5 key square, but can at maximum use 20 characters in the ciphertext.

Possibilities after thinking a bit: BIFID, CM BIFID, TWIN BIFID, FOURSQUARE, PHILLIPS, PLAYFAIR, SERIATED PLAYFAIR, TRI-SQUARE, and TWO-SQUARE. The next piece of information is that none of the letter pairs in the ciphertext contain a doubled letter e.g. AA, BB, CC etc. This is highly unlikely to occur with most ciphers, but it is a peculiarity of PLAYFAIR. So this puts playfair near the top of the list.

I have tried the playfair cryptanalysis program over here on all four variants and it hasn't worked. I did a test sentence of the same length which it cracked in just a few iterations, so I am fairly confident in saying it is not a vanilla playfair, or at least if it is then something else is going on as well (such as some sort of route cipher).

For bifid, there is no obvious period identifiable (see here for how to compute it), and some quick simulated annealing didn't turn anything up.

Regarding the possibility of routes, 460 has a lot of factors: 2x230,4x115,5x92,10x45,20x23. This means lots of routes around the rectangles when the characters are lined up right. Exploring this would add a lot of extra time to the cracking effort.

The quest continues...