QAnon’s coded conspiracy messages look like random typing, says analyst
The researcher says Q likes to type "on the ends of each side of the keyboard and alternate."
QAnon believers at a Trump rally.
Have you ever thought that maybe QAnon's coded messages are just randomly typed?
On Monday, security researcher Mark Burnett tweeted a keyboard heat map of a chunk of QAnon codes, saying "these are not actual codes, just random typing." The order of the characters suggests whoever typed them might also play a musical instrument and types on a US QWERTY keyboard, he added.
If you just take the codes I posted earlier, stripping out all words, this is what the keyboard heatmap looks like. pic.twitter.com/fiU9lbM3Kh
— Mark Burnett (@m8urnett) August 14, 2018
You might remember Burnett from 2015, when he compiled and published 10 million usernames and passwords online. Burnett published the dataset for "further research with the goal of making authentication more secure."
Burnett's analysis of QAnon's typing comes as the QAnon conspiracy theory jumps from 4chan and 8chan message boards to Twitter and real life. Q, as the poster calls him- or herself, claims to have insight into the inner circles of the US government. The QAnon phenomenon ties President Donald Trump, North Korea, Tom Hanks (yes, Tom Hanks!) and much more together.
QAnon and its followers rely partially on coded messages posted online, the same coded messages that Burnett says are gibberish.
"The funny thing about people is that even when we type random stuff we tend to have a signature," Burnett said in a Twitter thread. "This guy, for example, likes to have his hand on the ends of each side of the keyboard (e.g., 1,2,3 and 7,8,9) and alternate."
Q didn't immediately respond to a tweet request for comment. We'll update with any response, assuming we can decode it!