Amateur Crypotography

[dorchadas]

Sarahah has been going around my friends again. If you don't remember or never knew, it's another "tell people things anonymously" platform that came out in 2017, and for some reason people started posting their links recently. Some people told me I was pretty, someone said they had a crush on me, some people said they enjoyed my company, and it was all entirely positive. If for some reason you want to leave me an anonymous message, you can do so.

But that's not why I'm writing this. I'm writing this because one of the messages I received was in code.

Here was the message, originally spread over four parts due to character limits, but combined here:

NzUgNzYgNzMgOTAgOTAgNzMgNjkgMzIgNjUgNzIgNDUgNzggNjUgNzIgMzIgNjcgNzIgNjUgMzIgNzcgNjUgNDUgNjkgMzIgNzQgNjkgNzIgNjUgMzIgODQgODMgNjkgNDUgNzggNzMgNzYgNzYgMzIgODQgNzkgNzMgODMgNzIgNDUgNzQgNjkgNzIgMzIgODMgNzIgODUgODMgNzIgMzIgNjYgNjkgNDUgNzYgNjUgNDUgODMgNjUgNzggNjUgMzIgNjUgNzIgNDUgNzYgNzkgODMgOTAgMzIgNzUgNzYgNjkgODMgNzIgMzIgNjUgNDUgNzUgNjkgNzIgNDUgNjggNzMgNDUgNzEgNzYgNzMgNzggNzMgMzIgODcgNzkgNzYgNDUgNzYgNjUgNDUgNjcgNzIgNjkgNjkgMzIgNjcgNjUgNDUgODkgNjkgNzMgNzYgODQgNzIgMzIgNjUgNzIgNDUgNzQgNjUgNjggMzIgNzggNjUgNDUgNzIgNjUgODMgNzIgNDUgNjcgNzIgNzMgNjggMzIgNzYgNzMgNzggMzIgNjUgNzIgNDUgNzQgNjUgNzIgMzIgODMgNzIgODUgODMgNzIgMzIgODkgNzMgNzYgNDUgNjggNzkgNzMgMzIgNjYgNjkgNDUgNzYgNjUgNDUgODMgNjUgNzggNjUgMzIgNzQgNjkgNzIgNjUgMzIgNjggOTAgNjkgNzIgMzIgNzYgNzMgNzggMzIgNzQgNjkgNzIgNjUgMzIgNzggNzkgNDUgNjggNjUgNDUgNzMgNzI=

I could tell there were patterns, like all those Gs and Js and Zs, but I figured every two letters was one letter. This stumped me for a bit until damionw told me that the code was familiar to him and I should examine my assumptions, so I did. I tried various things, like looking at digraph, trigraph, and quadrigraph codes, a Vigenère Cipher, but nothing worked. I was stumped until a lucky search based on that one = at the end turned up a suggestion that it was Base64 encoding (the = is needed to pad the string out to the proper length), so I put the whole thing into a decoder and got back this:

75 76 73 90 90 73 69 32 65 72 45 78 65 72 32 67 72 65 32 77 65 45 69 32 74 69 72 65 32 84 83 69 45 78 73 76 76 32 84 79 73 83 72 45 74 69 72 32 83 72 85 83 72 32 66 69 45 76 65 45 83 65 78 65 32 65 72 45 76 79 83 90 32 75 76 69 83 72 32 65 45 75 69 72 45 68 73 45 71 76 73 78 73 32 87 79 76 45 76 65 45 67 72 69 69 32 67 65 45 89 69 73 76 84 72 32 65 72 45 74 65 68 32 78 65 45 72 65 83 72 45 67 72 73 68 32 76 73 78 32 65 72 45 74 65 72 32 83 72 85 83 72 32 89 73 76 45 68 79 73 32 66 69 45 76 65 45 83 65 78 65 32 74 69 72 65 32 68 90 69 72 32 76 73 78 32 74 69 72 65 32 78 79 45 68 65 45 73 72

From here on, it was much easier. Obvious each two-digit number sequence represents a character, and most of them are between 65 and 90, which is the space for capital letters in ASCII encoding. So after adding a 0 to the beginning of each two-digit number, I decoded it from ASCII:

KLIZZIE AH-NAH CHA MA-E JEHA TSE-NILL TOISH-JEH SHUSH BE-LA-SANA AH-LOSZ KLESH A-KEH-DI-GLINI WOL-LA-CHEE CA-YEILTH AH-JAD NA-HASH-CHID LIN AH-JAH SHUSH YIL-DOI BE-LA-SANA JEHA DZEH LIN JEHA NO-DA-IH

So, when I saw this result, I thought I had made a mistake. But on the other hand, it was too purposeful to be nonsense, right? All those hyphens wouldn't be there if they weren't part of some underlying syntax. I searched for "KLIZZIE" and the first response I got was the Navajo Phonetic Alphabet, which was used by the code-talkers during World War II, so there are decoders out there for it. I put the text into one and:

G E H F G A B B A R S V A Q L B H E B J A G E H G U

This one is obviously just a simple substitution cipher. The first cipher I tried is probably the most common non-pig-Latin code in English-speaking countries, ROT13, and it worked:

T R U S T N O O N E F I N D Y O U R O W N T R U T H

And there's the message, 796 characters reduced down to 51, counting spaces.

I don't agree with it, though. Finding your own truth is important, but trusting no one? That's a pretty lonely life. It's a risk, sure, but one worth taking.

Don't live your life sealed up in a bottle.