So far in cryptography history, substitution ciphers were vanquished by frequency analysis. However, a new cipher would rise, one that proved to be the first real challenge to frequency analysis: the homophonic cipher. The homophonic cipher was similar to a substitution cipher, but instead of using one symbol to replace another symbol, there would be
Read MoreAs part of my recent IDS project, I will be chronicling my ‘learning journey’ in the subject of cryptography and cryptoanalysis through a series of posts, each detailing a brief summary of what I have learned and/or accomplished. In the last post, I talked about the earliest type of cryptography: the substitution cipher, and how
Read MoreIn my previous post, I defined substitution ciphers, and how to decrypt them through frequency analysis. In this post, I will discuss various substitution ciphers that were used throughout history. One substitution cipher simply uses a random permutation of the letters of the alphabet as the key; this was the example I used in the
Read MoreAs part of my recent IDS project, I will be chronicling my ‘learning journey’ in the subject of cryptography and cryptoanalysis through a series of posts, each detailing a brief summary of what I have learned and/or accomplished. Today I began reading the Code Book, an excellent summary of the history of cryptoanalysis. I have
Read MoreToday I began my research into the subject of cryptography by reading The Code Book by Simon Singh. One of the first things I learned was the difference between stenography and cryptography. Both are methods of transmitting messaged secretly. However, the methods which both utilize differ greatly. When one sends a message with stenography, they
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