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Cryptology - Unofficial St. Mary's College of California Web Site

Cryptology - Unofficial St. Mary's College of California Web Site

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7.4.<br />

VIGENÈRE CIPHERS 115<br />

to encipher Meet me on tuesday eve [Abeles, p. 326]. What did he find<br />

as the ciphertext<br />

(4) Decipher TMOQE JKCNF SJDOE ESF using the keyword HOLMES.<br />

Deciphering is set up as you probably think:<br />

ciphertext<br />

T M O Q E J K C N F S J D O E E S F<br />

H O L M E S H O L M E S H O L M E S<br />

(5) Decipher WYONT REJOL BXNUQ IZHS using the keyword AROUND.<br />

(6) During World War I the German Army used a cipher that is equivalent to<br />

a Vigenère cipher with keyword ABC. To find out in which year, decipher<br />

NJPEUGEO HOVTTFGN.<br />

(7) Joseph Willard Brown claims that IN GOD WE TRUST was used as a key<br />

to encipher the message Longstreet is marching on Fisher’s Hill<br />

[Brown]. If so, what was the ciphertext 9<br />

⋄ ⋄ ⋄ ⋄ ⋄ ⋄ ⋄ ⋄ ⋄ ⋄ ⋄ ⋄<br />

How does being polyalphabetic influence the frequency counts Here is an<br />

enciphered message.<br />

QNTQH PIECN SCPOE QXPZC FFILF ACNMY FRRPW XUTKK RROLV CVEQX KASFS<br />

IMGSY XYRRM POEFH MYROI OEEUO EVSET EVPIX KAEFC ZGKEQ AHTAK KXTEI<br />

EGRNA DZPKM MDCAC ZGPVT QTFHZ OXZDE RFEWX YFWVN ARIGW AANUG RNQAE<br />

FXSMT FHCZG RWTMP ZDJII YQRRN QLDCV NKTHI VTKP<br />

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<br />

11 0 10 5 16 12 7 6 10 1 10 3 8 9 7 10 9 14 6 11 3 8 5 9 6 8<br />

Could this be from a monoalphabetic cipher Almost all the letters appear,<br />

and most appear between 5 and 10 times each. This frequency chart is much<br />

flatter than any we’ve see in the past. So, no, this ciphertext cannot be from a<br />

monoalphabetic cipher.<br />

Perhaps we could break this cipher by exhaustion, by trying each possible<br />

keyword Well, there are 26 one-letter keywords, 26 2 = 576 two-letter keywords,<br />

26 3 = 17576 three-letter ones, etc.. Here I used a five-letter keyword, and<br />

there are 26 5 = 11, 881, 376 possible five-letter keywords! It takes very little<br />

imagination to realize that trying all possible keywords is impossible.<br />

The Vigenère cipher, for much <strong>of</strong> its lifetime, had two very strong advantages<br />

over the ciphers we have previously seen:<br />

1. It was apparently unbreakable, in fact, it was basically unbroken until the<br />

19th century.<br />

9 (2) GCLET JZOZX YJATX YDUFM NVRRT LKEEU KGUGB TTICA KI, (3) HMKBX EBPXP MYLLY<br />

RXI, (4) my dear doctor watson, (5) what goes around comes, (6) nineteen fourteen, (7)<br />

TBTUV PVXVN ALUNX QKERZ FHXBA UKFVD MEC

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