Sapphire case

53.

Wang Qiangbing, deputy director of the Second Division, had just arrived in Jinzhou at noon, and before he had time to take a bite of food, he was called over by someone sent by Jiang Cheng to question him.

Standing in Jiang Cheng's office, Wang Qiangbing saluted him: "Major General!"

Jiang Cheng waved his hands impatiently, and threw a telegram on him with a very ugly face: "Come on, explain to me what's going on. Zhang Chu is a man who doesn't care about anything, and you are the one who co-operates with this matter." Handled it by one person? Didn't even make a report?"

Wang Qiangbing picked up the telegram and glanced at it, knowing that Jiang Cheng was making trouble about Gu Sheng, and quickly explained: "This is a mathematics expert who has returned from studying in the UK. We have notified the superiors twice in a row to assist our second office." Zhang Chu, who is in charge of encoding and deciphering secret codes, is busy with government affairs, so I dared to..."

"Damn!" Jiang Cheng said angrily, "When you passed the notification, you were clearly talking about a foreign devil! Isn't it a trick to kill first and then play? I still heard the news from... elsewhere, and Yin Andu draw!"

"The subordinate is negligent! The candidates are not agreed upon here...we are only responsible for contacting and contacting!"

"Fart! Also, who allows you to be a major as soon as you come up? Huh?! Don't you think there are not enough officers!"

"This..." Wang Qiangbing paused for a moment, then raised his head, "Report to the officer! Gu Sheng's rank as a major is due to the fact that we need a military rank for personnel transfer, and the second is..."

Jiang Cheng narrowed his eyes and looked at him.

"The second is that before Gu Sheng, he had military merits!"

"This guy has never been in the army, not even a militia. What kind of military exploits did he make, he came up to be a major?" Jiang Cheng didn't have time to listen to him at this time, so he let out a breath and said, "Come on, I know that you have to temporarily suspend your employment. Don't talk about those nonsense. How many cars have driven into Zhongzhou this time?"

He paused, then suddenly remembered, and raised his chin towards Wang Qiangbing: "That's right... you don't need to worry about that person anymore. Talents need to be cultivated. I specially set up a dark room for him. I'll take care of myself."

Wang Qiangbing: "Sir!..."

"Oh, I have to show it to the central government," Jiang Cheng glanced at Wang's expression, "Just give him a spare job in the Military Supply Department."

After Jiang Cheng left the mansion, Gu Sheng was extremely tired and leaned on the sofa in the small living room upstairs, flipping through the materials at hand.

Gu Sheng was slightly surprised by Jiang Cheng's attitude towards him.He could understand Jiang Cheng's feeling of wanting to kill him when he saw him five years later, but he couldn't understand why he was the perpetrator all along, but he acted like he was the one who was hurt look.

Gu Sheng dared to come here, so he was naturally escorted by someone, so he was not worried that Jiang Cheng would kill him on impulse, but what Jiang Cheng did during the surprise attack in Yin'an, and how he looked when he came to the door later, is indeed true. Some exceeded his expectations.

why?why?

Gu Sheng kept flipping the pages of the book, he was vaguely aware of the answers to all the questions, and in fact Jiang Cheng never denied it.Then he felt a severe headache again, which was the aftereffect of Jiang Cheng's madness a few years ago, like a shrapnel hidden in his skull, reminding him of all the scars in the past.

Gu Sheng sighed silently, and turned his attention back to the materials Ye Fengnian just brought.

At that time, the intercepted secret telegrams were still mainly based on the transmission of messages between major warlords, with some Japanese secret telegrams mixed in. The Chinese code itself started relatively late, and the decoding method was simpler than that of pinyin.

Among them, the horizontal-to-straight code conversion method that Gu Sheng said to Ye Fengnian was the most widely used Chinese coding method at that time, that is, to code commonly used Chinese characters into numbers in a chessboard distribution: each page of the code book is usually 10×10 squares, Horizontal and vertical lines are marked with 0 to 9 respectively, and the corners of the pages are marked with two-digit numbers that are not repeated on each page, called "corner codes". Code + a horizontal code (or a straight code) + a straight code (or a horizontal code) such four digits to represent.

And use the horizontal and vertical code conversion method to compile the password. In the horizontal and vertical spaces left on the top and left and right sides of the telegram book, the numbers [-]□□[-] are arbitrarily reversed and filled in the two horizontal and vertical spaces on each page. In the space where the two lines intersect; and fill in two additional numbers at will. These two numbers must be filled in on each page and cannot be the same.

When compiling plain codes, the two yards on the corner are regarded as two thousand and one hundred digits, the digits running straight are regarded as tens digits, and the digits running horizontally are regarded as ones digits, which is the first straight and then horizontal format.For example, the digits that run horizontally are used as the tens digit, and the digits that run straight are used as the ones digit.

To put it simply, this transformation method is based on the clear code book, disrupting the sequence of horizontal and straight code numbers, and some of them also compile fixed-angle codes separately, so that the Chinese characters marked with 4 digits are different from the clear code book, thus forming a Chinese character. password.

In addition, there are also coding methods such as addition and subtraction and self-coded codebooks, which are widely used.

For example, the method of addition and subtraction is to increase the number of the plain code electronic book, and the number of increments is mostly based on the month.For example, one is added to the first month, and the second is added to the second month; the incremental method, such as 0002 in the first month, 0003 in February, and so on, only increase the number, can be freely compiled, developed later, extended For more forms, it is not necessary to use the month as the standard.

In a nutshell, this kind of addition and subtraction cipher is based on the plain code book, and it is separately agreed to add or subtract a certain number to form a self-coded cipher that is different from the plain code.

However, self-compiled codebooks often add too many idiom phrases, which can be deciphered by the most commonly used deciphering methods in Western alphabets such as frequency analysis, and there are also problems such as codebook leaks that are too late to recompile. Not reliable enough.

What Ye Fengnian brought to Gu Sheng was the latest telegram they received from the Shen family. Since Jiang Cheng started the war with him three years ago, their telegram exchanges with each other have been almost transparent—basically they were obtained by agents. For example, the password book they are using, etc., but this time they changed the method.

Three years ago, Jiang Cheng annexed the Ye family's territory in one fell swoop. Ye Bin died in battle. His younger brother Ye Fengnian insisted on leading the army to surrender for more than a month. Ye Fengnian was a no-brainer. He was kicked out of the house by Ye Bin in the name of going to school. Before he came back for a few days, Jiang Cheng started a fight with his brother. He was so frightened that he ran directly to Jiang Chenglou to intercede with his family. He was either pretending or really cowardly. After surrendering, Jiang Cheng observed him for two years. It was found that this person was really useless, because his sister married into the Ye family, so he had no choice but to throw him in the intelligence department.

Ye Fengnian really wanted to make some achievements to make Jiang Cheng trust him more, but this person's brain is not bright, and it's not a day or two. He has been in the intelligence department for almost a year and has no actual achievements. A high-achieving student in mathematics was hired.

When he got the news, he came to visit anxiously. Surprisingly, the paratrooper was quite talkative. Although he was hesitant to help with the deciphering because of the system, Ye Fengnian was sure that the other party had a good personality and firmly believed that the other party would not be so reckless. In order to save face, he forced the information to Gu Sheng every time he came and went.

The secret message from the Shen family was compiled using the horizontal-to-vertical code conversion method. The principle of the compilation is very clear, but it is really necessary to decipher the entire page after row of four-digit code paper. When it comes out, the amount of work is really not small.No. [-] and No. [-] worked day and night, but they just figured out the meaning of a few numbers, and they didn't get the knack at all.

Ye Fengnian told him that there was a discussion meeting on Sunday night, because the Shen family’s secret telegrams these days were quite different from before, so the major general would also attend the meeting, and his tone was quite pleading, Jiang Cheng said that Ye saw him meeting with the mouse If Ye Fengnian can't deliver a convincing result this time, he might not have to take the office director's seat.

Gu Sheng spent three and a half days at the New Army Mansion day and night, and found Ye Fengnian on Sunday afternoon.

Ye Fengnian was scratching his head in his office at that time, when he heard that Gu Sheng was looking for him, he jumped up from the chair in surprise, held Gu Sheng's hand, and asked him as if he was about to cry: "How is it? How is it?"

"Hmm... It's a little different from what I've seen before, but it's not too difficult." Gu Sheng pulled out his hand without any trace, and took out the file bag from his briefcase. Ye Fengnian hurriedly led him in, closed the door and window, and turned around. He saw Gu Sheng open the file bag and took out some materials from it.

Ye Fengnian was taken aback, and hurriedly reached out to get it, only to see that there were five original copies and translations, and another piece of manuscript paper written with a pencil and scribbled down the principles.

Gu Sheng lined up the first one. According to the Beijing North Army radio station's habit of sending out reports, five columns of numbers were written densely on it (if unknown, use # instead):

URGENT60081838709806130466

0451TIENTSIN172804790674

01093352033881337003

24177193613918850615

13782392231714203945

443863657715 1367438 #

527798#21420#####369

2589SEAL

"That's how it is. I'll use this short paragraph as an example." Gu Sheng breathed a sigh of relief and explained, "I have carefully studied the few cases of using and decrypting this kind of code before, and I can understand it directly when I go out. Except for the English and unobtained parts, the fact that the header part to 1378 is plain code, which is what you called the "deciphered" part-in fact, this is the standard code.

"Then we come to the text of the telegram, which is the ciphertext that needs to be deciphered, that is, the paragraph '2392231714203945443863657715#1367438527798#21420#####369'." Gu Sheng scratched the manuscript with his hand to indicate the scope, "this One paragraph is the ciphertext written by Shen Yao using 'Shen Mi', you can compare the content I translated, the meaning of the sentence is roughly 'I agree with the reduction method, please follow it immediately.'"

"You must have already translated it in plain code," Gu Sheng pulled out a pen from his desk, and scribbled a sentence on the white paper on the desk, "Shuo xiaoyoumo support quail#饔纲#小# #", turned the paper to the side for Ye Fengnian to see, "I still use '#' to mark the unclear part of the code, but this obviously cannot be read as a sentence. Coincidentally, here is the third word from the positive number and the reverse number The third character is "small". Going back to the telegram before declassification, I can clearly see that both positions are '1420'. The existing Chinese encoding methods, whether horizontal or straight Or addition and subtraction, the principle of 'repeated code means repeated word' applies to all."

Gu Sheng straightened his back, and said again: "Since Sato Aimoro's time, repeated codes have been an important condition for deciphering Chinese codes. Here, there are repeated codes in only 14 telegrams. Obviously, this kind of code is not Gao Ming. But I’m just using him as an example, you can use a similar method to decipher the ciphertext, of course—it’s really time-consuming, I haven’t had time to eat these days.”

He spread his hands, looked at Ye Fengnian who seemed to be stupid, and was suddenly a little stunned: "What, you...haven't even thought of this level?"

He stayed alone in the clean and bright study of the mansion to study the code, and when he read the books, it seemed that time had returned to the days when he was studying in Cambridge.

It is completely different from his roommate Luke at that time. Although Gu Sheng is indeed smart, his previous life experience is hard to compare with that of most middle-class children in the mathematics department. There is a huge gap in his studies, and Almost all of the classmates are outstanding in some aspect, so they have to work harder and almost submerge themselves in textbooks and exercises to barely be called a qualified student.

As for Luke, what's even more frightening is that he relies on his talent to make a living, which essentially widens the gap with ordinary people.

Therefore, Gu Sheng has always been extremely humble, or his humble character was magnified in Cambridge. After a long period of immersion in a place with a strong academic atmosphere, he would have such an illusion that he deeply felt that he was inferior to other people. place, and forget what you own, it may have already far surpassed ordinary people.

"Okay... okay..." Ye Fengnian came back to his senses, and picked up the paper from the table, "What about these hashtags? How did you write the complete translation?"

"I didn't write it down. This is the word-for-word translation of the original text. Here is the reference sentence meaning inferred from the context." Gu Sheng flipped the paper in his hand, "The number of intercepted and referenced codes is too small. , Shen Yao probably just activated this kind of code, the time is short, I only made some statistics briefly, for example, in the second part written in cipher text, '3338' appeared twice, both of which were the word 'brother'; '5388' appeared twice, both with the word 'Yan'; '1919' appeared three times, both with the word 'Gong'. Similar to the frequency analysis method of alphabetic characters, these repeated messages are of great importance to the decipherer. These are very rare breakthroughs.”

He talked a lot, his mouth was dry, Ye Fengnian poured tea for him himself, and invited him to sit on the sofa.

"Hey, high-achieving students are really different! With your help, I'm really like a tiger with wings, like a tiger with wings." He said politely, looked at the file bag in his hand, and changed the subject, "There is less than an hour left before the seminar. These materials and ciphertext...do you see...?"

He raised his eyes to look at Gu Sheng, Gu Sheng took a sip of tea, his eyelashes trembled slightly, and said calmly: "Mr. Ye is the director of No. [-] institute, and naturally he is also my Gu's superior. If he can decipher the secret code, he is naturally the director's guide." You Fang, the first-class merit should not be compromised."

Ye Fengnian was startled, then laughed and patted him on the shoulder: "Don't you dare! Mr. Gu, you are a first-class talent! Good! I, Ye, put this sentence here, and I will follow you, Brother Ye, from now on. I will definitely not treat you badly!"

Gu Sheng laughed, but before he could answer, the phone on Ye Fengnian's desk rang, Ye Chong went over to answer it, and then signaled to Gu Sheng: "Jiang Shao informed the meeting ahead of time, now take your things and go to Bailou!"

The author has something to say:

The passwords in this article are quoted from the real secret telegrams given by Zhang Xueliang during the Republic of China, and the information comes from "Breaking Secrets: History of Chinese Password Warfare" compiled by a netizen (published on the Internet, unpublished).

The information on Chinese character codes is unexpectedly difficult to find, so everyone will just read it. If there is a chance in the future, I will look up other materials and write better ones.