Cracking the Unbreakable: Decoding a Child Killer's Encrypted Letter 🔓

#cryptology, #cryptography, #cryptanalysis

This is the first video of a new series on our YouTube channel. I call this series the "Let's break it!" series. In this first videos, I want to analyze and break original historic and new ciphertexts with CrypTool 2.

In this video, I cryptanalyze an encrypted letter sent by a child killer. Eleven year old Carlie Brucia was killed by Joseph Peter Smith, who then later sent an encrypted letter to his brother, while being in custody. The CRRU of the FBI deciphered the letter and Smith was sentenced to death. Today, he is still waiting for his execution.

I was made aware of this sad story and the encrypted letter by Klaus Schmeh on his Blog in 2014. The plaintext of the letter was publicly known, but it was unclear to Klaus how to come from the ciphertext to the plaintext. So Klaus asked his readers to try to break the provided ciphertext. I did this with the help of CrypTool 2. And this was the first time, that I successfully broke an original ciphertext using CrypTool 2.

Here is the original blog article of Klaus Schmeh (German): https://scienceblogs.de/klausis-krypto-kolumne/2014/02/26/codeknacker-auf-verbrecherjagd-folge-1-wie-das-fbi-den-code-eines-kindermoerders-knackte/

The (automatic) English translation of the blog article: http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=de&tl=en&u=https%3A%2F%2Fscienceblogs.de%2Fklausis-krypto-kolumne%2F2014%2F02%2F26%2Fcodeknacker-auf-verbrecherjagd-folge-1-wie-das-fbi-den-code-eines-kindermoerders-knackte%2F

If you are interested in learning the basics of cryptology, you should also have a look at our video series about basics of cryptology – also for beginners: https://youtu.be/jbumW7Ym03o

You may download the latest version of CrypTool 2 from here: https://www.cryptool.org/en/ct2/downloads
Like what I do 😄? Help fuel my crypto obsession 🎓 — buy me a coffee here☕— thx: https://buymeacoffee.com/cryptographyforeverybody