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58-478: The story of the three ciphertexts originates from an 1885 pamphlet called The Beale Papers , detailing treasure being buried by a man named Thomas J. Beale in a secret location in Bedford County, Virginia , in about 1820. Beale entrusted a box containing the encrypted messages to a local innkeeper named Robert Morriss and then disappeared, never to be seen again. According to the story, the innkeeper opened

116-711: A plot device in his short story " The Gold-Bug ". From 1820, he was also living in Richmond, Virginia at the time of Beale's alleged encounters with Morriss. In February 1826, Poe enrolled as a student at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville , but with mounting debts, Poe left for Boston in April 1827. However, research and facts debunk Poe's authorship. He died in 1849, well before The Beale Papers were first published in 1885. The pamphlet also mentions

174-477: A cleaning person) could easily conceal one, and even swallow it if necessary. Discarded computers , disk drives and media are also a potential source of plaintexts. Most operating systems do not actually erase anything— they simply mark the disk space occupied by a deleted file as 'available for use', and remove its entry from the file system directory . The information in a file deleted in this way remains fully present until overwritten at some later time when

232-417: A complex behaviour in the solved cipher as one might expect from an encoded message, while the unsolved ciphers have a simpler behaviour. Humans have limited abilities when it comes to generating random numbers out of thin air. One explanation for the difference between base 10 and the other ones is that the numbers were produced by a human in base 10, which would mean that the ciphers are fraudulent. Despite

290-663: A final enclosure of Old English Box Ciphers which created a series of statements about the operations behind illegally tapping Gold Mines in Arizona's Superstition Mountains. The Ciphers exposed the details behind the Peralta Land Grab, and the author James Reavis in a relay of information sent to JP Morgan, with a message added from Albert Pike, in a communique of the Knights of the Golden Circle. The Ciphers reveal

348-422: A form that can be viewed or used without requiring a key or other decryption device. Information—a message, document, file, etc.—if to be communicated or stored in an unencrypted form is referred to as plaintext. Plaintext is used as input to an encryption algorithm ; the output is usually termed ciphertext , particularly when the algorithm is a cipher . Codetext is less often used, and almost always only when

406-428: A pamphlet entitled The Beale Papers , which was published by yet another friend, James B. Ward, in 1885. Ward is thus not "the friend". Ward himself is almost untraceable in local records, except that a man with that name owned the home in which a Sarah Morriss, identified as the spouse of Robert Morriss, died at age 77, in 1863. He also is recorded as becoming a Master Mason in 1863. The images below, transcribed from

464-529: A portion of Albemarle County lying south of the James River was added. The county is named for John Russell , the fourth Duke of Bedford , who was a Secretary of State of Great Britain. In 1782, Campbell County was formed from eastern Bedford County and the county seat was moved from New London to Liberty (now Bedford). Also in 1786, the portion of Bedford County south of the Staunton (Roanoke) River

522-578: A second layer of maps in each that detail 1) the location of their Gold Mines in Arizona, 2) the location of their caches of .44cal & 807 Series repeating rifles, and 3) the location of their caches of Gold and Silver in Virginia. Bedford County, Virginia Bedford County is a United States county located in the Piedmont region of the Commonwealth of Virginia . Its county seat

580-474: A secure location. After Beale made multiple trips to stock the hiding place, he then encrypted three messages: the location, a description of the treasure, and the names of its owners and their relatives. The treasure location is traditionally linked to Montvale in Bedford County, Virginia . Beale placed the ciphertexts and some other papers in an iron box. In 1822 he entrusted the box to a Lynchburg innkeeper named Robert Morriss. Beale told Morriss not to open

638-518: Is likely to be more difficult than it was when Gutmann wrote. Modern hard drives automatically remap failing sectors, moving data to good sectors. This process makes information on those failing, excluded sectors invisible to the file system and normal applications. Special software, however, can still extract information from them. Some government agencies (e.g., US NSA ) require that personnel physically pulverize discarded disk drives and, in some cases, treat them with chemical corrosives. This practice

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696-420: Is not widespread outside government, however. Garfinkel and Shelat (2003) analyzed 158 second-hand hard drives they acquired at garage sales and the like, and found that less than 10% had been sufficiently sanitized. The others contained a wide variety of readable personal and confidential information. See data remanence . Physical loss is a serious problem. The US State Department , Department of Defense , and

754-547: Is the town of Bedford , which was an independent city from 1968 until rejoining the county in 2013. Bedford County was created in 1753 from parts of Lunenburg County , and several changes in alignment were made until the present borders were established in 1786. The county was named in honor of John Russell , an English statesman and fourth Duke of Bedford . Bedford County is part of the Lynchburg Metropolitan Statistical Area . As of

812-483: The 2020 census , Bedford's population was 79,462. The county population has more than doubled since 1980. The Piedmont area had long been inhabited by indigenous peoples . At the time of European encounter, mostly Siouan -speaking tribes lived in this area. Bedford County was established by the Virginia General Assembly on December 13, 1753, from parts of Lunenburg County . Later in 1756,

870-553: The American Civil War that started in 1861. William Poundstone , an American author and skeptic, had stylometric analysis performed on the pamphlet for his 1983 book Biggest Secrets , and found that Poe's prose is significantly different from the grammatical structure used by the author who wrote The Beale Papers . Another method to check the validity of the ciphers is to investigate some statistical aspects in different number bases. For example, one can investigate

928-503: The Beale Papers and their related story by Joe Nickell , using historical records that cast doubt on the existence of Thomas J. Beale. Nickell also presents linguistic evidence demonstrating that the documents could not have been written at the time alleged (words such as "stampeding", for instance, are of later vintage). His analysis of the writing style showed that Beale was almost certainly James B. Ward, whose 1885 pamphlet brought

986-592: The British Secret Service have all had laptops with secret information, including in plaintext, lost or stolen. Appropriate disk encryption techniques can safeguard data on misappropriated computers or media. On occasion, even when data on host systems is encrypted, media that personnel use to transfer data between systems is plaintext because of poorly designed data policy. For example, in October 2007, HM Revenue and Customs lost CDs that contained

1044-528: The Solid South , it was a reliably Democratic county until 1948 , when Strom Thurmond 's candidacy reduced Harry S. Truman 's victory, and it was a swing county for the next three decades. It voted for segregationist third-party candidate George Wallace for president in 1968 . Some of these unincorporated areas have mailing addresses in Bedford town and Lynchburg. Archived September 25, 2005, at

1102-511: The U.S. Census Bureau , the county has a total area of 769 square miles (1,990 km ), of which 753 square miles (1,950 km ) is land and 16 square miles (41 km ) (2.1%) is water. As of the census of 2000, there were 60,371 people, 23,838 households, and 18,164 families residing in the county. The population density was 80 people per square mile (31 people/km ). There were 26,841 housing units at an average density of 36 units per square mile (14 units/km ). The racial makeup of

1160-697: The UKTV series Myth Hunters (also known as Raiders of the Lost Past ) devoted one of its season 3 episodes to the topic. Also in 2015, the Josh Gates series Expedition Unknown visited Bedford to investigate the Beale Ciphers and search for the treasure. Simon Singh 's 1999 book The Code Book explains the Beale cipher mystery in one of its chapters. In 2010, an award-winning animated short film

1218-565: The Wayback Machine 37°19′N 79°32′W  /  37.31°N 79.53°W  / 37.31; -79.53 Plaintext In cryptography , plaintext usually means unencrypted information pending input into cryptographic algorithms , usually encryption algorithms. This usually refers to data that is transmitted or stored unencrypted. With the advent of computing , the term plaintext expanded beyond human-readable documents to mean any data, including binary files, in

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1276-559: The Beale Papers to light. Nickell argues that the tale is thus a work of fiction; specifically, a "secret vault" allegory of the Freemasons ; James B. Ward was a Mason himself. A pamphlet published in 1885, entitled The Beale Papers , is the source of this story. The treasure was said to have been obtained by an American named Thomas J. Beale in the early 1800s, from a mine to the north of Nuevo México (New Mexico), at that time in

1334-472: The Beale Papers' unproven veracity, treasure hunters have not been deterred from trying to find the vault. The "information" that there is buried treasure in Bedford County has stimulated many expeditions with shovels, and other implements of discovery, looking for likely spots. For more than a hundred years, people have been arrested for trespassing and unauthorized digging; some of them in groups as in

1392-465: The Declaration of Independence have been printed, with various adjustments to paragraphing, word inclusion, word changing, spelling, capitalization, and punctuation. The lack of clear images of the original ciphers, combined with the large quantity of numerals, has led to numerals being misprinted or omitted in many sources. The Beale Papers text, on pages 20 to 21, gives an alleged translation of

1450-669: The District of Columbia, and 18 of the counties of Virginia. The 1820 U.S. Census has two persons named Thomas Beale, Captain Thomas Beale of the battle of New Orleans 1815 in Louisiana originally from Virginia Botetourt County – Fincastle area 12 miles from Bedford County and one in Tennessee, and a Thomas K. Beale in Virginia, but the population schedules are completely missing for three states and one territory. Before 1850

1508-497: The Spanish province of Santa Fe de Nuevo México (an area that today would most likely be part of Colorado ). According to the pamphlet, Beale was the leader of a group of 30 gentlemen adventurers from Virginia who stumbled upon the rich mine of gold and silver while hunting buffalo. They spent 18 months mining thousands of pounds of precious metals, which they then charged Beale with transporting to Virginia and burying in

1566-454: The U.S. Census recorded the names of only the heads of households; others in the household were only counted. Beale, if he existed, may have been living in someone else's household. In addition, a man named "Thomas Beall" appears in the customer lists of St. Louis Post Department in 1820. According to the pamphlet, Beale sent a letter from St. Louis in 1822. Additionally, a Cheyenne legend exists about gold and silver being taken from

1624-601: The UK's Mysteries series, a segment in the seventh special of Unsolved Mysteries ; and the 2011 Declaration of Independence episode of the History Channel TV show Brad Meltzer's Decoded . There are also several books, and considerable Internet activity. In 2014, the National Geographic TV show The Numbers Game referred to the Beale ciphers as one of the strongest passwords ever created. In 2015

1682-740: The Virginia House of Delegates; and Republicans Bob Good (VA 5th District), Ben Cline (VA 6th District), and Morgan Griffith (VA 9th District) in the U.S. House of Representatives. Historically, Bedford County was an agricultural economy. While agriculture is still an important factor in the county's economy, Bedford County has significant residential development to serve Lynchburg , Roanoke , and Smith Mountain Lake . Tourism and retail are also becoming more significant, with some new industry near Forest and New London. Bedford has voted Republican in every presidential election since 1980 . Like much of

1740-562: The West and buried in mountains in the East, dating from roughly 1820. Edgar Allan Poe has been suggested as the pamphlet's real author because he had an interest in cryptography. It was well known he placed notices of his abilities in the Philadelphia paper Alexander's Weekly (Express) Messenger , inviting submissions of ciphers which he proceeded to solve. In 1843 he used a cryptogram as

1798-428: The age of 18 living with them, 65.40% were married couples living together, 7.50% had a female householder with no husband present, and 23.80% were non-families. 20.20% of all households were made up of individuals, and 7.30% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.52 and the average family size was 2.89. In the county, the population's age distribution was: 24.00% under

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1856-465: The age of 18, 5.80% from 18 to 24, 29.90% from 25 to 44, 27.50% from 45 to 64, and 12.80% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 40 years. For every 100 females there were 99.50 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 97.50 males. The median income for a household in the county was $ 43,136, and the median income for a family was $ 49,303. Males had a median income of $ 35,117 versus $ 23,906 for females. The per capita income for

1914-432: The algorithm involved is actually a code . Some systems use multiple layers of encryption , with the output of one encryption algorithm becoming "plaintext" input for the next. Insecure handling of plaintext can introduce weaknesses into a cryptosystem by letting an attacker bypass the cryptography altogether. Plaintext is vulnerable in use and in storage, whether in electronic or paper format. Physical security means

1972-408: The box 23 years later, and then decades after that gave the three encrypted ciphertexts to a friend before he died. The friend then spent the next twenty years of his life trying to decode the messages, and was able to solve only one of them, which gave details of the treasure buried and the general location of the treasure. The unnamed friend then published all three ciphertexts in a pamphlet which

2030-521: The box unless he or one of his men failed to return from their journey within 10 years. Sending a letter from St. Louis a few months later, Beale promised Morriss that a friend in St. Louis would mail the key to the cryptograms; however, it never arrived. It was not until 1845 that Morriss opened the box. Inside he found two plaintext letters from Beale, and several pages of ciphertext separated into Papers "1", "2", and "3". Morriss had no luck in solving

2088-453: The case of people from Pennsylvania in the 1990s. Several digs were completed at the top of Porter's Mountain, one in the late 1980s with the land owner's permission as long as any treasure found was split 50/50. However, the treasure hunters found only Civil War artifacts. As the value of these artifacts paid for time and equipment rental, the expedition broke even. The story has been the subject of multiple television documentaries, such as

2146-491: The ciphers, and decades later left the box and its contents to an unnamed friend. The friend, then using an edition of the United States Declaration of Independence as the key for a modified book cipher , successfully deciphered the second ciphertext which gave a description of the buried treasure. Unable to solve the other two ciphertexts, the friend ultimately made the letters and ciphertexts public in

2204-446: The ciphertexts were produced with some book cipher, but none have been recognized as successful to date. Breaking the cipher(s) may depend on random chance (as, for instance, stumbling upon a book key if the two remaining ciphertexts are actually book ciphers); so far, even the most skilled cryptanalysts who have attempted them have been defeated. Of course, Beale could have used a document that he had written himself for either or both of

2262-712: The computer and its components, and all backups must be secure. Sensitive data is sometimes processed on computers whose mass storage is removable, in which case physical security of the removed disk is vital. In the case of securing a computer, useful (as opposed to handwaving ) security must be physical (e.g., against burglary , brazen removal under cover of supposed repair, installation of covert monitoring devices, etc.), as well as virtual (e.g., operating system modification, illicit network access, Trojan programs). Wide availability of keydrives , which can plug into most modern computers and store large quantities of data, poses another severe security headache. A spy (perhaps posing as

2320-475: The county was $ 21,582. About 5.20% of families and 7.10% of the population were below the poverty line, including 8.30% of those under age 18 and 10.50% of those age 65 or over. As of 2017, the largest self-reported ancestry groups were: Bedford County is represented by Republican Mark Peake (8th District) in the Virginia Senate; Republicans Eric Zehr (51st District) and Tim Griffin (53rd District) in

2378-435: The county was 92.18% White , 6.24% Black or African American , 0.20% Native American , 0.43% Asian , 0.01% Pacific Islander , 0.20% from other races , and 0.74% from two or more races. 0.74% of the population were Hispanic or Latino of any race. 28.2% were of American, 15.6% English, 11.0% German and 9.6% Irish ancestry according to Census 2000 . There were 23,838 households, out of which 32.50% had children under

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2436-412: The exact locality of the vault, so that no difficulty will be had in finding it. The second cipher can be decrypted fairly easily using a modified copy of the United States Declaration of Independence , but some editing is necessary. To decrypt it, one finds the word corresponding to the number (e.g., the first number is 115, and the 115th word in the Declaration of Independence is "instituted"), and takes

2494-497: The first letter of that word (in the case of the example, "I"). Beale used a version of the United States Declaration of Independence slightly different from the original, and made mistakes in numbering it. To extract the hidden message, the following five modifications must be applied to the original text: Furthermore: Finally, in the decoded text there are six errors, probably due to wrong transcription of

2552-430: The frequency of the last digit in each number in the ciphers. These frequencies are not uniformly distributed – some digits are more common than others. This is true for all three ciphers. However, if one considers a base that is relatively prime to 10, then the last digits of the numbers in the unsolved ciphers turn uniform – each digit is equally common. The frequency of the solved cipher stays non-uniform. This indicates

2610-520: The operating system reuses the disk space. With even low-end computers commonly sold with many gigabytes of disk space and rising monthly, this 'later time' may be months later, or never. Even overwriting the portion of a disk surface occupied by a deleted file is insufficient in many cases. Peter Gutmann of the University of Auckland wrote a celebrated 1996 paper on the recovery of overwritten information from magnetic disks; areal storage densities have gotten much higher since then, so this sort of recovery

2668-470: The original paper: Additional Declaration differences affect paper number 1: word 210 of the modified text ("more") is shown as "now"; words 919 and 920 of the modified text ("fellow citizens") are shown hyphenated (also affects paper number 3); two extra words ("made" and "the") are shown in modified text positions 1058 and 1188; a word is removed ("of") after modified text position 1125. The other slight changes probably have no consequences. Many versions of

2726-527: The pamphlet's account. The pamphlet's background story has several implausibilities, and is based almost entirely on circumstantial evidence and hearsay . There have been many attempts to break the remaining cipher(s). Most attempts have tried other historical texts as keys (e.g., Magna Carta , various books of the Bible , the U.S. Constitution , and the Virginia Royal Charter), assuming

2784-609: The pamphlet, show the original line-breaks for easy comparison. In the second cryptogram, the original cipher errors are highlighted in red. The plaintext of paper number 2 reads: I have deposited in the county of Bedford, about four miles from Buford's, in an excavation or vault, six feet below the surface of the ground, the following articles, belonging jointly to the parties whose names are given in number three, herewith: The first deposit consisted of ten hundred and fourteen pounds of gold, and thirty-eight hundred and twelve pounds of silver, deposited Nov. eighteen nineteen. The second

2842-472: The remaining keys or either a document of his own or randomly selected characters for the third source, in either case rendering any further attempts to crack the codes useless. A survey of U.S. Census records in 1810 shows two persons named Thomas Beale, in Connecticut and New Hampshire. However, the population schedules from the 1810 U.S. Census are completely missing for seven states, one territory,

2900-409: The remaining two ciphertexts are real or hoaxes . An early researcher, Carl Hammer of Sperry UNIVAC , used supercomputers of the late 1960s to analyze the ciphers and found that while the ciphers were poorly encoded, the two undeciphered ones did not show the patterns one would expect of randomly chosen numbers and probably encoded an intelligible text. Other questions remain about the authenticity of

2958-641: The second ciphertext, but it has nine differences from the actual one. The differences are shown here as {alleged decipherment | actual decipherment}: I have deposited, in the county of Bedford, about four miles from Buford's, in an excavation or vault, six feet below the surface of the ground, the following articles, belonging jointly to the parties whose names are given in number {“3,” | three} herewith: The first deposit consisted of {one thousand | ten hundred} and fourteen pounds of gold, and {three thousand | thirty-} eight hundred and twelve pounds of silver, deposited {November, 1819 | Nov. eighteen nineteen}. The second

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3016-400: The securing of information and its storage media from physical, attack—for instance by someone entering a building to access papers, storage media, or computers. Discarded material, if not disposed of securely, may be a security risk. Even shredded documents and erased magnetic media might be reconstructed with sufficient effort. If plaintext is stored in a computer file , the storage media,

3074-559: The vessels rest on solid stone, and are covered with others. Paper number {“1” | one} describes the exact locality of the vault, so that no difficulty will be had in finding it. The treasure's total weight is about 3  tons as described in inventory of the second cryptogram. This includes approximately 35,052  troy oz gold, 61,200 troy oz silver (worth about US $ 96,275,926 million and US$ 1 ,810,755.77 million, respectively, in October 2024) and jewels worth around US$ 220,000 in 2017. There has been considerable debate over whether

3132-400: Was advertised for sale in the 1880s. Since the publication of the pamphlet, a number of attempts have been made to decode the two remaining ciphertexts and to locate the treasure, but all efforts have resulted in failure. There are many arguments that the entire story is a hoax, including the 1980 article "A Dissenting Opinion" by cryptographer Jim Gillogly , and a 1982 scholarly analysis of

3190-454: Was made Dec. eighteen twenty-one, and consisted of nineteen hundred and seven pounds of gold, and twelve hundred and eighty-eight of silver; also jewels, obtained in St. Louis in exchange to save transportation, and valued at thirteen thousand dollars. The above is securely packed in iron pots, with iron covers. The vault is roughly lined with stone, and the vessels rest on solid stone, and are covered with others. Paper number one describes

3248-487: Was made concerning the ciphers called The Thomas Beale Cipher . In 2024, Dave Howard from Popular Mechanics wrote an article with interviews from a number of researchers who have been working to break the Beale Ciphers. A cryptographer named James Simpson had made a break in the Ciphers using a series of 111 alphabets ascending in their count to the number 2906, in the 112th alphabet. The Ciphers would then be arranged with

3306-419: Was made {December, 1821 | Dec. eighteen twenty-one}, and consisted of nineteen hundred and seven pounds of gold, and twelve hundred and eighty-eight {pounds | } of silver; also jewels, obtained in St. Louis in exchange {for silver | } to save transportation, and valued at {$ 13,000 | thirteen thousand dollars}. The above is securely packed in iron pots, with iron covers. The vault is roughly lined with stone, and

3364-614: Was taken with part of Henry County to form Franklin County . The town of Bedford became an independent city in 1968, and remained the county seat. On September 14, 2011, the Bedford City Council voted to transition into a town and end its independent city status. The supervisors of Bedford County also voted to accept the town of Bedford as part of the county when it lost city status. The town of Bedford once more became part of Bedford County on July 1, 2013. According to

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