FBI Has Recipe for Ricin on Website
By Rainer Leurs
The US Capitol was put on high alert after a letter to a senator was found
to contain the deadly poison ricin. Days later a German cryptology
enthusiast discovered something surprising: The FBI has lightly encrypted
instructions on how to make ricin on its website.
Star, arrow, rune, figure eight -- at first glance, it looks like nothing
more than a series of hieroglyphics strung together on the website of the
FBI, the federal investigating authority of the United States. But it's an
easy-to-follow recipe for the deadly poison ricin, handwritten in a code
that even laymen can decipher.
The text was published in March 2011 on the pages of the Cryptanalysis and
Racketeering Records Unit (CRRU). There it served as an example of the work
of the bureau's decoding experts. Curiously enough, no secret is made of the
document's contents. The photo is captioned: "Enciphered instructions for
making ricin poison found in the notebook of a lone bomber in Virginia."
"I of course assumed that the note was either not decipherable or didn't
contain the real recipe," says author and cryptology expert Klaus Schmeh. He
came across the surprising material and posted the code on his blog. "To my
surprise, two readers cracked the code and determined that it was a complete
recipe," he says.
Easy Enough for Laymen to Crack
The instructions do indeed describe how to produce the highly deadly
substance with little more than a few household appliances. "It's a very
crude method for the enrichment of proteins, generally speaking," explains
Wolfgang Kreis, professor for pharmaceutical biology at the University of
Erlangen. "It should work."
Ricin is contained in the seeds of the castor oil plant, and is considered
one of the most poisonous protein substances that appears in nature. In its
isolated form, it takes just one milligram to kill an adult person. The FBI
document wouldn't result in the deadliest form of ricin, but the end product
would still be extremely poisonous, according to a German chemical company.
What's even more surprising is that the encoded instructions on the FBI site
are not particularly hard to crack. "That's doable for the interested
layman," says Johannes Blömer, chairman of the codes and cryptography
working group at the University of Paderborn. "If the FBI doesn't want it to
be decoded, they shouldn't have put it up on their website. The algorithm
isn't that clever."
One of the readers of Klaus Schmeh's blog didn't need more than an hour to
finish decoding the text. He says he'd rather not give his name. "I think
it's definitely noteworthy that the FBI would publish this note, knowing
full well what it's about," he says.
No one from the FBI was immediately available for comment.
On Tuesday a letter sent to US Senator Roger Wicker of Mississippi and
intercepted by authorities at a center handling the post for the Capitol in
Washington DC tested positive for ricin, sparking fears in Washington after
two bombs at the Boston Marathon killed three people. The FBI and the US
Capitol Police are investigating, and neither has drawn a connection between
the two incidents.
URL:
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/fbi-has-encrypted-recipe-for-deadl
y-poison-ricin-on-website-a-894981.html
Related SPIEGEL ONLINE links:
Photo Gallery: FBI Has Encrypted Ricin Recipe on Website
http://www.spiegel.de/fotostrecke/fotostrecke-95689.html
World from Berlin: US Reaction to Boston Shows 'New Maturity'
(04/17/2013)
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,894852,00.html
Photo Gallery: Boston Mourns Marathon Bombing Victims
http://www.spiegel.de/fotostrecke/fotostrecke-95662.html
Show of Solidarity: Europe Shocked by Boston Bombings (04/16/2013)
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,894612,00.html
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