Ciphers: Making and Breaking Ralph Morelli Trinity College, Hartford (
[email protected]) Smithsonian Institute October 31, 2009 © 2009 Ralph Morelli You are free to reuse and remix this presentation under a creative commons license provided you give credit to the author. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/us/ This presentation was created using Open Office 3.0, free and open source software. http://www.openoffice.org/ Part II: Cryptology in Transition Outline Polyalphabetic Substitution Alberti Cipher Vigenère Cipher – Le Chiffre Indéchiffrable Kasiski Decipherment Mechanical Ciphers The Enigma Machine WWII Leon Battista Alberti (1404-1472) Leon Battista Alberti (1404-1472) Renaissance man. Architect, author, artist, poet, philosopher. Father of Modern Cryptography – First western exposition of frequency analysis. – Invention of polyalphabetic cipher. Courtyard of the Uffizi Palace Alberti the Architect Santa Maria Novella – Florence De Cifris First comprehensive account of cryptanalysis in the West. Invention of the polyalphabetic cipher. Alberti Cipher Disk Outer disk stationary with regular alphabet. Inner disk moveable with permuted alphabet. An inner disk letter (k) is picked as index, and aligned with some letter on outer disk (B). The index is changed every 3 or 4 words and inserted into the message. “Ciao amici” might be encrypted as “BlvgyCeztkt”. Compare Letter Frequencies Plain Caesar Simple Polyalphabetic Polyalphabetic Development Alberti (~ 1472): devised genuine polyalphabetic cipher with mixed alphabet plus a practical cipher disk device. Abbot Trithemius (~ 1508): used tables of regular alphabets to be used in fixed order. Giovanni Battista Belaso (~ 1550 ): invented principle of a key or keyword to select alphabets. Giovanni Battista Porta (~ 1563): “invented” using mixed alphabets.