cnspp-ch02-Classical Encryption Techniques.ppt

* One approach to reducing the spikyness of natural language text is used the Playfair cipher which encrypts more than one letter at once. We now consider the other alternative, using multiple cipher alphabets in turn. This gives the attacker more work, since many alphabets need to be guessed, and because the frequency distribution is more complex, since the same plaintext letter could be replaced by several ciphertext letters, depending on which alphabet is used. * Simply create a set of caesar cipher translation alphabets, then use each in turn, as shown next. For some centuries the Vigenère cipher was le chiffre indéchiffrable (the unbreakable cipher). As a result of a challenge, it was broken by Charles Babbage (the inventor of the computer) in 1854 but kept secret (possibly because of the Crimean War - not the first time governments have kept advances to themselves!). The method was independently reinvented by a Prussian, Friedrich Kasiski, who published the attack now named after him in 1863. However lack of major advances meant that various polyalphabetic substitution ciphers were used into the 20C. One very famous incident was the breaking of the Zimmermann telegram in WW1 which resulted in the USA entering the war. In general the approach is to find a number of duplicated sequences, collect all their distances apart, look for common factors, remembering that some will be random flukes and need to be discarded. Now have a series of monoalphabetic ciphers, each with original language letter frequency characteristics. Can attack these in turn to break the cipher. * See that the key used is the keyword DECEPTIVE prefixed to as much of the message WEAREDISCOVEREDSAV as is needed. When deciphering, recover the first 9 letters using the keyword DECEPTIVE. Then instead of repeating the keyword, start using the recovered letters from the message WEAREDISC. As recover more letters, have more of key to recover later letters. Problem is that the same language char