Who didn't like playing spies or reading and watching spy detective stories as a child? To me, one of the most interesting aspects of espionage is composing and solving various ciphers. As a child, in games, I often had to resort to inventing my own encryption and codes, with the help of which I could transmit information without fear that a player from the other team would hear it. Oddly enough, as I grew up, I did not lose interest in this, and when in my fifth year we were taught the course “Models and Methods of Information Security,” I decided to expand it a little by independently studying the details of the history of encryption. I decided to consider the most interesting and mysterious ones in my individual section.

Zodiac code

This story kept all of San Francisco in fear from December 1968 to October 1969. During this time, at least seven people died at the hands of the Zodiac. Local police and newspaper editors regularly received letters from the killer with sarcastic remarks about officers of the law, threats and coordinates of yet to be discovered victims. Some messages were encoded.

The killer claimed that his identity would be revealed as soon as the codes were read. This did not happen and the killer was never caught.

The first three cryptograms consisted of symbols replacing letters. But there was a catch: some of the most common letters, such as "e", were represented by several symbols, so it was impossible to find a solution using simple decryption techniques, such as detecting the most common letters.

Three encryptions were eventually read. The assumption that such a text could not do without the words “kill” and “murder” helped. When the results were added together, the result was one long letter in which the killer described in detail the pleasure he received while committing his crimes. There was no hint of his or her identity.

It is quite possible that the name of the killer is hidden by the fourth encryption, dated November 1969, which Zodiac sent to the editor of the local newspaper. It has 340 characters, which is less than the previous three, and the encryption methods used are completely different. FBI Chief of Cryptanalysis Dan Olson once said that for his team this cryptogram, known as Z-340, is "the number one priority in the hot ten undeciphered codes." He claims that every year from 20 to 30 amateur codebreakers offer him their help in solving this riddle, but so far no positive result has been achieved.

A team of professionals analyzed the distribution of characters in the text to find out whether the message was a “dummy”. If there is no solution, or the text has been changed beyond recognition, then the distribution of characters in the row should have coincided with the distribution of characters in the columns, but this did not happen.

Bale cryptograms

Bale's cryptograms are three encrypted messages containing information about the location of a treasure of gold, silver and precious stones buried in Virginia (USA) near Lynchburg by a party of gold miners led by Thomas Jefferson Bale. The price of the hitherto undiscovered treasure in terms of modern money should be about 30 million dollars. The mystery of the cryptograms has not yet been solved.

So: Cryptogram No. 1 - location of the cache.

Cryptogram No. 2 - decrypted. Contents of the cache.

The US Declaration of Independence turned out to be the key to cryptogram No. 2. Substituting the corresponding letters instead of numbers in cryptogram No. 2, the following text was obtained:

In Bedford County, four miles from Buford, in a certain abandoned working or hiding place, six feet below the surface, I hid the following valuables, belonging exclusively to the people whose names appear in the document marked No. 3. The original deposit amounted to 1014 pounds of gold and 3812 pounds of silver, delivered there in November 1819. The second deposit, made in December 1821, consisted of 1,907 pounds of gold and 1,288 pounds of silver, and precious stones obtained in St. Louis in exchange for silver to facilitate the shipping process, the total value of which was $18,000.

All of the above is securely hidden in iron pots, closed with iron lids. The location of the cache is marked by several stones laid out around it; the vessels rest on a stone base, and are also covered with stones on top. Paper number 1 describes the exact location of the cache, so that you can find it without any effort.

Cryptogram No. 3. Names and addresses of heirs.

Currently, attempts to decipher Bale's papers continue. It is also suggested that the Bale cipher could be cracked a long time ago, however, the lucky person who did this, for obvious reasons, kept silent about his luck. It is sometimes believed that the treasure passed into the hands of NASA, due to the fact that this agency has the best cryptanalysts, mathematicians and the most powerful computers in the world.

Kryptos

Kryptos is a sculpture in the form of an ancient scroll with mysterious text. It is installed in the middle of the courtyard of the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in the city of Langley. There are 865 Latin characters punched through in a large copper sheet 4 meters high. This is a text that today is one of the biggest mysteries of our time.

In 1980, the US Central Intelligence Agency planned an expansion of its headquarters and announced a competition to create a sculpture to decorate the courtyard of the new building. The winner was sculptor Jim Sanborn, who created an original composition of copper, granite and petrified wood. Sanborn probably won the competition because the essence of his composition was consistent with the mysterious atmosphere of the CIA itself.

Since Jim Sanborn did not have enough personal knowledge to create ciphertext, he turned to Edward Scheidt, the former director of the intelligence agency's cryptographic center. Scheidt was distinguished by his outstanding abilities in the field of encryption, and it is thanks to his logical genius that Kryptos excites minds to this day.

In November 1990, the sculpture was unveiled, during which Jim Sanborn handed over a sealed envelope containing the decrypted text to then-CIA Director William Webster. But no one except Webster could look into this envelope.

The mysterious text instantly attracted worldwide attention. For many years the mystery remained unsolved. And only over time the secret inscription began to become clear. The entire text was divided into four fragments, conventionally designated as K1, K2, K3 and K4.

The first three fragments have already succumbed to the inquisitive minds of cryptographers. They found that the first section, K1, uses a modified Vigenère cipher. Here is the resulting text:Between subtle shading and the absence of light lies the nuance of iqlusion. In this case, the word iqlusion is a deliberate mistake, and the whole phrase is translated into Russian as: Between the shadow and the absence of light lies the nuance of illusion.

K2 encryption is carried out using the letters on the right. Here, the author used a trick - the X symbol between sentences, which complicates the opening process. However, the text was still deciphered:

It was totally invisible. How's that possible? They used the Earth's magnetic field. X The information was gathered and transmitted undergruund to an unknown location. X does Langley know about this? They should.Tt’s buried out there somewhere. X who knows the exact location? Only W.W this was his last message. The X thirty-eight degrees fifty-seven minutes six point five seconds north seventy-seven degrees eight minutes forty-four seconds West id by rows.

It was completely invisible. How was this possible? They used the Earth's magnetic field. Information was collected and transmitted underground to an unknown location. Does Langley know about this? Must. It's buried there somewhere. Who knows the exact location? Only W.W. This was his last message. Thirty-eight degrees fifty-seven minutes six and a half seconds north, seventy-seven degrees eight minutes forty-four seconds west. In rows.

From this recording it was possible to establish that W.W is William Webster, and the numbers (38 57 6.5 N, 77 8 44 W) are the geographical coordinates of the intelligence department itself.

The third fragment of the kryptos paraphrases an entry from the diary of anthropologist Howard Carter, who in 1922 discovered the tomb of Pharaoh Tutankhamun, ending with the words “Can you see anything?” Translation: Do you see anything?

The last 97 characters of part K4 have not yet been deciphered. They are the most difficult milestone on the path to solving the full text. Sanborn admitted that he and cryptographer Edward Scheidt deliberately complicated the code.

In November 2010, Jim Sanborn, in honor of the twentieth anniversary of his creation, decided to give a hint - he discovered six letters from 64 to 69. The open letters represented the name of the capital of Germany - BERLIN. At the same time, Sanborn called this word “an essential key” and hinted that it “globalizes” the sculpture. But, despite the clue, the entire text of the last fragment remains unsolved. To this day, sculptor Jim Sanborn, veteran cryptographer Edward Scheidt, and former CIA Director William Webster remain silent [3

Three leaves

Thomas Jefferson Bale, a buffalo hunter and adventurer, went missing in 1822 in the Rocky Mountains, leaving his acquaintance, Robert Morris, a locked metal box with the condition that he open it in 10 years if Bale himself did not show up by then.

After honestly meeting this deadline and making sure that Bale would not return, Morris opened the box and, among other things, discovered three sheets of paper covered with rows of numbers. These turned out to be cryptograms (when numbers are substituted for letters, and the key is some book or document known to the decipherer).

The accompanying letter stated that the first paper was an accurate description of the location of the treasure buried by Bale and his comrades in the state of Pennsylvania; the second sheet contains a detailed list of treasures. The third listed the (also encrypted) names of the heirs.

Bale cryptogram, 1 sheet

The second one has been deciphered!

Morris struggled for 40 years to decipher the mysterious inscriptions, but could not move a single step. The next mystery lover, who wished to remain anonymous, succeeded more: he discovered that the key to the second cryptogram was the US Declaration of Independence.

This is what he came up with after decoding: “In Bedford County, four miles from Buford, in a cache six feet deep, I hid the following valuables, belonging exclusively to the people whose names are given in the document marked number 3. The initial deposit amounted to 1014 pounds of gold and 3812 pounds of silver delivered there in November 1819. The second deposit, made in December 1821, consisted of 1,907 pounds of gold and 1,288 pounds of silver, as well as precious stones obtained in St. Louis in exchange for silver. Their total cost is 13 thousand dollars. All of the above is securely hidden in iron pots, closed with iron lids. The location of the cache is marked by several stones laid out around it; the vessels rest on a stone base, and are also covered with stones on top. Paper number 1 describes the exact location of the cache, so that it can be found without any effort.”

Bale cryptogram, 2 sheet

The mystery remains

Having unsuccessfully spent another 20 years deciphering the most important thing - the first sheet, which indicated the coordinates of the treasure, and by that time completely bankrupt, the treasure hunter decides to publish the documents under someone else's name with his comments in the form of a brochure, sell the circulation and somehow improve this your business. Thus Bayle's cryptogram became public domain.

Numerous codebreakers and treasure hunters set about solving the mystery. “Sensational” statements that the treasure had been found appeared in the press many times, but they turned out to be fake. Even with the advent of powerful computers, the first and third sheets of Bayle's cryptogram still remain unsolved. One can only assume that the key to them is some book or document like the Declaration of Independence. But what book? Which document? Maybe our readers will try to unravel the encryption? The prize will be $30 million, which is the amount the treasure of the missing buffalo hunter is currently valued at.

Bale cryptogram, sheet 3

– Sveta Gogol

The Secret of Taman Shud

In 1948, the body of a well-dressed man was found on one of the beaches of Australia. In his personal belongings, among other things, they found a collection of Persian poetry, on the back cover of which someone had scribbled five lines in capital letters. The meaning of this message has not yet been deciphered.

The case of Taman Shud is a mystery of secrets, wrapped in a secret, placed in a secret package and sent to a secret house. He is so mysterious that the most inquisitive and meticulous detectives like Sherlock Holmes and others like him could not unravel him.

On December 1, 1948, the body of an unknown man was discovered on Somerton Beach in Adelaide, Australia. He was well developed, completely healthy, and very well dressed. All the labels from his clothes were cut off. There was a train ticket in his pocket. Unfortunately, he never got to it. He could not be identified, and his dental casts did not match any person. The autopsy revealed that the last food he ate was a meat pie, which he ate 3-4 hours before his death, and that's about it. Tests for foreign substances came back negative, but investigators were convinced he had been poisoned.

A month later, police found a brown suitcase at Adelaide railway station. The label on it was also cut off, as was the clothing of the unidentified person. Inside it were clothes, all the labels from which had also been cut off. Among his personal items in the suitcase were a stencil cleaning brush, an electric screwdriver, and a pair of scissors commonly used for cutting stencils. Unfortunately, investigators did not find anything significant in the suitcase, but only determined that the jacket was possibly American-made.

In June 1949, investigators examined the body again and discovered a secret pocket in the deceased’s clothing, in which lay a piece of paper on which only two words were written - “Taman Shud.” After a more thorough examination of the piece of paper, it turned out that it was torn from the collection of works of Omar Khayyam “Rubaiyat”. This discovery led to all the media trying to find the book from which the piece was torn out. The search was successful. A man was found who had a copy of a rare first edition of the Rubaiyat translated by Edward Fitzgerald, which he said he found in the back seat of his car the night before the unknown man's body was found. On the back cover of the book the following was scrawled in pencil:

The book also contained the telephone number of a former nurse who, while working in World War II, gave a copy of the Rubaiyat to army officer Alfred Boxell. Boxell was still alive and had an intact copy of the Rubaiyat, and both denied any connection with the deceased.

Some speculation was made about another murder that occurred in the area, and it was assumed that the man was a spy working for some foreign government. This case remains unsolved today, and it seems that it will remain so forever.

Bale cryptograms

The Bale Cryptograms are a set of three encrypted messages containing information about a legendary treasure buried somewhere in Virginia. At least, so says a pamphlet by an unknown author published in 1885 by Virginian Book. Or is this just a hoax? Nobody knows anything for sure.

One of the three encryptions indicates the exact location where treasures of gold, silver and precious stones are located. In modern terms, this property costs about $65 million. The other two contain a detailed description of the treasure and a list of “owners,” that is, the closest relatives to whom the treasure should be inherited in the absence of a will. The order of inheritance itself was also determined there.

The passion surrounding the three cryptograms flared up after the appearance of the above-mentioned pamphlet, which was called “The Bale Papers or a book containing the true facts concerning the treasure buried in 1819 and 1821.” near Bufords, Bedford County, Virginia, and has not been found to date." According to the author of this work, events developed as follows:

In 1822, Bale handed over a locked iron box containing “papers of exceptional importance” to the owner of a local hotel and instructions to keep it as the apple of his eye. If neither the owner nor his messenger showed up within the next ten years, the box was allowed to be opened. After that, Bale disappeared without a trace.

Morris decided to break the lock only in 1843, that is, he waited almost twice as long as the deadline. The box contained three encryption codes - sheets of paper covered entirely with rows of numbers. From that moment until the end of his life, Morris tried to find the key to this puzzle. Unsuccessfully.

The unnamed author of the pamphlet claims to have received the ill-fated box and its contents from Morris just before the latter's death, and spent the next twenty years of his life deciphering it.

At first he assumed that the numbers were letters of the alphabet, but then abandoned this idea. Then it dawned on him - cryptograms should be read using the “one-time pad” method, according to which the key is a specific book. He even found such a key book for one of the encryptions - it turned out to be the US Declaration of Independence, which was always in Bale's hotel room. This is how we managed to read one of the cryptograms, the one that contains a description of the treasures.

According to this note, in an underground mine somewhere “near Buford” two wagonloads of gold and silver rest in iron vessels. In the same message, Bale talks about how the treasure came to him: in the 1820s, he, in the company of 29 other adventurers, stumbled upon a gold mine “somewhere 250-800 miles north of Santa.” Fe."

Unfortunately, the first success turned out to be the last - the keys to the remaining two encryptions have not yet been found. But since the brochure was published by the Virginian Book publishing house in 1885, attempts to decipher the cryptograms have not stopped, and who knows, maybe luck will smile on someone...

MIT Clockwork Puzzle

Experts at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a giant in the field of cryptography, have created an encrypted message that, according to their own calculations, will take 35 years to decipher (Unless, of course, some genius finds a solution first).

A prize awaits the person who solves the rebus. What kind of prize is unknown. We only know that it is stored in a tightly sealed lead container a meter high, which, in turn, is located in the archives of the Massachusetts Institute of Technical Sciences. The contents of the container will remain a secret until someone reads the encrypted message attached to it. Only one person knows the correct answer - Ron Rivest, co-inventor of the RSA algorithm, one of the most common electronic message encryption systems.

Clockwork encryption, which, by the way, was also created using the RSA algorithm, was first introduced to the general public in 1999, during the celebration of the 35th anniversary of the founding of the MIT Computer Science Laboratory. If no one solves the puzzle, the container with the “innovative time capsule” will be ceremoniously opened on the 70th anniversary of the same laboratory, that is, in 2033.

The puzzle is designed to eliminate any possibility of speeding up the solution process by detecting patterns or using distributed data processing. This problem requires only “sequential thinking.”

Kryptos - a monument to CIA secrecy

If you happen to visit the CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, pay attention to the sculpture in the courtyard - a giant copper scroll, curved in the shape of the Latin letter S and dotted with incomprehensible symbols. The monument is called "Kryptos". And the signs are encrypted text, which the most experienced cryptographers have been unsuccessfully struggling with for twenty years now. The mystery of Kryptos has repeatedly become the subject of heated debate, both within the CIA and beyond.

In 1988, it was decided to build a new building behind the main building for the CIA headquarters. American artist James Sanborn was commissioned to decorate the space between the two buildings. He came up with this composition with a set of 865 strange symbols, and without traces of any system in the order of their arrangement. Sanborn christened his creation “Kryptos,” a derivative of the Greek word for “hidden.”

No matter how many bright minds came together to solve this problem, all of them, including specialists from the CIA itself, were able to figure out only three fragments of the text. They are called K1, K2 and K3. There is nothing in these fragments that could shed any light on the contents of the remaining part of the cryptogram; rather, they create even more confusion. Here are their contents:

K1: “Between the slight shadow and the absence of light lurks a shade of illusion.”

K2: “It was completely invisible. How is this possible? They used the Earth's magnetic fields. The information was collected and transmitted underground to an unknown location. Does Langley know about this? They must: it's buried somewhere nearby. Who knows the exact location? WW only." (WW is former CIA Director William Webster, to whom Sanborn gave the envelope with the full transcript of the secret message)

K3: “With trembling hands, I made a tiny crack in the upper left corner. And then, widening the hole, I stuck a candle in there and looked inside. The hot air emanating from inside caused the candle flame to flicker, but immediately the details of the room emerged from the fog. Do you see anything? This is a paraphrased entry from the diary of archaeologist Howard Carter, who discovered the tomb of the Egyptian pharaoh Tutankhamun

Until now, 97 symbols of the last part (known as K4) remain undeciphered. And the further it goes, the more rumors and controversies surround Kryptos.

There are self-taught spies constantly hovering around Sanborn's workshop. Some even sacrifice their careers for Kryptos. One such fanatic from Michigan, for example, left his thriving business in the software industry to devote himself full-time to solving the cryptogram.

Another “ascetic,” named Randy Thompson, devoted three years to Kryptos. I think I'm close to a solution. This could happen tomorrow, or it could drag on for the rest of my life...

The mysterious sculpture also aroused the interest of Dan Brown, the author of The Da Vinci Code, who mentioned Kryptos in one of his novels.

In 1999, a computer expert from Los Angeles named James Gillogly announced that he was able to read the first three sections of the encryption using a Pentium II computer and his own program.

Once information about Gillogly's success was leaked to the press, the CIA had no choice but to prepare an urgent report. It turned out that a few months before Gillogly, the same three sections were deciphered by CIA officer David Stein. Moreover, the latter got by with paper, pencil and four hundred hours of working time. Stein reported on the results of his work to a narrow circle of colleagues in February 1998. Of course, this information did not reach the media.

Both Stein and Gillogly do not lose hope of dealing with the remaining 97 signs of Kryptos.

“It all has to do with secrecy,” Sanborn says evasively when asked about his brainchild, “with the state of the CIA, which piques our curiosity and inflates it to cosmic proportions. People call me an agent of the devil because I don't want to reveal this secret to anyone. But Kryptos will reveal its deepest secret over time.”

Voynich manuscript

Of course, there are plenty of unsolved encrypted messages in the world. Every treasure hunter and puzzle lover can find something to suit their taste. Few of them, however, inspire such sacred awe as the Voynich Manuscript - a medieval book with images of medicinal plants, astrological charts, naked nymphs and text that cannot be deciphered. Scientists have been struggling with decoding for a hundred years - and nothing. Not a single word was read.

Little is known about the history of the manuscript. In 1912, it was found by bookseller Wilfried Voynich in one of the Italian monasteries. There is a version that it once belonged to the Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II of Bohemia.

The Unread Message of Edward Elgar

The English composer Edward Elgar was a brilliant cryptographer. One of the musical themes of his composition “Enigma Variations”, after which the German cipher machine was named, according to the author, complements the melody of the famous song of another composer. What kind of song this is and who its composer is, Elgar did not consider it necessary to say.

This musical mystery is not the only Elgar puzzle that has come down to us. In 1897, he sent a coded message in 87 characters to his friend Dorabella Penny. Forty years later, she published it in her memoirs, with assurances that she had never been able to decipher it.

In subsequent years, many intellectuals and puzzle lovers broke their teeth on this puzzle. The document contains various wavy symbols arranged in three lines. Analysis of the code suggests that when creating a cryptogram, a regular “substitution cipher” could have been used, in which each character corresponds to a specific letter of the alphabet.

The last secret of World War II

The Second World War contributed to the art of cryptography. This is, first of all, a transition from manual encryption to machines capable of using a complex of constantly changing codes. The most famous of these devices was the Enigma electromechanical rotary machine, which was first tested by the German Navy in 1926.

The principle of Enigma operation comes down to replacing the characters of the input text according to the correspondence table. The role of the encryption node was played by a combination of three or four rotors, each of which represented 26 letters of the Latin alphabet. The rotor settings changed regularly, so the same encodings were rarely used when transmitting messages.

Thanks to Alan Turing (an English mathematician, logician and cryptographer who had a significant influence on the development of computer science; approx. mixednews) and specially designed machines called Bombes, codebreakers read many Enigma messages, which significantly influenced the course of the war. Many, however, remained unsolved.

In 2006, amateur codebreaker Stephen Krach created his project to decipher three Enigma codes intercepted in the North Atlantic in 1942. To do this, he tried to unite thousands of the same lovers around the world. Together, over several months, they deciphered the first two messages - they contained the coordinates of a German submarine and a message that the crew had come under fire and was forced to dive. The third encryption has not yet worked.

David Kahn, author of the seminal work on the history of cryptography, Codebreakers, argues that the Allies were able to decipher the Enigma codes only in cases where they could make their own guesses based on knowledge of the real state of affairs. Only then did they use Bombes, asking the most likely settings until they matched the ciphertext. Without knowledge of the situation and approximate content, according to Kahn, there would be so many possible combinations that the entire human life would not be enough to test them.

Who is the Zodiac?

In the 60s of the last century, an elusive serial killer nicknamed the Zodiac sent a letter to the police station in which he identified himself and confessed to all his crimes. The problem is that the message was encrypted, and so far no one has been able to decipher it.

This story kept all of San Francisco in fear from December 1968 to October 1969. During this time, at least seven people died at the hands of the Zodiac. Local police and newspaper editors regularly received letters from the killer with sarcastic remarks about officers of the law, threats and coordinates of as yet undetected victims. Some messages were encoded.

The killer claimed that his identity would be revealed as soon as the codes were read. This did not happen and the killer was never caught.

The first three cryptograms consisted of symbols replacing letters. But there was a catch: some of the most common letters, such as "e", were represented by several symbols, so it was impossible to find a solution using simple decryption techniques, such as detecting the most common letters.

Three encryptions were eventually read. The assumption that such a text could not do without the words “kill” and “murder” helped. When the results were added together, the result was one long letter in which the killer described in detail the pleasure he received in doing what he did. There was no hint of his or her identity.

It is quite possible that the name of the killer is hidden by the fourth encryption, dated November 1969, which Zodiac sent to the editor of the local newspaper. It has 340 characters, which is less than the previous three, and the encryption methods used are completely different. FBI Chief of Cryptanalysis Dan Olson once said that for his team this cryptogram, known as Z-340, is “the number one priority in the hot ten undeciphered codes.” He claims that every year from 20 to 30 amateur codebreakers offer him their help in solving this riddle, but so far no positive result has been achieved.

A team of professionals analyzed the distribution of characters in the text to find out whether the message was a “dummy”. If there is no solution, or the text has been changed beyond recognition, then the distribution of characters in the row should have coincided with the distribution of characters in the columns, but this did not happen.

In 2009, computer scientist Ryan Garlick at the University of North Texas at Dunton and his students tried to "derive" a solution using what's called a genetic algorithm.

(A class of algorithms based on genetics and natural selection. Its essence is to mix the most promising solution options from an initial random set of options, combined with the process of selecting the best options; approx. mixednews).

First, Garlick's students made possible pairs of English letters with symbols from the coded text. They then analyzed the two- to three-letter sequences that they produced, selecting those that could be contained in a potential solution, such as strings of the letters “th” or “es,” which are characteristic of English.

The most suitable pairs were accepted for further selection and combination. Using this method, they were able to find the key to the first Zodiac cryptogram, but did not achieve serious success with the Z-340.

Garlick suggested that in this case some kind of rearrangement of symbols in the text is needed. But, in this case, the number of possible actions with the text is infinite. It's discouraging. The scientist is confident that no computer programs will help get closer to the solution until it is possible to unravel the very principle by which the text was encrypted.

This three-page encrypted document, which talks about hidden treasure, was published in the United States in 1865. The most important part of it, which tells us where the treasure is, has not yet been deciphered.

Three leaves

Thomas Jefferson Bale, a buffalo hunter and adventurer, went missing in 1822 in the Rocky Mountains, leaving his acquaintance, Robert Morris, a locked metal box with the condition that it would be opened in ten years if Bale himself did not turn up by then.

After honestly meeting this deadline and making sure that Bale would not return, Morris opened the box and, among other things, discovered three sheets of paper covered with rows of numbers. These turned out to be cryptograms - when numbers are substituted for letters, and the key is some book or document known to the decipherer. The accompanying letter stated that the first sheet was an accurate description of the location of the treasure buried by Bale and his comrades in Pennsylvania, and the second contained a detailed list of treasures. The third listed the (also encrypted) names of the heirs.

The second one has been deciphered!

Morris struggled for 30 years to decipher the mysterious inscriptions, but could not advance a single step. The next mystery lover, who wished to remain anonymous, succeeded more: he discovered that the key to the second cryptogram was the US Declaration of Independence. This is what he came up with after decoding: “In Bedford County, four miles from Buford, in a cache six feet deep, I hid the following valuables, belonging exclusively to the people whose names are given in the document marked number 3. The initial deposit amounted to 1014 pounds of gold and 3812 pounds of silver delivered there in November 1819. The second deposit, made in December 1821, consisted of 1907 pounds of gold and 1288 pounds of silver, as well as precious stones obtained in St. Louis in exchange for silver. Their total cost is 13 thousand dollars. All of the above is securely hidden in iron pots, closed with iron lids. The location of the cache is marked by several stones laid out around it; the vessels rest on a stone base and are also covered with stones on top. Paper number 1 describes the exact location of the cache, so that it can be found without any effort.”

The mystery remains

Having unsuccessfully spent another 20 years deciphering the most important thing - the first sheet, which indicated the coordinates of the treasure, and by that time completely bankrupt, the treasure hunter decided to publish the documents under someone else's name with his comments in the form of a brochure. He thought about selling the circulation and somehow improving his affairs. Thus Bale's cryptogram became public domain.

Numerous codebreakers and treasure hunters set about solving the mystery. “Sensational” statements that the treasure had been found appeared in the press many times, but they turned out to be fake. Even with the advent of powerful computers, the first and third sheets of Bale's cryptogram still remain unsolved. One can only assume that the key to them is some book or document like the Declaration of Independence. But what book? Which document? Maybe our readers will try to unravel the encryption? The prize will be 30 million dollars - this is the amount the treasure of the missing buffalo hunter is currently valued at.