《斯坦福大学开课程：编程方法》讲义#26.docxVIP

Mehran SahamiCS 106AHandout #26October 22, 2007Strings and CiphersBased on a handout by Eric Roberts.Cryptography, derived from the Greek word meaning hidden, is the science ofcreating and decoding secret messages whose meaning cannot be understood by otherswho might intercept the message. In the language of cryptography, the message you aretrying to send is called the plaintext; the message that you actually send is called theciphertext. Unless your adversaries know the secret of the encoding system, which isusually embodied in some privileged piece of information called a key, intercepting theciphertext should not enable them to discover the original plaintext version of themessage. On the other hand, the intended recipient, who is in possession of the key, caneasily translate the ciphertext back into its plaintext counterpart.Caesar ciphersOne of the earliest documented uses of ciphers is by Julius Caesar. In his De VitaCaesarum, the Roman historian Suetonius describes Caesar’s encryption system like this:If he had anything confidential to say, he wrote it in cipher, that is, by so changingthe order of the letters of the alphabet, that not a word could be made out. Ifanyone wishes to decipher these, and get at their meaning, he must substitute thefourth letter of the alphabet, namely D, for A, and so with the others.Even today, the technique of encoding a message by shifting letters a certain distance inthe alphabet is called a Caesar cipher. According to the passage from Suetonius, eachletter is shifted three letters ahead in the alphabet. For example, if Caesar had had time totranslate the final words Shakespeare gives him, ET TU BRUTE would have come out asHW WX EUXWH, because E gets moved three letters ahead to H, T gets moved three to W,and so on. Letters that get advanced past the end of the alphabet wrap around back to thebeginning, so that X would become A, Y would become B, and Z would become C.Caesar ciphers have been used in modern times as well. The “