Difference between revisions of "Progress Report 2010"

Revision as of 13:37, 25 May 2010

Due Date

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Executive Summary

For decades the written code that is linked to the “Summerton Man Mystery” (or Taman Shud Case) has been undecipherable and delivered no solid information about his history or identity. This project aims to bring light to the unsolved mystery by tapping into the wealth of information available on the internet.

Recent collection of random letter samples has been used to reinforce previous claims that the code is unlikely to just be a randomly generated sequence of letters. Along with thorough revision and checking of previous code used to produce results, it has been agreed that the Summerton Man code is most likely initialism.

The code found with the dead man will be used in conjunction with a suitable “Web Crawler” and specific pattern matching algorithms. The aim is to target websites of interest and filter through the raw text available in search of character patterns that are also present in the code. Once some solid results are obtained, frequency analysis will hopefully enable a solid hypothesis on some possibilities in regards to the meaning behind the code.

unfinished***

Aims and Objectives

The aim of the project is to make progression with respect to the Summerton Man Case through use of engineering techniques such as information theory, problem solving, statistics, encryption, decryption and software coding. Through use of such techniques, the results from the previous year’s project will revised and used to solidify the pathway for the rest of the project. Once past results are properly revised the next aim of the project is to attempt to utilise a web crawling device in order to access information stored in raw text on websites of interest. Specifically designed algorithms will then be used on the sourced text in order to search for patterns and reoccurrences that may be of interest or relation to the contents of the Summerton Man Code.

Project Background

Mainly taken from proposal - michael will work on and edit this part

The Case

The project is based upon attempts to discover the identity of a middle aged man discovered dead on a metropolitan beach in South Australia in 1948. With little solid evidence of his death apart from the body itself, the man’s passing has remained a mystery covered in controversy for decades. He was found resting against a rock wall on Somerton Beach opposite a home for crippled children shortly before 6:45 am on the 1st of December in 1948. A post-mortem of the body revealed that there was no possibility that the death was natural due to severe congestion in his organs. The most likely cause of death was decided to be from poison, which in 1994 was uncovered by forensic science to be digitalis.

Among the man’s possessions were cigarettes, matches, a metal comb, chewing gum, a railway ticket to Henley Beach, a bus ticket and a tram ticket. A brown suitcase belonging to the man was later discovered at the Adelaide Railway Station. In it contained various articles of clothing, a screwdriver, a stencilling brush, a table knife, scissors and other such utensils. Authorities found the name “T. Keane” and the unknown man was temporarily identified as a local sailor by the name of Tom Keane. However, this was soon proved to be incorrect and the man’s identity has been a mystery ever since. The Somerton man has since been incorrectly identified as a missing stable hand, a worker on a steamship, and a Swedish man.

A spy theory also began circulating due to the circumstances of the Somerton man’s death. In 1947, The US Army’s Signal Intelligence Service, as part of Operation Venona, discovered that there had been top secret material leaked from Australia’s Department of External Affairs to the Soviet embassy in Canberra. Three months prior to the death of the Somerton man, on the 16th of August 1948, an overdose of digitalis was reported as the cause of death for US Assistant Treasury Secretary Harry Dexter White, who had been accused of Soviet espionage under Operation Venona. Due to the similar causes of their death, the rumours of the unknown man being a Soviet spy began to spread.

By far the most intriguing piece of evidence related to the case was a small piece of paper bearing the words “Tamam Shud”, which translated to “ended” or “finished”. This paper was soon identified as being from the last page of a book of poems called The Rubiayat by Omar Khayyam, a famous Persian poet. After a police announcement was made in search of the missing copy of The Rubiayat a local Glenelg resident came forth baring a copy that he had found in the back seat of his car. It was in the back of this copy of The Rubiayat that the Mystery Code was discovered.

The Code

The code found in the back of The Rubiayat revealed a sequence of 40 – 50 letters. It has been dismissed as unsolvable for some time due to the quality of hand writing and the available quantity of letters. The first character on the first and third line looks like an “M” or “W”, and the fifth line’s first character looks like an “I” or a “V”. The second line is crossed out (and is omitted entirely in previous cracking attempts), and there is an “X” above the “O” on the fourth line. Due to the ambiguity of some of these letters and lines, some possibly wrong assumptions could be made as to what is and isn’t a part of the code.

Professional attempts at unlocking this code were largely limited due to the lack of modern techniques and strategies, because they were carried out decades earlier. When the code was analysed by experts in the Australian Department of Defence in 1978, they made the following statements regarding the code:  There are insufficient symbols to provide a pattern.  The symbols could be a complex substitute code or the meaningless response to a disturbed mind.  It is not possible to provide a satisfactory answer.

Last year’s code cracking project group ran a number of tests to selectively conclude which encryption method was mostly likely used. In their final report, they determined that the Somerton man’s code was not a transposition or substitution cipher. They tested the Playfair Cipher, the Vigenere Cipher and the one-time pad[2]. The group concluded that the code was most likely to be an initialism of a sentence of text and using frequency analysis, determined that the most likely intended sequence of letters in the code was:

Requirements and Specifications

include block diagrams/workload breakdown - michael will edit previous block diagra, to include new bounds/search type requirements

Progress So Far

Verification of past results

Text Pattern Algorithms

Web Crawling

Approach for remaining part of the project

Problems to Overcome

Sites of Interest

i.e what websites will be of most interest? why?

Obtaining and Using Results

Project Management

discussion of any differences between the project execution and the original plan due to aspects such as technical difficulties/changes in project aims i.e. only searching 1 website rather than entire internet!! its too large for now :P

Budget & Resources

Risk Management

changes in risks? anything that has happened

Conclusion

References

See also

• Cipher Cracking 2010
• Final report 2009: Who killed the Somerton man?
• Timeline of the Taman Shud Case
• List of people connected to the Taman Shud Case
• List of facts on the Taman Shud Case that are often misreported
• Structuring the Taman Shud code cracking process
• List of facts we do know about the Somerton Man