Researchers Crack Secret Society's 18th Century Code, Target World's Most Mysterious Book

University of Southern California and Uppsala University

Pages from the "Copiale Cipher, " a mysterious cryptogram, bound in gold and green brocade paper, that was finally cracked by an international team of cryptographers.

They're going to need a bigger secret decoder ring. 

A team of researchers that made headlines for decoding a secret society's 18th century manuscript is working to reveal the secret behind an even more mysterious book -- one that the world has yet to decode.

Found in a chest of books outside Rome by a dealer in antique books, the Voynich manuscript has remained one of history’s biggest mysteries: Its aging parchment is coated in alien characters and has for centuries mystified scientists. And Kevin Knight, a computer scientist with USC's Viterbi School of Engineering who recently helped crack the Copiale Cipher, believes the same techniques could be used to tackle literature’s great mystery manuscript.

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