Cryptography Challenge 2 - dorsCrypt
Prompt
Our analysts intercepted a note. It looks to be encrypted but we don’t know how. Can you decrypt it?
Answers
Q1 (10 pts) - What specific type of substitution cipher is used in this message?
pigpen
Q2 (10 pts) - What is the first named location in the decrypted message?
umbracle gardens
Q3 (15 pts) - What is the second named location in the decrypted message?
assut bridge
Q4 (15 pts) - What is the password in the decrypted message?
zanzibar
Steps I Took
At first, this looked more difficult than it turned out to be. I had never seen the cipher before, so I searched for ciphers that used unusual symbols and found the correct direction fairly quickly.
That initial result was only partially helpful, because it did not fully match the symbols in the challenge.
ABBC CDEFGHC IC AFJEGHC KDLICDE DMCNFJB MANOILKB GIOJBEN meet tonight at mh-n
yeep pkjighp ap yidjghp wkcapkj kqpoide qybnacwe gandejo qjden phe aooqp bnidge phe xew io ij a fawoe bnicx awkjg phe zaww kjce skq ane ijoide vhej aoted phe laoovknd io uajuiban
- yeep - meet
- pkjighp - tonight
- ap - at
- yidjghp - midnight
- wkcapkj - location
- kqpoide - outside
- qybnacwe - umbracle
- gandejo - gardens
- qjden - under
- phe - the
- aooqp - assut
- bnidge - bridge
- phe - the
- xes - key
- io - is
- ij - in
- a - a
- fawoe - false
- bnicx - brick
- awkjg - along
- phe - the
- vaww - wall
- kjce - once
- skq - you
- ane - are
- ijoide - inside
- vhej - when
- aoxed - asked
- phe - the
- laoovknd - password
- io - is
- uajuiban zanzibar
This ended up being one of the more difficult easy challenges for me. It was not especially technical, but it was very tedious and took a lot of careful mapping.
I finally solved it by mapping letters to symbols and then using frequency analysis to confirm the remaining characters.
https://crypto.interactive-maths.com/frequency-analysis-breaking-the-code.html