Today I learned about the decipherment of Linear B. Linear B, like the Rosetta Stone, was an ancient piece of text, this time originating from ancient Crete, and was deciphered using cryptoanalysis techniques. However, Linear B uses a syllabic script, so it was much harder to decipher than the Rosetta Stone. It was eventually deciphered,
Read MoreAlthough the Enigma was cracked, and WW2 was over, cryptography was still changed forever. What used to be done with pen and paper is now being done with devices. Codes that were once cracked by linguists are now cracked by mathematicians. It was the beginning of a new era. And coinciding with this new era
Read MoreToday I learned about quantum cryptography, the use of quantum mechanics to perform cryptographic functions. One of the most useful applications of quantum mechanics in cryptography is quantum key distribution, a method of distributing keys between two parties without a third party intercepting it. The nature of quantum communication means that if a third party
Read MoreAfter the Vignere cipher was cracked, cipher technology stagnated for a long period of time. New ciphers were invented, but all these ciphers were easily cracked, and private transmissions, especially in the military, were being cracked left and right. That was until Arthur Scherbius invented a device called the Enigma. The Enigma took advantage of
Read MoreRight now, cryptography is still a developing science. Different types of ciphers are still being tried and tested, and while many are far too complicated for me to cover in detail, hardly any cipher that we use is completely indecipherable. Except for one. And it’s not even that new. The one-time pad cipher, as it
Read MoreToday I continued reading the Code Book, and learned about the evolution(or lack thereof) of ciphers in World War 1. In the late 1800s, around the time of the Crimean War, the Babbage-Kasiski method had rendered the Vignere cipher obsolete. After that, cryptography began to stagnate. New ciphers were still devised, but none could match
Read MoreSo 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
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