Thursday, September 20, 2007

The elementary code break

..... continued from here

Twenty20
Two2
You are to see an ass
To2

Shekhar saw something different in the words. Each word had sound of a character.

You are to see an ass
Ur2cns
It was a password !!! Shekhar knew that since You began with a capital letter, it was U and not u.
So he had a password now, but of what? Instinct said it was of an e-mail account. No body was going to spend even a penny on such a game. So it HAD to be a free account. And the account server HAD to be a popular one since there was no clue about the account. So, the most popular e-mail accounts were.... G-mail, Yahoo and Hotmail. Since Shekhar had made a g-mail account for his father few months back, he knew a g-mail pasword should have minimum 8 characters. So g-mail was ruled out. He opened the Yahoo homepage and then paused. He had a password but only a password. "What's the username?", he asked himself. "Mr. Code had given the password, he MUST have given the username. Think."
By now Shekhar's brain was all charged up and working overtime. One look at the Yahoo homepage and another at the note he had received and he got it. Username is always above the password.
for shekhar
Y r s n o e e a u t e s a o a s
The most probable usernames based on the note were "for_shekhar" and"for.shekhar".
As he was about to enter them in the Yahoo homepage, his instincts took over him and he decided to try hotmail.com first.

e-mail address: for_shekhar ; password:Ur2cns ...... username and passwords don't match.

e-mail address: for.shekhar ; password: Ur2cns ....... Welcome Guest.

Shekhar was in. No messages except one in drafts.
Everything was blank except the body and it read:

claudus sanctus
39-6-23-7-51-26-81-87-85-51-71-11-14-59-105-47-12-51-90-36-27-105-68-104-17
Let light and truth prevail

Mr. Code had laid the path for Shekhar and all Shekhar had to do was follow the path. And he was walking fast now. In this code, the only thing known to him was the last line.

Let light and truth prevail. It is the official motto of Patel Hall of Residence,IIT Kharagpur, the place where Shekhar spent his most memorable days as an undergraduate. The actual motto is Lux et Veritas Vincent, which is in Latin.
"I am getting closer Mr. Code". Shekhar now knew what claudus sanctus meant. He just had to translate it from Latin to English. He used the first translator Google offered him and the result was "lame holy". Shekhar knew he broke this code but just to make sure, he translated "sanctus" and got "holy, sacred, saint". He got what he was looking for... "saint".

So he was now left with
lame saint
39-6-23-7-51-26-81-87-85-51-71-11-14-59-105-47-12-51-90-36-27-105-68-104-17

To Robert Langdon, O lame saint would mean The Monalisa, but for Shekhar and everyone who had read it, it would simply mean The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown. And anyone who have read Dan Brown would instantly know what these numbers meant. Each number had to be replaced by the 1st letter of the corresponding chapter in 'The Da Vinci Code'.
Shekhar did the same and got:

a h s t e d t t y e a u w t n r r e h o s n n r w

It didn't make sense but then he counted the no. of characters. It was 25, a perfect square. The Transposition Cipher was immediately applied and the message appeared.
Shekhar was now smiling.


14 comments:

Di said...

Arre...happy birthday bachha!! :)

~Nayan~ said...

oye nahin chamka :-?

Daroga said...

@ Di
Thanks a lot ji :)

@ Nayan
decode kar le... easy hai

~Nayan~ said...

oyeeeeeeee
tussi great ho
chamak gaya chamak gaya
happy bday jee... :)

Daroga said...

@ Nayan
Thank you Thank you :)

Akshay said...

maa kasam! sexy post - darogi! kuchh dimaag lagaya hai!

Daroga said...

@ Akshay
thank u thank u :)

Zee said...

good god!!!!!!!! complicated!!!!!!! didn't get any of those! despite reading da vinci! good imagination dude!

Daroga said...

@ Zee
he he... koi baat nahin.
and Thanks.
I still think you didn't get the final mssg. Come on Zee, its staring at you. See, the people before you got it. :)

Anu Sharma said...

hey dont knw how cud i afford to miss dis post on right time.but after reading d latest entry whr u put word 'brilliant' 4 ad n admakers, i must say for dis post dis word 'BRILLIANT' goes to u ! who says ppl who often screw thr xams r gud 4 nothing, guess xam is d only xception !

Daroga said...

@ Anu
Two words:
Flattered, Blushing
:)

srikant said...

oooo aaaa ..never knew had a serius decoder around me :D

srikant said...

who sent you this bey ?? A secret admirer?? :P

Daroga said...

@ Srikant
he he.... catchya... fiction hai saale :P