The simplest methods for encrypting text. Simple ciphers and their decryption
In the courtyard of the CIA building in Langley stands S-shaped copper plate with encrypted text. This is the most famous element of the sculpture "Kryptos", its authors are sculptor James Sanborn and Ed Scheidt, the retired head of the CIA cryptographic department. They came up with a code that is difficult to decipher, but quite possible. At least that's what they thought.
According to the authors, “Kryptos” personifies the process of collecting information. The Kryptos cipher is 869 characters, divided into four parts. The creators assumed that it would take about seven months to solve the first three parts, and about seven years to solve the entire problem. 23 years later, there is still no complete decryption. "Cryptos" is practiced by amateurs (there has been a group of about 1,500 people on Yahoo! since 2003) and professionals (from the CIA and NSA) - their task is complicated by intentional mistakes made by Sanborn and Scheidt (partly to confuse people, partly for aesthetic reasons).
It is believed that Sanborn is the only person on the planet who knows the answer to "Kryptos". The sculptor says that people, obsessed with the code he created, call and say terrible things: “They call me the devil’s servant, because I have a secret that I don’t share with anyone.” Sanborn says that if he dies, the answer will definitely go to someone else, but adds that he wouldn't be completely upset if the right decision remains a mystery forever.
Murderer, about whom nothing is still known, sent encrypted letters to California newspapers, promising that they would contain clues to his identity. The first message of the Zodiac (August 1969) consisted of three parts and 408 characters; an ordinary Californian couple deciphered it the fastest. The meaning of the letter was that killing people is much more interesting than killing animals, because man is the most dangerous creature on the planet. “I will go to heaven where those I killed will become my slaves,” the note read. This was the last successful attempt to decipher the Zodiac cryptogram. The contents of the postcard with a 340-character code, which arrived three months later at the San Francisco Chronicle, remains a mystery. “Can you print it on the first page? I feel terribly lonely when people don’t notice me,” the killer asked in the accompanying letter. It is this code that is depicted on the poster of David Fincher's film Zodiac.
A few days later, Zodiac sent another letter in which he encrypted his name - it also remained unsolved. Then there was a letter in which the killer threatened to blow up a school bus. He attached a map and a code to it - with their help it was allegedly possible to find a bomb that was planned to be used for a terrorist attack. No one could figure out this code either, but there was no explosion either. Attempts to unravel the Zodiac codes continue. In 2011, amateur cryptographer Corey Starliper said he deciphered a 340-character message and found in it a confession from Arthur Lee Allen, once the prime suspect in the Zodiac case, but released due to lack of evidence. Many newspapers wrote about Starliper, but it quickly became clear that his method did not stand up to criticism.
Phaistos disc. It is believed that the hieroglyphic inscriptions on the Phaistos Disc presumably belong to the Minoan civilization that lived on the island of Crete. A clay disk with hieroglyphs written on both sides in the form of a spiral was discovered in 1908. Experts have determined that there are 45 different hieroglyphs on the disk, and some of them are similar to signs used in the early palace period.
18th century shepherd's monument in Staffordshire, England. It contains a strange sequence of letters DOUOSVAVVM - a code that has not been deciphered for more than 250 years. The author of this cipher is unknown, some believe that this code may be a clue left by the Knights Templar as to the location of the Holy Grail. Many of the greatest minds have tried to decipher this code and failed, including Charles Dickens and Charles Darwin.
Linear writing. Also found in Crete and named after British archaeologist Arthur Evans. In 1952, Michael Ventris deciphered Linear B, which was used to encrypt Mycenaean, the oldest language. known variants Greek But Linear A has only been partially solved, and the solved fragments are written in some language unknown to science, not related to any known language.
In 1933, General Wang of Shanghai, China, was issued seven gold bars. The ingots were engraved with drawings and inscriptions on Chinese and cryptograms, partly in Latin letters. Presumably these are certificates issued by an American bank. The inscriptions in Chinese speak of a deal worth more than US$300 million.
John F. Byrne invented the Chaocipher encryption method in 1918. Byrne considered it very simple, but still difficult to decipher, and for 40 years he tried unsuccessfully to interest the American government in his invention. He even offered a reward to anyone who could solve his code, but no one ever applied for the reward. Only last year, his family handed over all the papers regarding the cipher to the museum, and specialists managed to figure out his method.
Signal "Wow!"- a strong narrow-band cosmic radio signal recorded by Dr. Jerry Eyman on August 15, 1977 while working on the Big Ear radio telescope at Ohio State University. Under this name, the Signal was captured in the history of the “Program for the Search for Extraterrestrial Civilizations”, as still undeciphered.
British mathematicians participated in the underwater battles of World War II in their own way. Halfway between Oxford and Cambridge, in the town of Milton Keynes, at the height of the war, a kind of institute was set up where Alan Turing and other famous scientists worked on breaking the code that Germany used to communicate with submarines. German code breakers used a device similar to a typewriter with two keyboards: one regular, the other with light bulbs. When the radio operator hit the key with her finger, the light flashed under some other letter. This letter should have been added to the encrypted version of the message. Without a single sample of Enigma at hand, Turing was able to understand the principle of the machine’s operation and build his decoder based on logical reasoning alone. British historian Hinsley even stated that the breakthrough in cryptanalysis brought the end of World War II closer by two, if not four years. The exceptional role that breaking the Enigma code played in the victory over the Nazis was also cited by Queen Elizabeth II of Great Britain when she posthumously pardoned the mathematician several months ago. In 1952, Turing was sentenced to chemical castration for homosexuality, after which the scientist committed suicide.
Jotunvillur. There are only a few thousand runic inscriptions: orders of magnitude fewer texts than classical antiquity left behind. And then we are usually talking about short fragmentary phrases on tablets or on stones. Jonas Nordby, a graduate student in linguistics at the University of Oslo, focused on 80 encrypted ones: if you try to read them as is, it will come out nonsense. Nine, as it turned out, use a fairly simple algorithm, by the standards of modern cryptography - the author of the study calls it Jotunvillur: the rune is replaced by one whose name (“rune name”) ends with the desired letter. Why be so secretive is understandable in some cases. One of the inscriptions on the tablets read by Nordby reads “Kiss me.” Given that both the recipient and the sender of the message had to at least be able to read, then both were probably men.
During World War II, the British Army often used pigeons to transmit encrypted messages. In 2012, a resident of Surrey (southern England) found the remains of a bird in the chimney of his house, with a container with a message attached to its leg. The text was intended for a certain XO2 and was signed “W Stot Sjt”. After studying the message, experts from the British Government Communications Center came to the conclusion that without access to the code books used to create the cipher, it is almost impossible to find the correct solution. “Messages like this were designed to be read only by the sender and the recipient. Unless we know something about who wrote the letter or who it was intended for, we will not be able to decipher it,” said an anonymous GCC worker in an interview with the BBC.
On December 1, 1948, a man's body was found on Somerton Beach in Adelaide.. There were no signs of violence on the body; all that was on him were cigarettes, a box of matches, a pack of chewing gum, a comb, a bus ticket and a train ticket. The pathologist who performed the autopsy was unable to determine the exact cause of his death, but suggested that the victim was most likely poisoned with a poison, traces of which disappear from the body within a few hours. A month and a half later, police found a suitcase at Adelaide train station that apparently belonged to the murdered man. Inside were various tools and clothes with tags torn off - including trousers with a secret pocket in which they found a piece of paper torn from a book with the inscription “Tamam Shud”. The required book turned out to be an extremely rare edition of a collection of poetry by Omar Khayyam. On the last page there was a code written in pencil that has not been solved for more than 60 years. In 1978, the Australian Department of Defense issued a statement: it could be a code, it could be a meaningless set of characters, it’s impossible to say for sure. Since 2009, attempts to decipher the cryptogram have been underway at the University of Adelaide. Researchers have come to the conclusion that this is indeed some kind of cipher, but there is still no solution to either the cipher or the Taman Shud case itself, one of the most famous mysteries in the history of Australia.
In the first edition of the book Codes and Ciphers English cartographer and cryptographer of Russian origin Alexander D'Agapeev published a code that still remains unsolved. After the book was published, the author admitted that he had forgotten the correct answer. In subsequent editions of Codes and Ciphers there was no cryptogram. It has been proven that the D’Agapeev cipher is indeed based on a certain system (that is, it is not just a random set of symbols), but it turned out to be too complicated. In the early 1950s, The Cryptogram magazine announced a reward for deciphering the code, but the correct answer was still not found.
On July 14, 1897, the famous English composer Edward Elgar sent a note to Dorabella- that’s what he called his friend Dora Penny. "Miss Penny," it said on one side of the card. The other had a three-line cipher of 87 characters. Dora was unable to decipher the message, and it sat in her desk drawer for 40 years before it was reprinted in Penny's book of Elgar memoirs. Deciphering the composer's letter, some tried to make do with the simplest method of replacing symbols with letters, others came to the conclusion that it was not the words that were hidden here, but the melody. Some received messages in which absolutely nothing was clear, while others received extremely lyrical texts, full of dreaminess and love. There is still no final decision; The decoding competition held in 2007 in honor of Elgar’s 150th anniversary also ended in nothing.
Georgia Tablets- a large granite monument in Elbert County in Georgia, USA. The monument contains a long inscription at 8 modern languages, and at the top of the monument there is a shorter inscription in 4 ancient languages: Akkadian, classical Greek, Sanskrit and ancient Egyptian. The monument contains no encrypted messages, but its purpose and origin remain a mystery. It was erected by a man whose identity has never been established.
Voynich manuscript, which is often called the most mysterious book in the world. The manuscript uses a unique alphabet, has about 250 pages and includes drawings depicting unknown flowers, naked nymphs and astrological symbols. It first appeared at the end of the 16th century, when Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II bought it in Prague from an unknown merchant for 600 ducats (about 3.5 kg of gold, today more than 50 thousand dollars). From Rudolph II the book passed to nobles and scientists, and at the end of the 17th century it disappeared. The manuscript reappeared around 1912, when it was purchased by the American bookseller Wilfrid Voynich. After his death, the manuscript was donated to Yale University. British scientist Gordon Wragg believes that the book is a clever hoax.
The text contains features that are not characteristic of any language. On the other hand, some features, such as the length of words and the way letters and syllables are connected, are similar to those existing in real languages. “Many people think that this is all too complicated to be a hoax, and it would take some mad alchemist years to build such a system,” says Rugg. However, Rugg shows that such complexity could be achieved easily by using a encryption device invented around 1550 called Cardan's reticle. In this symbol table, words are created by moving a card with holes cut in it. The spaces left in the table result in words of different lengths. By superimposing such lattices on the manuscript's syllable table, Rugg created a language that shares many, if not all, of the features of the manuscript's language. According to him, it would take three months to create the entire book.
Inspired by the Voynich manuscript, in 1981 Italian designer and the architect Luigi Serafini published his album, designed in the same style: 360 pages of text in an unknown language and miniatures in the spirit of a medieval natural science treatise. Only if a historical manuscript can be suspected of describing some real flora and fauna, then in Serafini horses smoothly turn into caterpillars, and a young man and girl having sex on the storyboard turn into a crocodile.
In all interviews, Serafini claims that the text is meaningless, and there is no need to look for logic in the sequence of miniatures - which, of course, only fuels interest in the book among cryptology enthusiasts.
Rongo-rongo, kohau rongorongo- wooden tablets with letters from the inhabitants of Easter Island. It is currently unclear whether each symbol represents a separate word or syllable. All rongo-rongos are made from toromiro wood. Today, only about 25 “tablets” have survived in museums around the world. Traditionally, they are numbered with letters of the Latin alphabet, which, however, is not the only way to designate the “tables”, among which there is one staff, two inscriptions on the chest decoration of the reimiro, as well as an inscription on the snuff box and on the figure of tangata manu. The hieroglyphs are partly symbolic, partly geometric, in total about eight hundred different characters (according to Bartel's catalogue).
Bale cryptograms- 3 encrypted messages containing information about the location of a treasure of gold, silver and precious stones, allegedly buried in Virginia near Lynchburg by a party of gold miners led by Thomas Jefferson Bale. The price of the unfound treasure in modern terms should be about 30 million dollars.
Telegraf
Falcon Travis
TRANSLATION FROM ENGLISH LAKHMAKOV V.L.
CODES AND CIPHERS
Super spy
Secrets of codes and ciphers
Preface
During World War II, Falcon Travis served in the unit military intelligence, whose task was radio interception, decoding and deciphering of various kinds of messages, determining the locations of those who sent and received such messages.
The reader is given a unique opportunity to enjoy composing and exchanging messages with friends that no one will understand except you and your friends.
In this book you can learn all about polyalphabetic ciphers, grids, symbols, acrostics, invisible ink and special code words “Owl” and “Hawk”.
The book presents in a fascinating way aspects of organizing games and competitions using codes and ciphers, as well as special chapters that talk in a fascinating way about how to become a codebreaker. In short, here you will learn what will help you become a super spy!
The characters and situations described in this book are only a figment of the author’s imagination and have nothing to do with any real face or an event.
Any coincidence is the fruit of pure chance.
Translation from English
V.L. Lakhmakova
Copyright © V.L. Lakhmakov, 2013
Chapters: Pages:
Preface 1
1. About codes and ciphers 2 - 4
2. Moving ciphers 5 - 13
3 Large movement 14 - 23
4. Simple substitution ciphers 23 - 34
5. Large substitution ciphers 34 - 40
6. Ciphers - symbols 40 - 44
7. Hidden codes and ciphers 45 - 51
8. Attempts to crack the code 51 - 55
9. Codes in games and competitions 55 - 61
10. Invisible ink 62 - 69
Chapter 1
About codes and ciphers
On a cold January morning in 1975, newspaper headlines announced the death of the secret code. “Writing kills code!” one newspaper loudly declared. The story under this title talked about a radio and television interview with a certain person who was very informed at that time in these matters. During the interview, a long letter was read out, which had previously been radioed in a secret code to an agent in London. “A free gift to the listening world of cryptographers!” the article shouted, meaning that radio interceptors were able to intercept the message thus sent to London by radio and it was later announced in a completely decrypted form during the interview. Apparently, however, this message-letter itself was not of particular interest in its content to the interceptor decipherers, but they learned enough from it about the secret cipher with which the contents of the letter were hidden, so that it would be extremely difficult to use this cipher a second time. unsafe. From all that was said, it followed that the letter actually “killed” the secret code. This morning's January newspaper news clearly highlighted the serious problem of codes and ciphers. The so-called “invisible ink” also has its own problem, if only because of its long association only with spies of all stripes. And therefore they have a kind of rather serious approach and attitude towards themselves. However, the codes, ciphers and invisible ink described later in our book are not given in such a serious association, but in a lighter one - just for fun. Codes and ciphers (it must be borne in mind that a cipher is very different from a code) vary greatly in their types and degrees of secrecy, in order to be suitable for various ways of using them - exchanging secret messages with friends, finding and hiding treasures, preserving your their own secrets, and in many other cases, especially in the widespread outdoor games called "wide games" by scouts, in which invisible writing may be used to enhance the sense of pleasure, excitement and mystery. Some of the codes and ciphers we are talking about here will not be a discovery for those who already know about the science of cryptography, but some may be encountered for the first time in this book. Here we can include invisible ink, and in particular on a non-chemical basis. Some of the ciphers (and there are about fifty types and at least half of their variations) are so simple that they are hardly a secret at all, but they can also be very puzzling by adding an element of practical jokes to short-term games or gaming activities, or sometimes and similar long-term activities. Invisible ink, particularly of a non-chemical type and also developed by non-chemical methods, can serve the same purpose of entertainment. On the other hand, there are also ciphers that are so secure in their cryptography that even an experienced codebreaker will need quite long time to open it (hacking), without an encryption key.
In order to detailed explanation some terms used in cryptography, let's follow the procedure that precedes the appearance of a letter/message similar to that outlined in that January note.
First the message had to be written in ordinary language (called "plain language" or "pure"); it is then handed over to the cipherman, who must change the "plain language" of the letter into an encrypted one, called "ciphering" or "encoding" if any code is used. is a encryption alphabet, i.e. a method of manually or machine enciphering the letters of a common language. The result of enciphering or encoding is called a cryptogram. After which the radio operator radioed it in Morse code to the destination, where his cipher operator, using an identical key, deciphered, or (in the case of encoding) decoded the message into an understandable “simple language”.
The word "code" is usually used to refer to both code and cipher, but in cryptography there is a difference between them, and a very significant one.
The cipher is based on the alphabet of a common language, just like Morse code. A message conveyed in Morse code (which is not actually a secret cipher) must be spelled out. It’s the same with a secret code.
The code is more like a phrase book, where sentences, phrases, individual words and numbers are represented by groups of letters of the same length, usually no more than 3, 4 or 5 letters per group. For example, "AMZ" can stand instead of "YES", and "QTR" instead of "10000", and "GYX" instead of "We don't have enough fuel". A code is much more difficult to crack than a cipher, since, unlike a cipher, it is not based on the alphabet of the language you know, and is much faster to operate. However, the main advantage of a cipher is that any form of expression can be encrypted. While in a code, compound words, numbers, and word groups (groups of words) can be encoded, although most codes do include individual alphabets. Codes are usually compiled for ease of use by any user. For example, a Navy code will consist primarily of maritime terms and phrases, while a code used in commercial activities will consist primarily of so-called “business phrases.” Commercial codes are used less to protect certain secrets than to save money, because... telegraph companies receive words, but a code group consisting of a number of words often carries the load of only one word.
There are two main classes of ciphers used in everyday life: substitution ciphers and transposition ciphers.
In the first case, an ordinary letter is replaced by various letters or letters, or numbers or symbols.
In the second case, the ordinary letters remain ordinary, but they are mixed in a systematic manner that hides their original meaning.
In some mixed systems, it is necessary to add letters that do not carry a semantic load in this particular case, in order to complicate the message. Such letters are called “zeros” by professionals. A message closed with a code is not interrupted by punctuation marks. Any punctuation, especially a question mark, helps someone else's code breaker easily crack your code. In cryptography, there are no authorities responsible for standardizing the terms used, which explains why there are so many different terms used to denote the same objects or concepts. There are also ciphers under several different names, while there are others that do not have them at all. In this book, all the ciphers we encounter, both nameless and named, once had their own names, sometimes even for the sake of a simple reference to them.
Other terms will be explained as they appear, and some explanations given earlier will be repeated by us to develop your skill in using them.
Chapter 2
Moving ciphers
This type of cipher, and any other cipher that quite easily makes messages secret, by systematically shifting or otherwise “stirring up the original letters” instead of changing them into symbols, numbers or other letters, is called a transposition cipher. Some of them are so simple that they hardly constitute a secret at all, while others keep their secret even from fairly experienced codebreakers for months. There are also a number of transposition ciphers - called "transpo" for short. If necessary, the message can be accompanied by a pre-agreed code word or letter (called an “indicator”) to inform your correspondent of what code is used to cover this particular message. Of course, you can coordinate the exchange of messages without “indicators”, just for the pleasure of unraveling the encryption yourself.
If, in the case of using very simple ciphers in this first group, the message does not seem secure enough, then you will probably find that another cipher makes that particular message more secure.
When we start translating a message into transpo, the first thing we need to do is write out the normal message in blocks of capital letters. This will greatly facilitate the encryption process and help you save a copy of what you actually encrypted.
Let's consider several ciphers of the above category:
RANDOM DIVISION CIPHER
The letters of the message remain in their original order, but are rearranged in such a way that they disguise the words. Can you decipher the message below? It is the same as the message used for most of the following ciphers:
W EN OWME E TINO URS HED
WORD PERMANTUTION CIPHER. CIPHER "r e v"
The words of the message remain in their original order, but each of them is spelled in reverse order:
EW WON TEEM NI RUO DEHS
COMPLETE PERmutation CIPHER. CIPHER “r e v”
The entire message is written using the permutation method, word by word:
DEHS RUO NI TEEM WON EW
RANDOM PERMANTUTION CIPHER.
Like a total permutation cipher, the message is written using the total permutation method, but instead of arranging the words in the usual, normal way, you rearrange the order in a way that will confuse anyone who is not intended to be deceived by the message. This cipher is actually a RANDOM PERMANTUTION CIPHER, but it is more secure:
DEHS RUO NITE EMWO NEW
CIPHER OF PERmutation GROUPS. CIPHERS “r e v”
In such ciphers, the entire message is written using the permutation method, from the last letter to the first, then divided into groups of the same number of letters: 3, 4 or 5.
In ciphers as simple as this type, there is usually a choice of grouping of letters, because One way of grouping the letters of a message can often provide a greater degree of privacy than another.
(1.) TRIPLE PERmutation CIPHER
First of all, write out your message and count the number of letters it contains. If this number is not divisible by 3, add "zeros" until you get that number. These "zeros" should be added to the end of the normal message, and then they will appear at the beginning of the encryption, where they will not interfere with your decipherer of this message. Care must also be taken to select “zeros” that cannot be perceived as part of the message. Then, write the message using the rearrangement method, in 3-letter groups. Decryption begins from the end, and is either read word by word and written down, or the entire message is written down at once, and only then divided into words using a step-by-step recording method.
(2.) QUARTER PERmutation CIPHER
The encryption and decryption procedures are the same as for (1), except that the number of letters in the message must be divided by 4, with the addition of “zeros” if necessary. Then, the message is written in 4 letter groups.
(3.) FINAL PERmutation CIPHER
The same as the above methods (1) and (2), but in this case the message is divided into 5-letter groups, with the addition of “zeros” if necessary.
Here's the usual, simple message:
WE NOW MEET IN OUR SHED
Here is the process of encrypting it:
(1)Triple permutation cipher: DEH SRU ONI TEE MWO NEW
(6 groups)
(2)Quadruple permutation cipher: QJDE HSRU ONIT EEMW ONEW (5 groups)
(3)Quintuple permutation cipher: YZDEH SRUON ITEEM WONEW (4 groups)
CIPHER OF THE UPCOMING “ZERO”
Divide your simple message into 3-letter groups. If there are not enough letters in the last group, add "zeros". Please note that such non-meaningful letters of the cipher would not be mistakenly perceived by the addressee as part of your message. Then add any letter of the alphabet to the beginning of each 3-letter group:
OWEN BOWM FEET LINO FURS AHED
Your codebreaker will simply cross out the first letter in each group and read the message. The step-by-step division of words makes reading much easier.
CIPHER OF POSTSTANDING ZERO
The method is the same as the Coming Zero Cipher, except that a special letter is placed at the end of each 3-letter group, but remember to first add "zeros" to the last group, if necessary, to make 3 letter group:
WENT OWME EETH INOS URST HEDZ
Decoding is done by crossing out the last letter in each group.
CIPHERS "A - ZERO" and "ZERO - A"
(1) Cipher "A-Zero": a "zero" is added after each letter of the message. Zeros can be any letters of the alphabet. In this cipher, the encrypted message is always twice as long as the original message, so it is more suitable for short messages.
To decrypt, you just need to cross out all the “zeros”, and you will receive the message intended for you. You need to start by crossing out every second letter of the message, and then every alternating letter at the end.
(2) Null-A Cipher: This cipher is used in the same way as A-Null, but in this case the zeros are placed before the letters of the message instead of after them.
Here's an example of a simple message: WE ARE GOING TODAY
(1) Code “A-Zero”: WREN AGREES GOOGISNOGY TROMDRAVYS
(2) Code “Zero-A”: AWLE FAIRIE OGNORILNIG STROPDRAKY
CIPHER FOR ADDITIVES TO A VOWEL. CIPHER “VOWEL-PLUS”
After each vowel and letter Y, add any letter except the vowel or Y. To decipher, cross out the letter following each vowel and Y, the message will be read as expected. Simple message:
I AM NOT GOING TO CAMP SO YOU MAY HAVE MY SLEEPING BAG The same message in this code:
IS ARM NOWT GOGIGNG TOP CASMP SON YKOLUM MAPYK HALVED MYG SLBEMPIRNGBANG
CIPHER “SANDWICH”
Write a simple message - a message. Count the number of letters and divide the message in half using step-by-step notation. If the message has an odd number of letters, then let the first half contain an additional letter. Then, write out the first half of the message with enough space between letters to add another letter. Now, in the first gap, write the first letter of the second half, then in the second gap - the second letter from the same place, and so on until the entire second half fills the “sandwich” of the first half. The encryption can be composed in one long series of letters, or divided into groups of equal or random length. Here is the encryption, where the first letter of the second part is added:
WE NOW MEET\IN OUR SHED
WIEN O W ME E T
To decipher, read the first and each subsequent letter to the end of the line, then the second and each subsequent letter to the end of the line; or write the letters in the order shown and separate the words with a “step by step” line.
OSCILLATING CIPHER
This cipher assumes an odd number of letters. First, write down your message, count the number of letters, and add a “zero” if necessary. Start by writing the first letter in the middle of the line, the next letter to the left of the first, the next to the right of the first, and so on, alternating between letters on the right and left until your message is complete. Let's give an example with the first 9 letters of the alphabet: H,F,D,B,A,C,E,G,I and a sample message encrypted in this way: DHROIEMOEWNWETNUSEQ
Such encryption can be sent either as a whole or in groups of letters, as far as this order allows preserving the same letters. To decipher, find the middle letter and read the message, one letter at a time, alternating the order: left - right, left - right to the end.
CIPHER "ZIGZAG"
This cipher is also known as "Palisade" and is said to have been used during Civil War in America.
Write the message, then count the number of letters it contains. If this quantity is not divisible by 4, add “zeros” as indicated in (A) (see page 10). After this, write the message without spaces between words and with each alternating letter below the line, as in (B). Now you are ready to write a message for subsequent forwarding. On the sheet of paper chosen for the message, start writing the top line of the 4 letter groups, and continue writing by combining lines, as in (B). Deciphering such a message is simple. First of all, count the number of letters in the received message, and mark half with a thick dot or an oblique line. Then write on one line all the letters of the first half of the message, leaving enough space between the letters to be able to substitute another letter. In these spaces write the letters of the second half of the message, inserting the first letter into the next space, etc. until the end, as indicated in (D) , showing a half-done decryption:
(A) WE NOW MEET IN OUR SHED QZ
(B) W N W E T N U S E Q
E O M E I O R H D Z
(B) WNWE TNUS EQ.EO MEIO RHDZ
(D) WE / NOW / MEET / IN U S E Q
E O M E I O R H D Z
CIPHER “OWL” (“OWL”)
Write down your message without leaving spaces between the words, but above it, above it, repeat the word “OWL” for the entire length of the line, and write only once vertically from top to bottom on one side, as shown. The last word on the top line “OWL” must be complete and have the letters of the message underneath it. This means that the message must be divisible by 3, even using "zeros" if necessary. Then each letter of the message is put into a row with the same letter that stands above it. This divides the message into three rows, which are then written out one after the other, forming an encrypted message.
The grouping is different. There is an element of chance here. The decipherer, knowing for sure that the message uses the OWL cipher, first counts the number of letters in the message, divides it into 3 equal parts, and gives each part one letter of the keyword. Then he writes down a series of “OWL” - words sufficient to cover the entire message (1), and then under the letters “O” he writes all the letters belonging to the letters of the group “O”.
(1) OWLOWLOWLOWLOWLOWL (2) O W O E I U H
WENOWMEET I NOUR SHED W E W E N R E . L N M T O S D
(3) WOEI UHE WENR EN MTOSD
After this, he sequentially enters two other groups (2) and the message becomes deciphered and readable. Here his work is almost complete:
1) OWLOWLOWLOWLOWL 2) O W L
WE OW EE I N U R HE WOEI UH E WENR E N MTOSD
CIPHER "HAWK" and "RAVEN"
These ciphers are similar to the SOVA cipher (OWL), but the messages are grouped into 4 5 parts, respectively. They work this way:
HAWKHAWKHAWKHAWKHAWK RAVE N RAVENRAVENRAVEN
WENOWMEET I NO U RS HED QZ WENOWME ET INOURSH EDQZ
H W W T U E R W M N H
A E M I R D A E E O E
W N E N S Q V N E U D
K O E O H Z E O T R Q
N W I S Z
WWTUE EMIRD NENSQ OEOHZ
WMNH EEQE NEUD OTRQ WISZ
Decryption is carried out in the same way as in the case of the SOVA cipher.
CIPHER "MARG"
These light ciphers are more secure than any of the above. So, write your message in capital letters and leave space at the bottom for another row of capital letters. After this, using oblique lines, divide the message into groups according to the cipher you use (3,4,5). If the last group does not have enough letters, add "zeros".
The following examples show how to perform encryption:
(a) - shows a message written and divided by oblique lines
(b) - shows encrypted individual groups, permutation methods
(c) - shows how an encrypted message is recorded for sending
(d) - shows another way of writing the same message.
Random grouping always makes the cipher look more secret. It may help the decipherer if you leave some space below the lines of your message.
CIPHER “BI-MARG”
The message is divided into two letter groups:
(a) WE\NO\W M\EE\T I\N O\UR\SH\ED\
(b) EW\ON\M W\EE\I T\O N\RU\HS\DE\
Encrypted message:
(c) EW ON MW EE IT ON RU HS DE
(d) EWON MWEE ITO NR UHSDE
CIPHER "TRI-MARG"
The message is divided into three-letter groups:
(a) WE N/ OW M / EET / IN O / UR S / HED
(b) NE W/ MW O / TEE / ON I / SR U / DEH
Encrypted message:
(c) NEW MWO TEE ONI SRU DEH
(d) NE WMW OTE EONIS RUD EH
CIPHER "QUAD – MARG"
The message is divided into four-letter groups:
(a) WE NO / W MEE / T IN O / UR SH / EDQZ
(b) ON EW / E EMW / O NI T / HS RU / ZODE
Encrypted message:
(c) ONEW EEMW ONIT HSRU ZQDE
(d) ONE WEEM WON ITHS RUZ QDE
CIPHER "QUIN –MARG"
The message is divided into five-letter groups:
(a) WE NOW / MEET I / N OUR S / HEDQZ
(b) WO NEW / ITEE M/ S RUO N/ ZQDEH
Encrypted message:
(c) WONEW ITEEM SRUON ZQDEH
(d) WO NEWIT EEMS ROONZ QDEH
CIPHER "VARI-MARG"
The message is divided into random groups:
(a) WE NO / W ME / ET / IN OU / R SHED
(b) ON EW / E MW/ TE / UO IN / D EHSR
encrypted message:
(c) ONEW EMW TE UONI DEHSR
To decrypt, simply divide the message into groups according to which encryption is carried out, and below each group write the same letters by rearrangement. In this case, the message will open itself.
CIPHER "TWISTED COMMUNICATION"
Write down your message, then rewrite it in groups of 3, 4 or 5 letters. Add "zeros" if necessary to complete the last group. Below are some examples:
(a) WEN OWM EET INO URS HED
(b) WENO WMEE TINO URSH EDQZ
(c) WENOW MEETI NOURS HEDQZ
Then place the two final letters between the groups, as shown in the following example, and write the result as an encrypted message:
(a) WEO NWE MEI TNU ORH SED
(b) WENW OMET EINU ORSE HDQZ
(c) WENOM WEETN IOURH SEDQZ
Decryption is carried out by moving the final letters between groups. “Twisted connection” (c) is perhaps the most secret for keeping your specific message from prying eyes.
Big move
"SCYTALE"
Scytale - bar cylindrical, is the earliest mechanical encryption device described in history - the first encryption "machine". As a scytale, you can use a pencil, or something similar, but thicker and longer, but no more than 20 cm in length, or just a tube of any length, but of the same diameter, agreed upon with your recipient. Then you will need a long strip of paper no more than 2 centimeters wide. The blank margins of a newspaper sheet or a long strip from a double page of any magazine may work. What is the process of working with scytale?
Start by securing the beginning of the paper tape to the beginning of the “wand” using a thumbtack or rubber band. Now wind this tape in a spiral around the “rod” so that each next turn covers almost half the width of the previous turn and secure the end of the tape with a button, rubber band or the like. The simplest option for uniformly winding the tape is to secure the beginning of the tape with one hand and rotate the “rod” clockwise, while simultaneously allowing the paper tape to slide freely through the fingers of the other hand.
To record your message, fix the “staff” in a horizontal position, with the beginning of the tape fixed from left to right, holding the “staff” from turning, and write from left to right in block letters, placing one letter on each successive turn. Having finished the line, turn the “wand” slightly back and begin the next line of your message under the previous one, and so continue until you have written down your entire message. Remove the completed message from the staff and roll it up or fold it into a square. The decipherer, who has a “wand” similar to yours, winds the resulting tape in the same way as the encryptor, and only in this case will he learn the information.
CODE "GEO - TRANSPO"
Ciphers of this kind were widely used by the German Wehrmacht during the 2nd World War. The full name of the cipher sounds a little heavy:
"Geometric transposition or Geometric displacement." This cipher got its name because at the first of two stages of encryption, the letters of the message are arranged in the form of a rectangle.
The rectangle, of course, includes the square. Another name given to such ciphers is: "Columnar Transposition", from English word"column" (column, column), because in the second stage of encryption, the columns or rows of letters of the rectangle are separated to form an encrypted message.
The example below will show how easy it is to operate with such a cipher. First, the message is entered and the number of letters is counted:
WE NOW MEET IN OUR SHED (18)
This means that the message can be placed either in two columns of 9 letters each, or in three - of 6 letters each, but instead we add two “zeros” and place the message in four 5-letter columns. A rectangular piece of paper makes this step much easier.
W E N O W
M E E T I
N O U R S
H E D Q Z
After this, the columns of letters are written out in order, from left to right, and your encryption now reads like this: WMNH EEOE NEUD OTRQ WISZ
To decrypt, you just need to write these groups again in columns, from left to right, and read the message “snake”, i.e. top to bottom left to right. This is the simplest form of such a cipher. So simple that not a single professional cryptographer uses it for their encryption.
But, at the same time, such a professional will easily turn this same cipher into a rather tough nut to crack. You can do this too. There are two known ways to turn this cipher into a complex puzzle for someone else's codebreaker. You can use these methods either separately or together. The first method assumes the presence of a number key or a word key. The order in which letter groups are allocated depends on this. By the way, a key word is preferable to a key number because it is easier to remember. A number-key often indicates numerical order, and a word-key indicates alphabetical order. For example, the alphabetical order of the letters of the Word Key “BLAZE” is A, B ,E, L, Z (i.e., according to the order of the letters in the alphabet), and the numerical order of the numbers in the Digit Key 93418 is 1,3,4. 8.9 (i.e. in counting order from 1 to 9). The example below clearly shows how these two keys change our message:
B L A Z E 9 3 4 1 8
W E N O W W E N O W
M E E T I M E E T I
N O U R S N O U R S
H E D Z Q H E D Z Q
(a) NEUD WMNH WISQ EEOE OTRZ
A B E L Z (alphabetical order)
(b) OTRZ EEOE NEUD WISQ WMNH
1 3 4 8 9 (numeric order)
The decipherer to whom the message is intended knows the Key Word or the Key Number. Having received the message(s), he must write down each letter of the key word under each group, in alphabetical order, then write out the key word and insert each letter group under it. The following example shows an almost completed transcript:
(a) A B E L Z
NEUD WMNH WISQ EEOE OTRZ
B L A Z E
W E N W
M E E I
N O U S
H E D Q
The second way to give greater secrecy to a message with a cipher of this kind is to use a special arrangement of letters when forming a rectangle at the first stage. This first stage is called inscribing (writing in), and the second stage is called transscribing (writing out). The message is first inscribed, i.e. is written in the form of a rectangle and then transcribed, i.e. written out in letter groups. On page 16 we will look at our sample message, written in two different ways, and transcribed with the key words TEXAS and LAZY.
In (c) the inscription is carried out in horizontal alternating rows (almost as in the previous example, which was written in horizontal rows), and the writing out is carried out with a columnar word-key. In (d) the inscription is carried out by moving clockwise from the top from the right corner, and the writing out is carried out by an ordinary word - the key, i.e. the keyword is on the side and thus indicates rows of letters instead of columns. The order in which the message fits is called a route - options could be a vertical alternating route, a counter-clockwise route, etc.
Decryption is carried out in the same way as described earlier, but the decipherer must also know the route by which the message should be read, i.e. rows or columns opposite the key word.
(c) T EX AS L NOURW
WENOW A I ZQSE
I T EEM Z TDEHN
NO URS Y EEMWO
QZ DEH
(c) OERE ETOZ WMSH WINQ NEUD
(d) IZQSE NOURW EEMWO TDEHN
There are quite a large number of various inscription routes. Below are some. The alphabet is used so that you can easily follow the presented route. Users of such ciphers can indicate with pre-prepared code letters which route the message was inscribed, and which key word or key number was used.
Horizontal
Formal (straight) Alternating (snake)
ABCDE - ABCDE
FGHIK - KIHGF
LMNOP - LMNOP
QRSTU - UTSRQ
VWXYZ VWXYZ
Vertical
AFLQV AKLUV
BGMRW BIMTW
CHNSX CHNSX
DIOTY DGORY
EKPUZ EFPQZ
Internal spiral
ABCDE AQPON
QRSTE BRYXM
PYZUG CSZWL
OXWVH DTUVK
NMLKI EFGHI
External spiral
clockwise counterclockwise
ZKLMN NMLKZ
YIBCO OCBIY
XHADPPDAHX
WGFEQ QEFGW
VUTSR RSTUV
These 8 routes can be expanded several times, using different starting points. For example, "horizontal", "vertical" and "inner spiral" can start from any of the 4 corners, and "outer spiral" can start anywhere, according to the shape of the rectangle.
The easiest way to work with fairly long messages is to write it in four or five rows, read from left to right (this is the so-called direct horizontal inscription) and choose a suitable keyword.
A key word can consist of more than one word. Below we give a corresponding example of a long message.
MARYLOVESFUN
WENOWMEETI NO.
URSH E DEVERYS
ATURDAYMORNI
NGTOPR ACTI S E
FORTHE MATCH
ERTGO EVMCA IRRIC WEDPH WUANE OSIEX MDARE NSUTR
TEOTT NYNSH EEYAM OHROT
Such a message is deciphered according to the BLAZE model (see pages 15-16).
You may have already noticed that there are three ways that these geometric transposition ciphers can make any ordinary message secret:
1) by inscribing the message in the usual manner of writing it from left to right (formal horizontal, as in the message under the key word MARZLOVESFUN) and selecting columns in alphabetical order, according to the key word.
2) by inscribing the message in an unusual manner (a route - such as, for example, a spiral coming from the center), and highlighting the columns in the usual order of writing from left to right, instead of randomly arranging them with the keyword.
3) by combining the other two, as in the case of a TEXAS-type message.
Since misunderstandings often arise when naming these three methods, we will agree to call them: 1).column 2).route 3)route and column.
CIPHERS “GRILLE”
Such ciphers were in use in Italy during the time of Henry V|||, and were used quite widely during World War I. The lattice is part of a transposition-type encryption apparatus.
The lattice, also called a “mask” or “trellis,” is a piece of cardboard or similar material in which special squares are cut out and placed in different places on the cardboard. Such cardboard is placed on a sheet of paper and the letters of the message are written through them. The most common types of such ciphers are "alternating (or "rotating") lattice", "reversible lattice" and "random lattice".
CIPHER "ROTATING GRID"
In this case, the card has squares arranged in such a way that various places on the paper are left uncovered each time the card is rotated 90°. Once the letters are fit into the squares in each of the four positions, they form a square block of mixed letters. For example, the message: WE NOW MEET IN OUR SHED NOT THE HUT TELL TIM should be encrypted with a “rotating grid” card with sides of 6 x 6 using the following method.
"GRILLE" is placed on a piece of paper and the slotted squares are filled in with the first nine letters of the message. Then “GRILLE” is turned 90° clockwise and the next nine letters are written. After making two more turns, we enter the remaining letters of the message. Since there are two fewer letters in the message than there are squares-slots (letters -34, and squares for a full turn -36), two “ZEROS” are added: Q and Z, to complete the filling of the last turn “GRILLE”. After filling all the squares, we remove GRILLE, and write out the resulting message in groups in a row or columns, or for greater secrecy, by highlighting groups using the Column Key Word.
1 2
W E I N
N O
a) O 4 b) U R
2 W 3 S
E E M H E
T D
3 4
And then we also turn:
3 4
N T
O T E L
c) T d) L
4 H E 2 1 T I
E M
U T Q Z
1 2
The codebreaker, who must have exactly such a GRILLE and know how the record was encrypted, first of all folds the groups of letters back into the shape of a square, and then, applying his GRILLE, works in the same order as the codebreaker.
There is a wide variety of GRILLE sizes and encryption patterns available. Below we present samples of GRILLE 4 x 4, 5 x 5, 6 x 6 and even 10 x 10. GRILLE of size 5 x 5 always has a blank central area - a square after encrypting and ZERO is needed here to fill it. Groups of more than
The 6 letters can be split in half, but they should be placed together in this case. The numbers on the side indicate the sequence of card rotation
4 x 4
1
X
2 4
X X
X
3
5 x 5
1
X
X
2 X 4
X X
X
3
1 6x6
X X
X
2 X X 4
X
X X
X
3
10x 10
1
X X X
X X
X X
X X X
2 X X X
X X
X X
X X X
X X X
X X
3
CIPHER “INVERTIBLE GRILLE”
In this case, GRILLE, unlike the “Rotating Grid” cipher, should not be square. Its four positions are as follows: A - side, TOP -1 (topmost); turn the card over so that TOP -2 goes to the very top. We turn the card over to the B side, TOP - 1 again at the very top; and we finish by turning the card so that the very top occupies the TOP - 2 B - sides. Encryption and decryption are exactly the same as in the case of the "Rotating Lattice". Below are examples of the "Invertible Lattice" cipher.
A BE RX - 1 A BE RX - 1
x x
x B- x B-
X x hundred x x hundred
X x rona x x ro
X x on
x x
x x
x x
x x x x
BE RX - 2 BE RX - 2
CIPHER "RANDOM GRID"
This cipher is most suitable for very short messages and for passing through a Key Word or Password. In this case, the lattice can be of any shape, and open squares can be anywhere, because The lattice in this cipher does not turn or turn. The message is written into the open squares, then the GRILLE is removed, and the Null letters are written into the empty spaces. When deciphering, the decipherer places an identical GRILLE grid on the leapfrog of letters. Zero - the letters are closed and the message is easy to read.
MANUFACTURING "GRILLE"
To make any type of GRILLE, line the card into the required number of squares and leave margins on four sides. Use a cross to mark the squares that need to be cut out. Pierce the middle of the square, make slits in its corners, bend the resulting triangles and cut them off. Add to GRILLE any additional detail you need.
SIMPLE SUBSTITUTION CIPHERS
Mary, Queen of Scots, during her stay at Chartley Hall, one of several places in England where she was imprisoned after her escape from Scotland in 1568, was involved in a plot to kill Queen Elizabeth, her cousin, and install herself as a English throne. The main first difficulty of the planned undertaking was how to receive and transmit messages from Chartley Hall, a moated feudal castle, under the ever-watchful eye of the chief jailer, Amyas Paulet. To overcome this obstacle, it was decided to involve a local brewer in the conspiracy. The plan itself was this: When Queen Mary needed to send a secret message, she would dictate it to one of her two secretaries, who would then encrypt it. The encrypted message would then be rolled up and sealed, wrapped in a piece of leather, and handed to the brewer when the latter was called to deliver the beer and remove the empty kegs from the castle. The brewer, having received a message rolled up into a tube, had to attach it to a previously prepared plug and push it through the hole of an empty keg. Safely outside the castle, the brewer would retrieve the secret package and hand it to Queen Mary's trusted messenger, Gilbert Gifford, for delivery to London. Secret messages from the conspirators were then delivered back by Gifford to the brewer who delivered them, for secret delivery, using a cask stopper, to Chartley Hall. But unfortunately for Mary, Queen of Scots, her trusted messenger was one of Queen Elizabeth's spies, and the brewer and jailer worked closely with him. When Gifford was handed a message for Mary or for a group of conspirators who supported her, he had to first deliver it to the headquarters of Queen Elizabeth's Secret Service, which was headed by Sir Francis Walsingham. At Headquarters, the seal was opened and a copy of the message was made, then the seal was skillfully forged and sealed again, after which Gifford set off on the road with the original message. Meanwhile, Walsingham's best codebreaker, Thomas Philippes, was deciphering the message very quickly. In conclusion, it must be said that all the conspirators were captured and hanged, and on February 8, 1587, in the Great Hall of Fotheringhay Castle, Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots was beheaded.
Julius Caesar secretly communicated with his generals using a code that has since been named after him, although it was known long before its use by the great Caesar. The essence of the cipher was this: Each ordinal (ordinary) letter of the message was replaced by the letter behind it in third place in the alphabet. Regular X,Y,Z replaced by A,B,C; thus, for example, the word LAZY was replaced by ODCB. The encrypted alphabet of Julius Caesar was always three letters apart from the usual one, but since the letters can be any number of letters BEHIND or IN FRONT of the main one, such a cipher was called the “SLIDING ALPHABET CIPHER”.
CAESAR'S CIPHER
This is a shorter name for the Julius Caesar Cipher or the Sliding Alphabet Cipher. Its essence is as follows:
The simple alphabet is written out, and below is the cipher alphabet, written in the same order as the top one, but beginning with a letter one or more places forward or backward from the first letter of the ordinary alphabet, with letters omitted at the beginning of the bottom line. The example below begins with "K", and therefore such a cipher can be called the Caesar Cipher "K":
Simple: A,B,C.D,E,F,G,H,I,J,K,L,M,N,O,P,Q,R,S,T,U,V,W,X,Y, Z
Code: K,L,M,N,O,P,Q,R,S,T,UVW,X,Y,Z,A,B,C,D,E,F,G,H, I, J
To encrypt a message, find each required letter in the normal alphabet and write out the substitution, i.e. a letter in the cipher, standing strictly below the letter of the regular alphabet. The message can be written in normal groups of words, or in groups of 3,4 or 5 letters, if greater secrecy is required. To decrypt, find each required letter in the cipher alphabet and write the corresponding letter strictly at the top.
KEYWORD CIPHERS
A mixed cipher alphabet always provides a greater degree of secrecy than a sequential alphabet. One of the simplest and effective ways Alphabet mixing method, usually based on one word, is the use of a keyword. The key can be any word, or a group of words of the same total length as the various letters in the composed string.
The longer the keyword, the more secure the cipher.
The advantage of a mixed-keyword alphabet cipher is that users of such a cipher do not need to carry a copy of the alphabet with them (which is very dangerous for an intelligence officer or spy), they only need to remember the key word.
To start, write the normal alphabet, then write the keyword below it and complete this line with part of the regular alphabet, not including the letters used in the keyword. If, as this often happens, some of the letters of the encrypted alphabet coincide with the letters of the regular alphabet written above, do not be upset, but a well-chosen key word (for example, including letters from the end of the alphabet) reduces the frequency of their repetition to a minimum. Below we give three examples of keyword alphabets and several sentences in the form of such keywords. When you write a message in a keyword cipher, remember that you need to include some additional means (a way of identifying the key you used, such as a coded letter, somewhere on a piece of paper).
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
L A Z Y B ONE S C DF G H I J K M P Q R T U V W X
P L A Y WR I GH T S B C D E F J K MN O QU V X Z
T R E N DY MUS I C A L B OX F G H J K P Q V W Z
PATHFINDER BACKGROUND BUCKINGHAM WORKINGDAY
REPUBLICAN MISFORTUNE BANKRUPTCY PREVIOUSLY
PRESUMABLY DESTROYING SUNDAY MONDAY
TUESDAY THURSDAY FRIDA
CIPHERS OF THE SAME DEGREE (Corresponding ciphers)
This type of cipher is also known as Box Cipher or Frame Cipher because in this case, the usual alphabet is written, usually in the shape of a rectangle; as well as a cipher in the form of a baygram, because in this case, each letter of a regular message is replaced by two letters or numbers, or both, one at a time. The position of each letter in the frame is located in the same way as the coordinate grid on the map corresponds to the location of some position on the map - so much to the east, so much to the north, or with squares running diagonally or vertically. This type of corresponding cipher is called a grid map cipher, since this name best describes how this type of cipher works.
CIPHER "MAP - SCHEME"
There are 6 variants of this cipher in total. Each frame contains the alphabet and numbers from 0 to 9. The letters (the code /с/ has numbers) on the outside of the frame are called “recommendations”. Those located at the top (the cipher /f" / has them at the bottom) refer to letters and numbers in the columns located below them, and those located on the side refer to letters and numbers in adjacent rows. Two letters on the outside, determining the position of the letter or number in the frame , become a cipher "stand" ("substitute") for this letter or number, and therefore are called the "BYGRAMM Cipher".
For example, in cipher (a), Bygram Cipher /BIGRAM/ for the letter "K", the letters are GC - the letter "G" is the letter located strictly above the "K", and the letter "C" is the letter located on line of the row where "K" is located. The completed message usually has its "bygrams", grouped word by word, but grouping according to other criteria can also be used. Random grouping, using some groups that have extra numbers or letters, makes the cipher more secret. Decryption is the reverse process of encryption. A letter encrypted using a bigram is located at the intersection of two imaginary lines passing through the column at the top and along the line of the row on the side of the letters included in the bigram.
CIPHER (a)
The letters located on top of the frame are the same. as those located on the side, this is important for the decipherer to easily find the letters of the bigram. For example, FD is a regular P if the letter F from the top edge of the frame is taken first, but U if the letter F from the side row is taken first. If you use the top location as your index, and always encrypt and decrypt in that order (FD = P), then you will avoid many of the difficulties in working with this cipher.
B C D F G H B C D F G H
B A B C D E F B A B C D E F
C G H I J K L C G H I J K L
D M N O P Q R D M N O P Q R
F S T U V W X F S T U V W X
G Y Z 1 2 3 4 G Y Z 1 2 3 4
H 5 6 7 8 9 0 H 5 6 7 8 9 0
(a) (b)
CIPHER (b)
The letters located at the top and side of the frame are different, so they can be used in any order when encrypting. Therefore, each letter has a set of two bigrams. For example, the word NOON is encrypted as
C L L D D L L C
CIPHER (c)
The digits here are used for encrypted bigrams, and the cipher is made more secure by using the keyword (SYLVIA) to mix the alphabet in the frame. The encryption process can be done in the same way as Cipher (b), minus X; Z; 5; 6, which repeat the numbers 0 located inside the frame; 1, and therefore the upper letter must enter the bigram first. In order to avoid confusion, the entire encryption process can be done the same way as in Cipher (a) - “topside” (at the top of the frame).
CIPHER (d)
This type of cipher also has a mixed alphabet, and can be used, as with encryption using Cipher (b) - any letter located on the outside of the frame comes first. The consonants are located along the top edge of the frame, and the vowels and the letter Y are located on the side; and then the encryption resembles some kind foreign language, and may even be spoken out loud.
CIPHER (e)
Messages encrypted with such a cipher, which also has a mixed alphabet, look rather strange, because... consist only of vowels and Y. Encryption is carried out using the Cipher (a) method - i.e. "topside".
B D K N P Z A E I O U Y
A J U L I A N Y A G M G O U
E B C D E F G U B H 1 7 P V
I H K M O P Q O C I 2 8 Q W
O R S T V W X I D J 3 9 R X
U Y Z 1 2 3 4 E E R 4 0 S Y
Y 5 6 7 8 9 0 A F L S N T Z
(d) (e)
CIPHER (f)
This type of cipher, having two groups of opposing letters on the outer border of the frame, can be used for encryption, starting with any letter that comes first, and each ordinary letter has a set of eight different cipher bigrams. For example, "F" could then be encrypted with DJ, DX, JD, JP, PJ, PX, XD or XP. Let's take the message: WE MEET TODAY
CIPHERS (a - f):
(a) GFGB BDGBGBCF CFDDFBBBBG
(b) GMGJ LBJGGJCM MCDLFJJBBN
(c)* 5937 38377339 9358275661
(d) PONE KINEENOK KONIKEPABU
(e) YOAE IYAEAEUA UAUYAIAYYE
(f)* CTCX EWJQXCLF VNAVB***TE
MORSE CODE
Morse code letters are made up of dots or dashes, or a combination of both. In this cipher, the letters of the alphabet, with the exception of vowels, are replaced by dots and dashes. The consonants of the first half of the alphabet, from "B" to "M", are replaced by dots; the consonants of the second half of the alphabet, from "N" to "Z", are replaced by a dash. Vowels serve as separators. One vowel indicates the end of the letter; two vowels indicate the end of a word. Message: A RED CAT, which is encrypted in Morse code as follows:
.- .-. . -.. -.-. .- - , can be encrypted like this
way:
DTAIL PHOFI VKMOU QLNCO BSIRO or:
CROAK WHALE SHEE PLYMA DRIVE and many other ways. When it is necessary to use additional letters to divide groups into equal numbers, vowels are added.
For decoding, indicate a dot or dash under each consonant letter.
After which, under the dots or dashes, the letter equivalent is written down.
CIPHER "CHANGING NUMBERS"
The same work happens here as when working with letters, in addition,
that the numbers 1 to 8 represent dots and dashes, and 9 and 0 serve as separators. 1,3,5 and 7 stand instead of dots; 2,4,6 and 8 - instead of a dash. 9
is used to separate letters, and 0 separates words. If additional numbers are required to divide the message into equal groups, separators are added.
Message: A RED CAT, divided into groups of 4 digits, with
with two “zeros” added, it reads like this: 3407 6593 9651 0678 5932 9490
. - . - . . - . . - . - . . - -
Codebreaker, writes a dot under each odd digit and a dash under
each even number, then writes the corresponding letters.
DIGITAL CIPHERS.
Nowadays, when an enemy spy is captured, he is almost always found to have a very small book, no larger than a postage stamp. Each page of such a book is filled with columns of numbers. It may also have pages of different colors, or you may find a separate book with pages of different colors. Such books, called one-time pads, are so called because each page contains a different code and after the message is encrypted with it, the page is subject to immediate destruction in the fire. Just a light touch of the flame is enough for the page to catch fire and be destroyed in a split second. Not a single spy, no matter where he is, has a code in his activities that is the same as that of his colleague. And no decipherer or even a computer can decipher the encryption without having the key to it. There is only one key for a particular encryption, and when a spy uses that single key (for example, a colored page) to decipher the encryption he has received, he must immediately destroy it. Below we will look at several not the most complex Digital Ciphers.
This is the simplest of digital ciphers. Its essence is that the letters of the alphabet are numbered from 1 to 26, and in the forward order of encryption numbering: 1= A. In the reverse order: 26= A. Of course, there are other options, which we will provide with our own examples.
(a) The numbering begins with 11 (or 21,31,41,51,61 or 71) so that two digits are assigned to a letter, thus forming different, actually possible groups of digits. The five options below, in which 11 = A, will show how the phrase “WE MEET” can be placed in this kind of groups: (b) - in one group, (c) - in a group of three numbers, (d) - in a group of four numbers, (e) - in a group of five numbers, with added “zero” digits to complete the formation of the last group; (f) - in randomly composed groups. When "zero" digits are required to complement/complete groups of 3, 4 or 5 digits, the first two (if the number of required "zero" digits is two or more) must form a number that cannot in any way be included in the cipher, e.g. a number greater than 36 in the cipher example (a). And then this number will indicate the end of the message, and eliminate possible confusion with zero digits in the message.
(a) A 11 E 15 I 19 M 23 Q 27 U 31 Y 35
B 12 F 16 J 20 N 24 R 28 V 32 Z 36
C 13 G 17 K 21 O 25 S 29 W 33
D 14 H 18 L 22 P 26 T 30 X 34
W E M E E T ) 3315 (b) 331523151530 (c) 331 523 151 530
3315 23151530 2315 (d) 3315 2315 1530
1530 (e) 33152 31515 30392 (not in the key
3,2,9,39,92,392 are “zero digits”)
(f) 3 31 52 31 51 530
For decryption, numbers are written out in pairs, and below each such pair its letter equivalent is written.
CIPHER "MARABU"
A mixed encrypted alphabet is compiled using the key word, after which the letters are arranged into groups, and each group is assigned its own number. Each letter is assigned its own number in the group in which it belongs, and the two digits are combined and become the encrypted letter numbers, so P = 23 and N = 34. The keyword in the example below is CUSTARDPIE and the message is:
WE NOW MEET IN OUR SHED.
The number indicating the group number appears at the beginning. You can, of course, use the regular alphabet:
5 2 6 3 4
СUSTA RDPIE BFGHJ KLMNO Z
1 2 34 5 1 2 345 123 4 5 1 2 3 4 5 1
W=73
7325 343573 33252554 2434 355221 53642522
CIPHER "FRACTIONAL"
This cipher is similar to the Marabou Cipher, but the numbers are arranged so that the two digits associated with a letter of the alphabet can be written as a fraction. The alphabet may be very common, but the one used in the example below was mixed with the WAVYTRIPE keyword. We take our message too:
WE NOW MEET IN OUR SHED
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
WAVYTRIP EBCD FGHJ KIM NOQS U XZ
2 3 45 6 789 3 57 9 4 57 8 5 7 9 6 7 8 9 7 8 9
1 2 5 5 1 4 2 2 1 1 5 5 6 1 5 3 2 2
2 3 6 7 2 9 3 3 6 8 6 7 7 7 9 7 3 9
The top number (numerator) of a fraction tells the decipherer about the group of letters, and the bottom number (denominator) tells the letter's place in that group.
CIPHER "INVERSED TWIN"
Letters of the alphabet and numbers from 0 to 9 are represented by pairs of numbers,
which can be used upside down. Hence,
Each letter has two encrypted equivalents, which
increase the secrecy of the cipher. Below is an alphabet mixed with
using the PLASTICBUN keyword, and the message: MEET US SOON AT 23.
P 12 21 D 25 52 O 37 73 1 56 65 8 78 87
L 13 31 E 26 62 Q 38 83 2 57 75 9 79 97
A 14 41 F 27 72 R 39 93 3 58 85 0 89 98
S 15 51 G 28 82 V 45 54 4 59 95
T 16 61 H 29 92 W 46 64 5 67 76
I 17 71 J 34 43 X 47 74 6 68 86
C 18 81 K 35 53 Y 48 84 7 69 96
B 19 91 M 36 63 Z 49 94
U 23 32 N 37 73
N 24 42
63622661 2315 51377342 4116 7558
When decoding, the letters are easy to find if you find the smaller of the two numbers.
For example: the reciprocal of 63 is 36, i.e. letter "M".
CIPHER "DICTIONARY"
This type of cipher is based on the alphabetical arrangement of pages of any
dictionary In a simple pocket dictionary, for example, words starting with the letter “A” sometimes occupy pages from 1 to 31, B from 33 to 67, C from 69 to 131, etc. Pages containing two letters of the alphabet are skipped. In order to encrypt a message, you need to replace each letter of this message with any number that determines the page on which this letter is located in the dictionary. But since some letters are located on three-digit pages, all other pages must be brought to a three-digit value. Instead of hundreds, in these cases. put 0 in numbers that are less than 100, at the same time, this figure. starting with 0, is replaced in place of hundreds by any digit, thus constituting a page that is not present at all in this dictionary. For example, there are only 690 pages in the dictionary, 0 stands in place of hundreds in a two-digit number. can be replaced by 7, 8 or 9:
Example: 73 - 073 - 773 - (873, 973). The word "CAB" will look like 129723046 in encryption, or a thousand other ways. Where a letter of the alphabet, such as "X", for example, appears on a page together with another letter (and this is often the only letter listed in dictionaries), users of the cipher are told that the page number is reserved specifically for the letter "X".
DICTIONARY CODE
Dictionary codes have been used almost immediately since the first dictionaries appeared, but their use is very limited. The message consists of groups of numbers. Each group is assigned to a word in the dictionary by indicating the page number on which it is located and its position on that page. The dictionary thus becomes a book of codes and, as with any book of codes, the messages must be crafted to fit it. For example, in most pocket dictionaries you are unlikely to be able to find any of the exact words in the message: WE ARE TRAILING SPIES, and only a very small number of dictionaries can carry the last two words. .Message:SEND A NEW SECRET CODE AND A FURTHER SUPPLY OF INVISIBLE INK can be compiled from a dictionary of any size, regardless of its volume. Therefore, we see that dictionary codes can only be used with a special dictionary with a high frequency of words. A secret encrypted with a dictionary code can be more secret than one encrypted with any other code and depends not on the encoding method, but on keeping secret which dictionary you use. Consider a method based on a widely used pocket dictionary, say 700 pages long. Let the word SEND be on line 8, in 2 of the two dictionary columns on page 494. Then the entry will go in this order: three digits of the page number (494), one is a column digit (2), and the other two are rows of a given word (08), i.e. each word can be made up of just six digits. Therefore, if we group all the numbers in the specified order (page + column + row), then the encoded word SEND will be represented as 494208. The word “A” or “AN” in the second line of the first column of the first page, it would seem, should be encoded as 001102. but from such a code it is clear to anyone that this word is at the beginning of page 1, and in the wrong hands such a code can easily become the key to the entire codogram. Therefore, a figure indicating a page number less than 100 must be masked. In fact, this is achieved by replacing the first “0” with 7,8 or 9 (in our example it is: 701102), which will not confuse the recipient during decryption, because The dictionary used contains no more than 700 pages.
To be continued...
When the complex code is finally solved, it may contain the secrets of world leaders, secret societies and ancient civilizations. Here are the ten most mysterious ciphers in the history of mankind, which have not yet been solved.
Post sponsor: chandeliers and lamps
Notes from Ricky McCormick
In June 1999, 72 hours after one person was reported missing, a body was found in a corn field in Missouri. What’s strange is that the corpse decomposed more than it should have in such a time. At the time of his death, 41-year-old Ricky McCormick had two encrypted notes in his pockets. He was unemployed with a high school education, living on welfare, and didn't have a car. McCormick also served time in prison for raping a minor. He was last seen alive five days before his body was found, when he went for a routine check-up at Forest Park Hospital in St. Louis.
Neither the FBI's cryptanalysis unit nor the American Cryptanalytic Association were able to decipher these notes and made them public 12 years after the murder. Investigators believe the mysterious notes were written approximately three days before the murder. McCormick's relatives claim that the murdered man used this technique of encoding messages since childhood, but, unfortunately, none of them knows the key to this code.
Kryptos
This is a sculpture by American artist Jim Sanborn, which is installed in front of the entrance to the CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia. It contains four complex encrypted messages, three of which have been decrypted. 97 symbols of the last part, known as K4, remain undeciphered to this day.
Deputy head of the CIA in the 1990s, Bill Studman, tasked the NSA with deciphering the inscriptions. A special team was created that was able to solve three of the four messages in 1992, but did not make them public until 2000. The three pieces were also solved in the 1990s by CIA analyst David Stein, who used paper and pencil, and computer scientist Jim Gillogly, who used a computer.
The decrypted messages resemble CIA correspondence, and the sculpture is shaped like paper coming out of a printer during printing.
Voynich manuscript
The Voynich manuscript, created in the 15th century, is one of the most famous mysteries of the Renaissance. The book bears the name of the antiquarian Wilfried Voynich, who bought it in 1912. It contains 240 pages, and some pages are missing. The manuscript is full of biological, astronomical, cosmological and pharmaceutical illustrations. There's even a mysterious fold-out astronomical table. In total, the manuscript contains more than 170 thousand characters that do not comply with any rules. There is no punctuation or breaks in the writing of the encrypted characters, which is unusual for handwritten ciphertext. Who created this manuscript? Researcher? Herbalist? Alchemist? The book once allegedly belonged to the Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II, who was interested in astrology and alchemy.
Leon Battista Alberti, Italian writer, artist, architect, poet, priest, linguist and philosopher, could not choose just one activity. Today he is known as the father of Western cryptography, and he lived during the same years when the manuscript was created. He created the first polyalphabetic cipher and the first mechanical cipher machine. Maybe the Voynich manuscript is one of the first experiments in cryptography? If the code of the Voynich manuscript is deciphered, it could change our knowledge of the history of science and astronomy.
Shugborough inscription
The Shepherd's Monument is located in picturesque Staffordshire in England. It was erected in the 18th century and is a sculptural interpretation of Nicolas Poussin's painting "The Shepherds of Arcadia", although some details have been changed. Below the painting is a text of 10 letters: the sequence O U O S V A V V between the letters D and M. Above the image of the painting are two stone heads: a smiling bald man and a man with goat horns and pointy ears. According to one version, the man who paid for the monument, George Anson, wrote an acronym for the Latin saying "Optimae Uxoris Optimae Sororis Viduus Amantissimus Vovit Virtutibus", which means "To the best of wives, the best of sisters, the devoted widower dedicates this to your virtues."
Former CIA linguist Keith Massey associated these letters with the verse of John 14:6. Other researchers believe that the cipher is associated with Freemasonry. Former Bletchley Park analyst Oliver Lawn has suggested that the code may be a reference to Jesus' family tree, which is unlikely. Richard Kemp, head of the Shugborough estate, initiated a publicity campaign in 2004 that linked the inscription to the location of the Holy Grail.
Linear A
Linear A is a type of Cretan script that contains hundreds of characters and has not yet been deciphered. It was used by several ancient Greek civilizations between 1850 and 1400 BC. After the Achaean invasion of Crete, it was replaced by Linear B, which was deciphered in the 1950s and revealed to be an early form of Greek. Linear A was never deciphered, and the codes for Linear B are not suitable for it. The reading of most signs is known, but the language remains unclear. Mainly its traces were found in Crete, but there were monuments of writing in this language in mainland Greece, Israel, Turkey, and even in Bulgaria.
It is believed that Linear A, which is said to be the predecessor of the Cretan-Minoan script, is exactly what can be seen on the Phaistos Disc, one of the most famous archaeological mysteries. It is a fired clay disk approximately 16 cm in diameter, dating from the second millennium BC. and found in the Phaistos Palace on Crete. It is covered in symbols of unknown origin and meaning.
1000 years after Creto-Minoan, the Eteocretan language appeared, which cannot be classified and may be somehow related to Linear A. It is written in the letters of the Greek alphabet, but it is definitely not Greek.
Dorabella Cipher
The English composer Edward Elgar was also very interested in cryptology. In memory of him, the first encryption machines of the early 20th century were named after his work “Enigma Variations.” Enigma machines were capable of encrypting and decrypting messages. Elgar sent his friend Dora Penny a “note to Dorabella” - that’s what he called his friend, who was twenty years younger than him. He was already happily married to another woman. Maybe he and Penny were having an affair? She never deciphered the code he sent her, and no one else was ever able to do so.
Bale cryptograms
A man from Virginia who creates ciphers containing the secrets of hidden treasure is something out of the realm of Dan Brown, not the real world. In 1865, a pamphlet was published describing the enormous treasure, which today would be worth more than $60 million. It has allegedly been buried in Bedford County for 50 years. Perhaps the man who did it, Thomas J. Bale, never existed. But the brochure indicated that Bale gave a box containing three encrypted messages to a hotel owner, who did nothing with them for decades. Bale was never heard from again.
The only message from Bale that has been deciphered states that the author left a huge amount of gold, silver and jewelry in a stone cellar six feet deep. It also says that another cipher describes exact location location of the cellar, so there should not be any difficulties in finding it. Some skeptics believe that Bale's treasure is a hoax that was successfully used to sell brochures for 50 cents, which would be $13 in today's money.
Mysteries of the Zodiac Killer
Famous Serial killer from California, nicknamed the Zodiac, teased San Francisco police with several codes, claiming that some of them would reveal the location of bombs planted throughout the city. He signed letters with a circle and a cross - a symbol representing the Zodiac, the celestial belt of thirteen constellations.
The Zodiac also sent three letters to three different newspapers, each containing a third of the 408-character code. A schoolteacher from Salinas saw the symbols in a local newspaper and cracked the code. The message said: “I like killing people because it's a lot of fun. This is more fun than killing wild animals in the forest because man is the most dangerous animal of all. Killing gives me the most thrill. It's even better than sex. The best thing awaits when I die. I will be born again in paradise, and everyone I killed will become my slaves. I will not tell you my name because you will want to slow or stop the recruitment of slaves for my afterlife."
The Zodiac took responsibility for killing 37 people and was never found. He has imitators all over the world.
Taman Shud
In December 1948, the body of a man was found on Somerton Beach in Australia. The identity of the deceased could not be established, and the case is shrouded in mystery to this day. The man could have been killed with an undetectable poison, but even the cause of death is unknown. The Somerton man was wearing a white shirt, tie, brown knitted pullover and taupe jacket. The tags on the clothing were cut off and the wallet was missing. The teeth did not match any existing dental records.
In the unknown person’s pocket they found a piece of paper with the words “tamam shud”, or “finished” in Persian. Later, when publishing material on this topic in one of the newspapers, a typo was made: instead of “Tamam,” the word “Taman” was printed, as a result of which the erroneous name went down in history. It was a fragment of a page from a rare edition of the collection “Rubaiyat” by the 12th century Persian poet Omar Khayyam. The book was found and on the inside cover was written a local phone number and an encrypted message. In addition, a suitcase with things was found in a storage room at a nearby railway station, but this did not help identify the murdered man. Maybe the Somerton man was a spy cold war under deep cover? Amateur cryptographer? Years pass, but researchers are no closer to the solution.
Blitz ciphers
This mystery is the newest of all listed, as it was only made public in 2011. The Blitz Ciphers are several pages discovered during World War II. They lay for years in wooden boxes in one of the basements in London, which was opened as a result of German bomb attacks. One soldier took these papers with him, and it turned out that they were full of strange drawings and encrypted words. The documents contain more than 50 unique calligraphic-like characters. It is not possible to date the documents, however, according to the popular version, the blitz ciphers are the work of occultists or masons of the 18th century.
In substitution ciphers (or substitution ciphers), unlike, the elements of the text do not change their sequence, but change themselves, i.e. the original letters are replaced with other letters or symbols (one or more) according to certain rules.
This page describes ciphers in which the replacement occurs with letters or numbers. When the replacement occurs with some other non-alphanumeric characters, with combinations of characters or pictures, it is called direct.
Monoalphabetic ciphers
In monoalphabetic substitution ciphers, each letter is replaced by one and only one other letter/symbol or group of letters/symbols. If there are 33 letters in the alphabet, then there are 33 replacement rules: what to change A to, what to change B to, etc.
Such ciphers are quite easy to decipher even without knowing the key. This is done using frequency analysis ciphertext - you need to count how many times each letter appears in the text, and then divide by the total number of letters. The resulting frequency must be compared with the reference one. The most common letter for the Russian language is the letter O, followed by E, etc. True, frequency analysis works on large literary texts. If the text is small or very specific in terms of the words used, then the frequency of letters will differ from the standard, and more time will have to be spent on solving. Below is a table of the frequency of letters (that is, the relative frequency of letters found in the text) of the Russian language, calculated on the basis of NKRY.
The use of frequency analysis to decipher encrypted messages is beautifully described in many literary works, for example, by Arthur Conan Doyle in the novel "" or by Edgar Allan Poe in "".
It is easy to create a code table for a monoalphabetic substitution cipher, but it is quite difficult to remember it and, if lost, it is almost impossible to restore it, so they usually come up with some rules for compiling such code pages. Below are the most famous of these rules.
Random code
As I already wrote above, in the general case, for a replacement cipher, you need to figure out which letter should be replaced with which. The simplest thing is to take and randomly mix the letters of the alphabet, and then write them down under the line of the alphabet. The result is a code table. For example, like this:
The number of variants of such tables for 33 letters of the Russian language = 33! ≈ 8.683317618811886*10 36 . From the point of view of encrypting short messages, this is the most ideal option: in order to decrypt, you need to know the code table. It is impossible to go through such a number of options, and if you encrypt a short text, then you cannot apply frequency analysis.
But to use it in quests, such a code table needs to be presented in a more beautiful way. The solver must first either simply find this table or solve some kind of verbal-letter riddle. For example, guess or solve.
Keyword
One option for compiling a code table is to use a keyword. We write down the alphabet, under it we first write down a keyword consisting of non-repeating letters, and then we write down the remaining letters. For example, for the word "manuscript" we get the following table:
As you can see, the beginning of the table was shuffled, but the end remained unshuffled. This is because the “oldest” letter in the word “manuscript” is the letter “U”, and after it there is an unmixed “tail”. The letters in the tail will remain unencoded. You can leave it like this (since most of letters are still encoded), but you can take a word that contains the letters A and Z, then all the letters will be mixed up, and there will be no “tail”.
The keyword itself can also be guessed in advance, for example using or. For example, like this:
Having solved the arithmetic rebus frame and matched the letters and numbers of the encrypted word, then you will need to enter the resulting word into the code table instead of the numbers, and enter the remaining letters in order. You will get the following code table:
Atbash
The cipher was originally used for the Hebrew alphabet, hence the name. The word atbash (אתבש) is made up of the letters "alef", "tav", "bet" and "shin", that is, the first, last, second and penultimate letters of the Hebrew alphabet. This sets the replacement rule: the alphabet is written out in order, and underneath it is written out backwards. Thus, the first letter is encoded into the last, the second - into the penultimate, etc.
The phrase “TAKE HIM TO THE EXCEPTION” is transformed with the help of this cipher into “ERCHGTC BJR E VFNIPZHS”. Online Atbash cipher calculator
ROT1
This code is known to many children. The key is simple: each letter is replaced by the next one in the alphabet. So, A is replaced by B, B by C, etc., and I is replaced by A. “ROT1” means “ROTate 1 letter forward through the alphabet.” The message “Oinklokotam oinklokotamit at night” will become “Tsyalmplpubn tsyalmplpubnyu rp opshbn.” ROT1 is fun to use because it is easy for a child to understand and easy to use for encryption. But it is just as easy to decipher.
Caesar Cipher
The Caesar cipher is one of the oldest ciphers. When encrypting, each letter is replaced by another, separated from it in the alphabet not by one, but by a greater number of positions. The cipher is named after the Roman emperor Gaius Julius Caesar, who used it for secret correspondence. He used a three letter shift (ROT3). Many people suggest doing encryption for the Russian alphabet using this shift:
I still believe that the Russian language has 33 letters, so I propose this code table:
It’s interesting that in this version the replacement alphabet reads the phrase “where is the hedgehog?” :)
But the shift can be done by an arbitrary number of letters - from 1 to 33. Therefore, for convenience, you can make a disk consisting of two rings rotating relative to each other on the same axis, and write the letters of the alphabet on the rings in sectors. Then it will be possible to have at hand the key for the Caesar code with any offset. Or you can combine the Caesar cipher with the atbash on such a disk, and you will get something like this:
Actually, that’s why such ciphers are called ROT - from the English word “rotate” - “to rotate”.
ROT5
In this option, only numbers are encoded, the rest of the text remains unchanged. 5 substitutions are made, therefore ROT5: 0↔5, 1↔6, 2↔7, 3↔8, 4↔9.
ROT13
ROT13 is a variation of the Caesar cipher for the Latin alphabet with a shift of 13 characters. It is often used on the Internet in English-language forums as a means of hiding spoilers, main ideas, solutions to riddles, and offensive material from casual view.
The 26-letter Latin alphabet is divided into two parts. The second half is written under the first. When encoding, letters from the top half are replaced by letters from the bottom half and vice versa.
ROT18
It's simple. ROT18 is a combination of ROT5 and ROT13 :)
ROT47
There is a more complete version of this cipher - ROT47. Instead of using the A-Z alphabetical sequence, ROT47 uses a larger set of characters, almost all of the characters displayed are from the first half of the ASCII table. Using this cipher you can easily encode url, e-mail, and it will not be clear that it is exactly url and e-mail :)
For example, a link to this text will be encrypted like this: 9EEAi^^?@K5C]CF^82>6D^BF6DE^4CJAE^4:A96C^K2>6?2nURC@Ecf. Only an experienced solver will be able to guess from the repeated pairs of characters at the beginning of the text that 9EEAi^^ can mean HTTP:⁄⁄ .
Polybius Square
Polybius - Greek historian, general and statesman, who lived in the 3rd century BC. He proposed an original simple substitution code that became known as the Polybius square or Polybius checkerboard. This type of coding was originally used for the Greek alphabet, but was then extended to other languages. The letters of the alphabet fit into a square or suitable rectangle. If there are more letters for a square, then they can be combined in one cell.
Such a table can be used as in the Caesar cipher. To encrypt a square, we find the letter of the text and insert the lower one in the same column into the encryption. If the letter is on the bottom line, then take the top one from the same column. For Cyrillic alphabet you can use the table ROT11(analogue of the Caesar cipher with a shift of 11 characters):
The letters of the first line are encoded into the letters of the second, the second - into the third, and the third - into the first.
But it’s better, of course, to use the “trick” of the Polybius square - the coordinates of the letters:
Under each letter of the encoded text we write in a column two coordinates (top and side). You will get two lines. Then we write these two lines into one line, divide it into pairs of numbers and using these pairs as coordinates, we again encode using the Polybius square.
It can be complicated. We write the original coordinates in a line without splitting them into pairs, shift them by odd number of steps, divide the result into pairs and encode again.
A Polybius square can also be created using a code word. First, the code word is entered into the table, then the remaining letters. The code word should not contain repeated letters.
A version of the Polybius cipher is used in prisons by tapping out the coordinates of letters - first the line number, then the number of the letter in the line.
Poetic cipher
This encryption method is similar to the Polybius cipher, only the key is not the alphabet, but a poem that fits line by line into a square of a given size (for example, 10x10). If the line is not included, then its “tail” is cut off. Next, the resulting square is used to encode the text letter by letter with two coordinates, as in the Polybius square. For example, take a good verse from “Borodino” by Lermontov and fill out the table. We notice that the letters E, J, X, Ш, Ш, Ъ, E are not in the table, which means we won’t be able to encrypt them. The letters, of course, are rare and may not be needed. But if they are still needed, you will have to choose another verse that contains all the letters.
RUS/LAT
Probably the most common cipher :) If you try to write in Russian, forgetting to switch to the Russian layout, you will end up with something like this: Tckb gsnfnmcz gbcfnm gj-heccrb? pf,sd gthtrk.xbnmcz yf heccre. hfcrkflre? nj gjkexbncz xnj-nj nbgf "njuj^ Why not a code? The best replacement cipher ever. The keyboard acts as a code table.
The conversion table looks like this:
Litorrhea
Litorrhea (from Latin littera - letter) is secret writing, a type of encrypted writing used in ancient Russian handwritten literature. There are two types of litorrhea: simple and wise. A simple one, otherwise called gibberish, is as follows. If “e” and “e” are counted as one letter, then there are thirty-two letters left in the Russian alphabet, which can be written in two rows - sixteen letters in each:
The result will be a Russian analogue of the ROT13 cipher - ROT16:) When encrypting, the upper letter is replaced with a lower one, and the lower letter with an upper one. An even simpler version of litorrhea - leaving only twenty consonant letters:
It turns out a cipher ROT10. When encrypting, only consonants are changed, and vowels and others that are not included in the table are left as is. It turns out something like “dictionary → lsosham”, etc.
Wise litorrhea involves more complex rules substitutions. In various variants that have come down to us, substitutions of entire groups of letters are used, as well as numerical combinations: each consonant letter is assigned a number, and then arithmetic operations are performed on the resulting sequence of numbers.
Bigram encryption
Playfair cipher
The Playfair cipher is a manual symmetric encryption technique that pioneered the use of bigram substitution. Invented in 1854 by Charles Wheatstone. The cipher encrypts pairs of characters (bigrams), instead of single characters, as in the substitution cipher and in more complex Vigenère encryption systems. Thus, the Playfair cipher is more resistant to cracking compared to a simple substitution cipher, since frequency analysis is more difficult.
The Playfair cipher uses a 5x5 table (for the Latin alphabet, for the Russian alphabet you need to increase the table size to 6x6) containing a keyword or phrase. To create a table and use a cipher, just remember the keyword and four simple rules. To create a key table, first of all you need to fill the empty cells of the table with the letters of the keyword (without writing down repeated characters), then fill the remaining cells of the table with alphabetical characters not found in the keyword, in order (in English texts the “Q” character is usually omitted, to make the alphabet smaller, other versions combine "I" and "J" into one cell). The keyword and subsequent letters of the alphabet can be entered into the table line by line from left to right, boustrophedon, or in a spiral from the upper left corner to the center. The keyword, supplemented by the alphabet, forms a 5x5 matrix and is the cipher key.
In order to encrypt a message, you need to break it into bigrams (groups of two characters), for example, “Hello World” becomes “HE LL OW OR LD,” and find these bigrams in a table. The two bigram symbols correspond to the corners of a rectangle in the key table. We determine the positions of the corners of this rectangle relative to each other. Then, guided by the following 4 rules, we encrypt pairs of characters source text:
1) If two bigram symbols match, add an “X” after the first symbol, encrypt a new pair of symbols and continue. Some variants of the Playfair cipher use "Q" instead of "X".
2) If the bigram symbols of the source text occur in one line, then these symbols are replaced by the symbols located in the nearest columns to the right of the corresponding symbols. If the character is the last in a line, then it is replaced with the first character of the same line.
3) If the bigram symbols of the source text occur in one column, then they are converted to the symbols of the same column located directly below them. If a character is the bottom character in a column, then it is replaced by the first character of the same column.
4) If the bigram symbols of the source text are in different columns and different rows, then they are replaced with symbols located in the same rows, but corresponding to other corners of the rectangle.
To decrypt, you must use the inversion of these four rules, discarding the symbols “X” (or “Q”) if they do not make sense in the original message.
Let's look at an example of composing a cipher. We use the “Playfair example” key, then the matrix will take the form:
Let's encrypt the message “Hide the gold in the tree stump”. We break it into pairs, not forgetting about the rule. We get: “HI DE TH EG OL DI NT HE TR EX ES TU MP.” Next we apply the rules:
1. The bigram HI forms a rectangle, replace it with BM.
2. The bigram DE is located in one column, replace it with ND.
3. The bigram TH forms a rectangle, replace it with ZB.
4. The bigram EG forms a rectangle, replace it with XD.
5. The bigram OL forms a rectangle, replace it with KY.
6. The bigram DI forms a rectangle, replace it with BE.
7. The bigram NT forms a rectangle, replace it with JV.
8. The bigram HE forms a rectangle, replace it with DM.
9. Bigram TR forms a rectangle, replace it with UI.
10. The bigram EX is in one line, replace it with XM.
11. The bigram ES forms a rectangle, replace it with MN.
12. The bigram TU is in one line, replace it with UV.
13. The bigram MP forms a rectangle, replace it with IF.
We get the encrypted text “BM ND ZB XD KY BE JV DM UI XM MN UV IF.” Thus the message "Hide the gold in the tree stump" is converted to "BMNDZBXDKYBEJVDMUIXMMNUVIF".
Double Wheatstone square
Charles Wheatstone developed not only the Playfair cipher, but also another bigram encryption method called the "double square". The cipher uses two tables at once, placed along the same horizontal line, and encryption is done in bigrams, as in the Playfair cipher.
There are two tables with Russian alphabets randomly located in them.
Before encryption, the original message is divided into bigrams. Each bigram is encrypted separately. The first letter of the bigram is found in the left table, and the second letter in the right table. Then they mentally build a rectangle so that the letters of the bigram lie at its opposite vertices. The other two vertices of this rectangle give the letters of the ciphertext bigram. Let us assume that the bigram of the original text IL is encrypted. The letter I is in column 1 and row 2 of the left table. The letter L is in column 5 and row 4 of the right table. This means that the rectangle is formed by rows 2 and 4, and columns 1 of the left table and 5 of the right table. Consequently, the ciphertext bigram includes the letter O, located in column 5 and line 2 of the right table, and the letter B, located in column 1 and line 4 of the left table, i.e. we obtain the ciphertext bigram OB.
If both letters of the message bigram lie in one line, then the letters of the ciphertext are taken from the same line. The first letter of the ciphertext bigram is taken from the left table in the column corresponding to the second letter of the message bigram. The second letter of the ciphertext bigram is taken from the right table in the column corresponding to the first letter of the message bigram. Therefore, the TO message bigram turns into a ZB ciphertext bigram. All message bigrams are encrypted in a similar way:
Message APPLIED AYU _SH ES TO GO
Ciphertext PE OV SHCHN FM ESH RF BZ DC
Double-square encryption produces a highly tamper-resistant and easy-to-use cipher. Cracking a double square ciphertext requires a lot of effort, and the message length must be at least thirty lines, and without a computer it is not at all possible.
Polyalphabetic ciphers
Vigenère cipher
A natural development of the Caesar cipher was the Vigenère cipher. Unlike monoalphabetic ones, this is already a polyalphabetic cipher. The Vigenère cipher consists of a sequence of several Caesar ciphers with different meanings shift For encryption, a table of alphabets called a "tabula recta" or "Vigenère square (table)" can be used. At each stage of encryption, different alphabets are used, selected depending on the letter of the keyword.
For the Latin alphabet, the Vigenère table might look like this:
For the Russian alphabet like this:
It is easy to see that the rows of this table are ROT ciphers with successively increasing shifts.
They encrypt it like this: under the line with the source text, the keyword is cyclically written into the second line until the entire line is filled. Each letter of the source text has its own key letter below. Next in the table we find the encoded letter of the text in the top line, and the letter of the code word on the left. At the intersection of the column with the original letter and the row with the code letter, the desired encrypted letter of the text will be located.
An important effect achieved when using a polyalphabetic cipher such as the Vigenère cipher is masking the frequencies of appearance of certain letters in the text, which simple substitution ciphers do not have. Therefore, it will no longer be possible to apply frequency analysis to such a cipher.
To encrypt with the Vigenère cipher, you can use Vigenère cipher online calculator. For various versions of the Vigenère cipher with a shift to the right or left, as well as with replacing letters with numbers, you can use the tables below:
Gronsveld cipher
Book cipher
If you use a whole book (for example, a dictionary) as a key, then you can encrypt not individual letters, but entire words and even phrases. Then the coordinates of the word will be the page number, line number and word number in the line. For each word you get three numbers. You can also use the internal notation of the book - chapters, paragraphs, etc. For example, it is convenient to use the Bible as a code book, because there is a clear division into chapters, and each verse has its own marking, which makes it easy to find the desired line of text. True, not in the Bible modern words such as “computer” and “Internet”, so for modern phrases it is, of course, better to use an encyclopedic or explanatory dictionary.
These were substitution ciphers, in which letters are replaced with others. And there are also ones in which the letters are not replaced, but mixed together.
Despite the development of decryption technologies, the best minds on the planet continue to puzzle over unsolved messages. Below is a list of 10 ciphers whose contents have not yet been revealed.
1. The most important encrypted message ancient culture island of Crete became a clay product found in the city of Festus in 1903. Both sides are covered with hieroglyphs written in a spiral. Experts were able to distinguish 45 types of signs, but only a few of them were identified as hieroglyphs that were used in the pre-palatial period ancient history Krita.
2. Linear A was also found in Crete and named after British archaeologist Arthur Evans. In 1952, Michael Ventris deciphered Linear B, which was used to encrypt Mycenaean, the oldest known variant of Greek. But Linear A has only been partially solved, and the solved fragments are written in some language unknown to science, not related to any known language.
(Additional materials.)
3. Kryptos is a sculpture that American sculptor James Sanborn installed on the grounds of the CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, in 1990. The encrypted message written on it still cannot be deciphered.
4. Code printed on chinese gold bar. Seven gold bars were allegedly issued to General Wang in Shanghai in 1933. They contain pictures, Chinese writing and some encrypted messages, including in Latin letters. They may contain certificates of authenticity of the metal issued by one of the US banks. The content of the Chinese characters indicates that the value of the gold bars exceeds $300 million.
5. - three encrypted messages believed to contain information about the location of a two-wagonload of gold, silver and precious stones buried in the 1820s near Lynchburg, in Bedford County, Virginia, by a party of gold miners led by Thomas Jefferson Beila. The price of the treasure, which has not been found until now, in terms of modern money, should be about 30 million dollars. The mystery of the cryptograms has not yet been solved; in particular, the question of the real existence of the treasure remains controversial. One of the messages has been deciphered - it describes the treasure itself and gives general indications of its location. The remaining undiscovered letters may contain the exact location of the bookmark and a list of owners of the treasure. ()
6. Voynich manuscript, which is often called the most mysterious book in the world. The manuscript uses a unique alphabet, has about 250 pages and includes drawings depicting unknown flowers, naked nymphs and astrological symbols. It first appeared at the end of the 16th century, when Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II bought it in Prague from an unknown merchant for 600 ducats (about 3.5 kg of gold, today more than 50 thousand dollars). From Rudolph II the book passed to nobles and scientists, and at the end of the 17th century it disappeared. The manuscript reappeared around 1912, when it was purchased by the American bookseller Wilfrid Voynich. After his death, the manuscript was donated to Yale University. British scientist Gordon Wragg believes that the book is a clever hoax. The text contains features that are not characteristic of any language. On the other hand, some features, such as the length of words and the way letters and syllables are connected, are similar to those existing in real languages. "Many people think it's too complicated to be a hoax; it would take some mad alchemist years to build," says Rugg. However, Rugg shows that such complexity could be achieved easily by using a encryption device invented around 1550 called Cardan's reticle. In this symbol table, words are created by moving a card with holes cut in it. The spaces left in the table result in words of different lengths. By superimposing such lattices on the manuscript's syllable table, Rugg created a language that shares many, if not all, of the features of the manuscript's language. According to him, it would take three months to create the entire book. (, Wikipedia)
7. Dorabella Cipher, composed in 1897 by British composer Sir Edward William Elgar. He sent a letter in encrypted form to the city of Wolverhampton to his friend Dora Penny, the 22-year-old daughter of Alfred Penny, rector of St. Peter's Cathedral. This code remains unsolved.
8. Until recently, the list also included chaocipher, which could not be revealed during the lifetime of its creator. The cipher was invented by John F. Byrne in 1918, and for almost 40 years he unsuccessfully tried to interest the US authorities in it. The inventor offered a cash reward to anyone who could solve his code, but as a result, no one applied for it. But in May 2010, Byrne's family members handed over all his remaining documents to the National Cryptography Museum in Maryland, which led to the disclosure of the algorithm.
9. D'Agapeeff cipher. In 1939, British cartographer of Russian origin Alexander D'Agapeyeff published a book on the basics of cryptography, Codes and Ciphers, in the first edition of which he presented a cipher of his own invention. This cipher was not included in subsequent editions. Subsequently, D'Agapeyeff admitted that he had forgotten the algorithm for breaking this cipher It is suspected that the failures that befell everyone who tried to decipher his work were caused by the fact that the author made mistakes when encrypting the text.But in our time, there is hope that the cipher can be solved using modern methods- for example, a genetic algorithm.
10. Taman Shud. On December 1, 1948, the dead body of a man was found on the Australian coast at Somerton, near Adelaide, dressed in a sweater and coat, despite a typically hot day for the Australian climate. No documents were found on him. Attempts to compare the prints of his teeth and fingers with the available data on living people also led to nothing. A pathological examination revealed an unnatural rush of blood, which filled, in particular, his abdomen, as well as an increase internal organs, but no foreign substances were found in his body. At the same time, a suitcase was found at the railway station that could have belonged to the deceased. In the suitcase were trousers with a secret pocket, in which they found a piece of paper torn from a book with words printed on it. Taman Shud. The investigation established that the piece of paper was torn from a very rare copy of the collection "Rubai" by the great Persian poet Omar Khayyam. The book itself was found in the back seat of a car, left unlocked. On the back cover of the book, five lines were carelessly scribbled in capital letters - the meaning of this message could not be deciphered. To this day, this story remains one of Australia's most mysterious mysteries.
post tags: ,
