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Code and ciphers: Julius Caesar, the Enigma and the internet

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152<br />

chapter 10<br />

corresponding to an active pin <strong>and</strong> those corresponding to an inactive<br />

pin. If <strong>the</strong>re is overlapping <strong>the</strong> inactive pin columns are not affected but<br />

<strong>the</strong> active columns are. By comparing <strong>the</strong> cipher letter frequency counts<br />

in <strong>the</strong> ‘inactive’ columns with <strong>the</strong> corresponding counts in <strong>the</strong> ‘active’<br />

columns <strong>the</strong> cryptanalyst would hope to determine <strong>the</strong> kick on <strong>the</strong> 17wheel.<br />

He might not succeed but whe<strong>the</strong>r he does or not he would carry<br />

out <strong>the</strong> same analysis on <strong>the</strong> widths of <strong>the</strong> o<strong>the</strong>r five wheels. If he were<br />

able to deduce one or more kicks with some certainty he would <strong>the</strong>n see<br />

what <strong>the</strong> cipher distribution on <strong>the</strong> remaining wheels would be after<br />

taking <strong>the</strong> known kicks into account. Thus he would carry out an iterative<br />

process, hopefully steadily increasing <strong>the</strong> information about <strong>the</strong> cage <strong>and</strong><br />

pin patterns. If <strong>the</strong>re is overlapping <strong>the</strong> analysis is even more difficult,<br />

particularly if all of <strong>the</strong> wheels have some overlap. On <strong>the</strong> o<strong>the</strong>r h<strong>and</strong>, as<br />

<strong>the</strong> example above showed, too much overlapping may turn a ‘good’ cage<br />

into a poor one!

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