1 00:00:01,800 --> 00:00:07,320 Speaker 1: Welcome to Brainstuff, a production of iHeartRadio, Hey Brains to 2 00:00:07,480 --> 00:00:11,719 Speaker 1: Floor and Vogelbomb. Here. From the pharaohs of ancient Egypt 3 00:00:11,840 --> 00:00:15,520 Speaker 1: to the warring kingdoms of medieval Europe, humans have had 4 00:00:15,560 --> 00:00:19,120 Speaker 1: plenty of good reasons to send secret messages. If you 5 00:00:19,239 --> 00:00:22,239 Speaker 1: wanted to keep military plans from the enemy or keep 6 00:00:22,239 --> 00:00:25,000 Speaker 1: an illicit affair from your partner, you wrote it down 7 00:00:25,079 --> 00:00:28,120 Speaker 1: as a cipher. That is, a coded message that can 8 00:00:28,160 --> 00:00:33,400 Speaker 1: only be unlocked by someone possessing the key. Before the 9 00:00:33,440 --> 00:00:36,519 Speaker 1: computer age, if a historian came across a coded message 10 00:00:36,520 --> 00:00:39,839 Speaker 1: and an archive of material, they would usually skip over 11 00:00:39,920 --> 00:00:43,320 Speaker 1: it because it just wasn't worth the trouble. Even ancient 12 00:00:43,400 --> 00:00:46,280 Speaker 1: ciphers can be nearly impossible to crack with just a 13 00:00:46,320 --> 00:00:50,920 Speaker 1: pencil and paper. But what juicy historical secrets were trapped 14 00:00:50,920 --> 00:00:55,520 Speaker 1: in those ancient puzzles. For the article this episode is 15 00:00:55,520 --> 00:00:58,280 Speaker 1: based on, has Stuff Works spoke with Craig P. Bauer, 16 00:00:58,520 --> 00:01:01,760 Speaker 1: a math professor at York College of Pennsylvania and editor 17 00:01:01,800 --> 00:01:05,920 Speaker 1: in chief of the journal Cryptologia. He said, if you're 18 00:01:06,000 --> 00:01:08,480 Speaker 1: looking through a diary and you come across a passage 19 00:01:08,480 --> 00:01:11,880 Speaker 1: that's enciphered, you know that's the best part. When a 20 00:01:11,920 --> 00:01:14,600 Speaker 1: message can't be read, the sky's the limit. It can 21 00:01:14,640 --> 00:01:18,440 Speaker 1: be absolutely anything. It can resolve a historic mystery or 22 00:01:18,520 --> 00:01:21,000 Speaker 1: shed new light on the personality of a historic figure. 23 00:01:21,520 --> 00:01:27,560 Speaker 1: Maybe history itself is rewritten, and Bower should know. His 24 00:01:27,760 --> 00:01:30,840 Speaker 1: journal made history in February of twenty twenty three by 25 00:01:30,880 --> 00:01:34,679 Speaker 1: publishing the work of three amateur codebreakers who decrypted a 26 00:01:34,760 --> 00:01:38,200 Speaker 1: trove of secret letters written by Mary, Queen of Scots. 27 00:01:39,000 --> 00:01:42,160 Speaker 1: The encoded letters date to the fifteen hundreds, during Mary's 28 00:01:42,240 --> 00:01:45,960 Speaker 1: nineteen year imprisonment by Queen Elizabeth the First and show 29 00:01:46,040 --> 00:01:49,680 Speaker 1: how Mary remained a shrewd political operative even while locked 30 00:01:49,680 --> 00:01:53,520 Speaker 1: away in a castle. The letters contain about fifty thousand 31 00:01:53,560 --> 00:01:57,040 Speaker 1: words of writing, enough to fill a book. Historians are 32 00:01:57,080 --> 00:02:00,880 Speaker 1: sure to be digging into them for a good while. Interestingly, 33 00:02:01,240 --> 00:02:04,200 Speaker 1: they're mostly addressed to the French ambassador to England at 34 00:02:04,200 --> 00:02:08,080 Speaker 1: the time, and indicate that Mary was directly or indirectly 35 00:02:08,200 --> 00:02:11,280 Speaker 1: in touch with many of the major players in Elizabeth's court. 36 00:02:13,160 --> 00:02:16,840 Speaker 1: The team that cracked the letters harnessed powerful codebreaking technology 37 00:02:17,000 --> 00:02:20,320 Speaker 1: that wasn't available even a decade ago, and those new 38 00:02:20,360 --> 00:02:23,560 Speaker 1: tools have ushered in what Bauer calls the Second Golden 39 00:02:23,600 --> 00:02:28,480 Speaker 1: age of decipherment. The question is what secrets will these 40 00:02:28,520 --> 00:02:36,000 Speaker 1: historical codebreakers uncover? Next, let's talk about historical cryptology. Cryptology 41 00:02:36,120 --> 00:02:40,079 Speaker 1: is the study of both writing and breaking codes. When 42 00:02:40,120 --> 00:02:42,960 Speaker 1: we think of cryptologists, we might picture someone like the 43 00:02:43,000 --> 00:02:47,400 Speaker 1: British mathematician Alan Turing, who cracked Nazi Germany's infamous Enigma 44 00:02:47,440 --> 00:02:52,000 Speaker 1: machine during World War Two. But cryptologists don't just work 45 00:02:52,040 --> 00:02:56,280 Speaker 1: for intelligence agencies. There are also amateur codebreakers who are 46 00:02:56,360 --> 00:03:00,880 Speaker 1: fascinated with solving historical puzzles. A Bower is one of them. 47 00:03:00,919 --> 00:03:04,560 Speaker 1: He wrote a book called Unsolved, The History and Mystery 48 00:03:04,600 --> 00:03:07,760 Speaker 1: of the World's Greatest Ciphers from Ancient Egypt to online 49 00:03:07,800 --> 00:03:11,480 Speaker 1: secret societies. In it, he cataloged some of the biggest 50 00:03:11,480 --> 00:03:16,919 Speaker 1: ciphers that historical cryptologists are itching to crack. The Zodiac 51 00:03:16,960 --> 00:03:20,160 Speaker 1: cipher used to be one of them. For fifty one years, 52 00:03:20,280 --> 00:03:22,239 Speaker 1: no one could solve the riddle of the three hundred 53 00:03:22,240 --> 00:03:25,720 Speaker 1: and forty character coded message written in nineteen sixty nine 54 00:03:25,720 --> 00:03:29,720 Speaker 1: by the infamous Zodiac Killer, and then a team of 55 00:03:29,720 --> 00:03:33,960 Speaker 1: amateur cryptologists cracked it in twenty twenty one using supercomputers 56 00:03:34,080 --> 00:03:38,840 Speaker 1: and custom decryption software. The killer's identity still remains a mystery, 57 00:03:38,880 --> 00:03:44,280 Speaker 1: though in recent years, historical cryptologists have broken ciphers created 58 00:03:44,280 --> 00:03:48,360 Speaker 1: by the KKK, Marie Antoinette, and the Masons. They even 59 00:03:48,440 --> 00:03:51,720 Speaker 1: figured out how to decrypt the infamous RAHNK Codex, an 60 00:03:51,760 --> 00:03:55,160 Speaker 1: ancient illustrated manuscript discovered in the eighteen thirties that's written 61 00:03:55,200 --> 00:03:59,760 Speaker 1: in an unknown language. A. Bauer is quick to point 62 00:03:59,760 --> 00:04:02,960 Speaker 1: out that it takes more than just raw computing power 63 00:04:03,040 --> 00:04:06,680 Speaker 1: to break an ancient code. He said, a good historical 64 00:04:06,720 --> 00:04:10,480 Speaker 1: cryptologist has to be part countant, able to very carefully 65 00:04:10,560 --> 00:04:13,960 Speaker 1: keep track of numbers and statistics, but they also need 66 00:04:14,000 --> 00:04:16,680 Speaker 1: to have the spirit of Mozart. You have to be 67 00:04:16,760 --> 00:04:20,680 Speaker 1: very creative and almost a psychologist to guess the keywords 68 00:04:20,760 --> 00:04:24,520 Speaker 1: or phrases to unlock the cipher. It requires a combination 69 00:04:24,560 --> 00:04:29,000 Speaker 1: of creativity, powerful computers, and persistence. If you lose one 70 00:04:29,080 --> 00:04:34,000 Speaker 1: leg of that stool, you won't find a solution. The 71 00:04:34,080 --> 00:04:37,120 Speaker 1: team who deciphered Queen Mary's code used a process called 72 00:04:37,240 --> 00:04:40,640 Speaker 1: hill climbing, where a computer randomly assigns the symbols and 73 00:04:40,680 --> 00:04:43,880 Speaker 1: the cipher two letters of the alphabet, decrypts the whole message, 74 00:04:44,160 --> 00:04:47,679 Speaker 1: scores it based on readability, and then repeats the process 75 00:04:47,720 --> 00:04:51,200 Speaker 1: only keeping the changes that increase the score of the translation. 76 00:04:52,360 --> 00:04:55,159 Speaker 1: After the code was cracked, the cryptologists still needed to 77 00:04:55,160 --> 00:04:57,840 Speaker 1: decipher the coded letters one word at a time and 78 00:04:58,040 --> 00:05:04,200 Speaker 1: edit transcriptions, a process that took a year. Every cipher 79 00:05:04,400 --> 00:05:08,000 Speaker 1: is created by some kind of algorithm or formula, and 80 00:05:08,279 --> 00:05:12,520 Speaker 1: Bauer says that encryption algorithms can be extremely complex, like 81 00:05:12,680 --> 00:05:16,320 Speaker 1: the unbreakable end to end encryption that safeguards data traveling 82 00:05:16,320 --> 00:05:21,160 Speaker 1: across the Internet, or extremely simple alike Julius Caesar's formula 83 00:05:21,320 --> 00:05:23,800 Speaker 1: in which he shifted each letter in the alphabet three 84 00:05:23,880 --> 00:05:30,120 Speaker 1: letters over. In cryptology terms, Caesar's method is called transposition. 85 00:05:30,839 --> 00:05:33,480 Speaker 1: That's any system that moves the letters of the alphabet 86 00:05:33,520 --> 00:05:37,840 Speaker 1: around or scrambles their order. A transposition cipher appears a 87 00:05:37,839 --> 00:05:40,360 Speaker 1: few times in the Hebrew Bible, in which the first 88 00:05:40,400 --> 00:05:42,520 Speaker 1: letter of the alphabet is swapped with the last letter, 89 00:05:42,760 --> 00:05:45,800 Speaker 1: the second letter with the second to last, and so on. 90 00:05:47,320 --> 00:05:49,760 Speaker 1: A far more difficult cipher to solve is one that 91 00:05:49,839 --> 00:05:53,200 Speaker 1: employs substitution, in which the letters or words in the 92 00:05:53,200 --> 00:05:57,640 Speaker 1: original message are replaced by other random letters, numbers, or symbols. 93 00:05:58,400 --> 00:06:01,479 Speaker 1: Substitution ciphers are created by using a key or a 94 00:06:01,600 --> 00:06:05,000 Speaker 1: cipher alphabet. A Mary, Queen of Scots, used a cipher 95 00:06:05,000 --> 00:06:08,920 Speaker 1: alphabet that replaced each word with a unique symbols. Such 96 00:06:08,920 --> 00:06:11,839 Speaker 1: a cipher could only be decoded by someone possessing the 97 00:06:11,920 --> 00:06:16,360 Speaker 1: same key. To make a cipher even harder to crack, 98 00:06:16,839 --> 00:06:20,360 Speaker 1: two different cipher keys could be employed simultaneously. These are 99 00:06:20,360 --> 00:06:24,680 Speaker 1: called polyalphabetic ciphers. So maybe you use one key for 100 00:06:24,720 --> 00:06:26,880 Speaker 1: the first word of a sentence and a different key 101 00:06:26,920 --> 00:06:30,120 Speaker 1: for the second word. Null symbols might be added that 102 00:06:30,279 --> 00:06:33,720 Speaker 1: have no meaning, just to throw off the codebreakers. Another 103 00:06:33,760 --> 00:06:36,440 Speaker 1: trick is to assign several different symbols to the most 104 00:06:36,480 --> 00:06:43,359 Speaker 1: common words, a tactic called homophonic substitution. The three guys 105 00:06:43,360 --> 00:06:46,359 Speaker 1: who solved the Queen Mary mystery all have day jobs. 106 00:06:46,720 --> 00:06:50,440 Speaker 1: George Lassary is a computer scientist living in Israel. Norbert 107 00:06:50,440 --> 00:06:54,159 Speaker 1: Bierman is a music professor in Germany, and Satoshi Tomokio 108 00:06:54,480 --> 00:06:58,200 Speaker 1: is an atrophysicist in Japan. They each had a passion 109 00:06:58,240 --> 00:07:01,440 Speaker 1: for historical ciphers, but it's unlikely any one of them 110 00:07:01,480 --> 00:07:05,000 Speaker 1: would have solved the riddle all on their own. The 111 00:07:05,080 --> 00:07:08,040 Speaker 1: three men found each other as part of the decrypt project, 112 00:07:08,240 --> 00:07:12,320 Speaker 1: and international effort to bring historians and cryptologists together and 113 00:07:12,440 --> 00:07:16,080 Speaker 1: give them the computational tools to decipherb ancient encrypted texts. 114 00:07:16,720 --> 00:07:20,400 Speaker 1: In the past, codebreakers and historians mostly worked on stubborn 115 00:07:20,480 --> 00:07:25,360 Speaker 1: problems in isolation, but that's changing, Bowers said. A lot 116 00:07:25,400 --> 00:07:27,720 Speaker 1: of the great work in cryptology is done in teams 117 00:07:27,720 --> 00:07:31,120 Speaker 1: of two or more people. George Laspree has established himself 118 00:07:31,160 --> 00:07:34,000 Speaker 1: as the best codebreaker outside of the government. He and 119 00:07:34,040 --> 00:07:41,480 Speaker 1: his teammates are tearing things up. Today's episode is based 120 00:07:41,520 --> 00:07:45,040 Speaker 1: on the article why historical cryptologists need to be part Mozart, 121 00:07:45,080 --> 00:07:48,200 Speaker 1: part accountant on houstofworks dot com, written by Dave Bruce. 122 00:07:48,760 --> 00:07:51,840 Speaker 1: Brainstuff is production of iHeartRadio in partnership with HowStuffWorks dot 123 00:07:51,840 --> 00:07:54,440 Speaker 1: Com and is produced by Tyler Klang. For four more 124 00:07:54,480 --> 00:07:58,160 Speaker 1: podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, 125 00:07:58,240 --> 00:07:59,920 Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite show.