From: Robert Hettinga <rah@shipwright.com>
Date: Sat, 27 Dec 1997 10:23:33 +0800
To: cypherpunks@cyberpass.net
Subject: Cryptographer examines Kaczynski's journal
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Subject: Cryptographer examines Kaczynski's journal
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From: William Knowles <erehwon@dis.org>
To: "Perry's crypto list" <cryptography@c2.net>, DC-Stuff <dc-stuff@dis.org>
cc: DCSB <dcsb@ai.mit.edu>
Subject: Cryptographer examines Kaczynski's journal
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SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) -- Driven by secrecy, Theodore Kaczynski
 kept a cryptic diary for two decades, substituting numbers and
 mathematical symbols for words and letters.

 Prosecutors say the Unabomber suspect's encoded journal is the
 cornerstone of their case against the mathematics professor-turned
 -forest recluse. They say it provides a remarkable, step-by-step
 view of years of wrongdoing -- in the defendant's own words. And
 they intend to have FBI cryptographer Michael Birch lay out his
 ``translation'' of the entire document to jurors.

 ``Although Mr. Birch's expertise is breaking codes, in this case the
 'key' to the defendant's code was found in the cabin,'' the government
 said in its trial strategy brief. ``Therefore, Mr. Birch's expertise
 will be directed to explaining to the jury how to apply the code to
 the defendant's coded writings and the admission into evidence of
 his completed translation.''

 Earlier, lead prosecutor Robert Cleary said the journal records
 are ``the backbone of the government's case.'' He said the diary
 describes in detail the 16 Unabomber attacks from 1978 to 1995
 that killed three people and injured 29.

 Kaczynski, 55, is charged with using bombs in four attacks: He is
 accused of killing a lobbyist and a computer store owner a decade
 apart in Sacramento, and maiming a geneticist and a computer
 professor with Sacramento-postmarked mail bombs in 1993.

 Opening statements in the trial are scheduled for Jan. 5. Kaczynski
 could get the death penalty if convicted. He is charged separately
 in New Jersey with the third fatality attributed to the Unabomber's
 18-year siege.

 Unlike the Unabomber manifesto, a 35,000-word treatise that depicts
 technology as an evil force, the coded diary was never intended to
 be seen by anyone else.

 The diary, written in pencil on several hundred pages of notepaper
 and several inches thick, includes details of experiments with
 explosives. It was among 20,000 documents seized from Kaczynski's
 tiny Montana shack.

 The diary contents have not been made public, although Birch's
 decoded version was given to the defense last year.

 Sources familiar with the journal describe it as a sophisticated
 jumble of numbers, an intricate enigma wrapped in a riddle befitting
 a Harvard-trained mathematician described by one prospective juror
 as a ``smart weirdo.''

 But code experts aren't so sure. They believe Kaczynski, who shunned
 computers and electronic devices in his cabin without electricity,
 may actually have cloaked the journal in a ``hand code'' that would
 have been relatively easy to break, even without the key.

 Such codes vary widely, but one basic variety resembles a checkerboard
 or grid, numbered on the sides, with each square filled randomly with
 a letter of the alphabet.

 The coded message is a string of numbers, which are the coordinates
 corresponding to the letters in the grid. To read the message, one
 needs to translate the numbers using the grid, or key. But typically,
 those numbers may be scrambled using a second code, and even a third,
 so that the final message is shrouded in layers of secrecy.

 Although such a numeric code looks daunting to the lay person, it is
 no more difficult to crack than the kind of basic substitution ciphers
 popular in pulp fiction or newspaper word games.

 ``You may have `A equals 1', and `B equals 2,' stuff like that in
 a numeric code with pencil and paper. Numbers look a little more
 mysterious and harder, like `39647181.' But it doesn't have anything
 to do with the complexity of the code. It's totally irrelevant,''
 said David Kahn, an editor at Long Island's Newsday and the author
 of ``The Code Breakers,'' a seminal work on classical cryptography.

 ``A checkerboard cipher with nothing else going on is no harder to
 crack than the simple substitution system used in a newspaper,''
 added James Gillogly, president of the American Cryptogram Assoc.
 He is an employee of the Westwood-based Mentat Inc., which develops
 security software.

 Ronald L. Rivest, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of
 Technology and a founder of MIT's Cryptography and Information
 Security Group, agreed.

 ``When you are dealing in a situation where someone is working
 by hand with a code, and dealing with pencil and paper, it's not
 that difficult'' to decode, he said.


 ==
 The information standard is more draconian than the gold
 standard, because the government has lost control of the
 marketplace.
 ==
 http://www.dis.org/erehwon/



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Robert Hettinga (rah@shipwright.com), Philodox
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