Codes and cryptograms: From yesterday to today. Part 3o & Competition

The third part of the Codes and Cryptograms: Let us here again in another article about secrets, cryptography and cryptograms! In the previous two parts we have seen some remarkable techniques of the past centuries, which undoubtedly influenced modern forms of cryptography.crypto-2 cryptograms cryptograms

part 1

part 2

In this article we will refer to more modern forms of cryptography and begin our references starting with Samuel Morse, whose last name has been associated with Morse we've all heard of.

The Morse Code alphabet. 1922
The Morse Code alphabet. 1922

In the middle of the 19th century began to be applied to communications directly influencing cryptography. Codebreakers jumped at the chance and started looking for new ways to keep a message hidden.

The revolution became 1844 when US inventor Samuel Morse built the first telegraph line, covering a distance of approximately 60 kilometers, between Baltimore, Maryland and Washington.

On May 24 of that year, Morse sent the famous Bible telegram “Whatever God has done", From the Supreme Court room in Washington to his assistant Alfred Vale in Baltimore.

Samuel Morse (1791 - 1872)
Samuel Morse (1791 - 1872)

In Morse code the message would have been transmitted (in Greek) as shown below:

--- - --- --- --- --- ---. . --- ... .- .--. .-. - -. .- ... -.-. ....

Long-distance electrical communication was now possible and signaled a revolution that would have a major impact on society. Businesses soon began to apply technology to close deals immediately, newspapers on collection speed and ministries for national and international communication.

In a few decades a dense network of tele cables crossed all the oceans of the globe, making communication truly, instantaneously global.

5m cryptograms cryptograms cryptograms cryptograms cryptograms
Telegraphic Morse.

For all its speed, however, the telegraph had one very serious flaw: The lack

Morse had devised a system of short and protracted beats to send messages through his network, but his codebook was of common use, so it was useless for secrets.

1853, an article in the English version Quarterly Review illustrated the problem:

Measures should also be taken to prevent an important one

today's objection to the sending of personal telex mail,

of violating any secrecy, because in any case, at least half a dozen people

 they must know every word a person sends to another.

And they were not wrong, except for the employees of the telegraph office who read and transmitted the messages, anyone who owned a simple receiver device could hear them. Realizing this problem, dozens of people began to invent their own hypothetical inviolable cryptograms.

The process was simple, the text would be encrypted using a method and then the generated text would be sent with Morse code. So both the officials and the aspirants who would obey the messages would see nothing but gibberish.

One of the first services that was adapted to the new technology was the army, all the major military messages were encrypted using the old Viagener encryption encryption, the invisible chiffre indechiffrable (uncrypted cryptogram).

As we understand, the telegraph revolutionized cryptography and, after 450, reinvented years, in which codes and names were prevalent, the art of cryptograms!

Blaise de Wiesener & Charles Babbage.

Naturally, I personally universally embrace it, nothing in the latest technological development came from parthenogenesis! I imagine reading these three articles describing various crypto techniquesover the centuries, you would find it yourself.

With cryptanalysis we have a repeat of ancient or medieval techniques, adapted to the technological skills of each age.

As we mentioned in previous article, John Trithemius was one of the first to use a table to create a polyalphabetic cryptogram. Now what happens when someone uses this table by defining a key, without which you can't figure out where to start? This was none other than Visener.

Let's go straight to an example to understand what Weisener did in 1549. Let's say we want to encrypt the message. "AVOID THE NORTH" with Wisconsin cryptograms:

bizener cryptograms cryptograms

We use any keyword (in our case I chose the word “CODE") And write it as many times as we need to encrypt the sentence, as shown in the example above.

Then we look back at the table of Trithimios

trith cryptograms

What we do is this simple, we go back to the first row of the array and find the first letter of the sentence for , that is, in our example ( ΑGO HORSHIP) the letter "Α“. The corresponding letter of the key as shown in the table above is the letter “Κ", We understand down by following the letters until we find the letter"Κ”And with what intersects, we write it. (In the letter “Α"There is an exception because there is no column left so we write"Κ").

Let's look at one more example. The second letter of the encryption proposal (ΑΠSAVE THE BORE) it's the "Π", The corresponding letter of the key is"Ω", So go back to the first line, find the"ΠAnd they go down until we find the first pillar the "Ω“. The cross-over letter is the encryption letter, meaning “Ο".

Also, the third letter of our proposal is the letter (CAΟBURN THE NORTH) "Ο“. We look back at the front line and look for “Ο“. We go down until we find the letter with which it intersects with the letter of the first column "Δ", The third letter of the key. And this is the letter "Σ“. And so on.

Babaz is mentioned as the man who broke the awesome cryptogram of Vizner who uses the self-key, that is, he embodies the encrypted sentence into the key. We will not analyze a code in this case, because the article will be enormous. Certainly the encryption of this way is not done using the frequency analysis we saw in a previous article. Decryption is based on factors. The factor found most often indicates the number of letters in the key. A process that can keep days ..

Two more articles that complement Morse code encryption and shipping can be found here: First   Secondly

The competition

The competition is aimed at our "for-sale" and non-readers, who have the luxury of devoting some of their free time to participate in another iGuRu.gr competition by discovering the cryptograms! Today's contest will be a little more complicated than it is previous because you have to go into my mind and guess the keyword (of course there will be help :)) in order to decrypt the encrypted message.

I suggested to the manager that the first five who would answer correctly take me out for food, but he replied that this is not in the interest of our audience, we give gifts, we do not take advantage.

So we decided after pressure that I accepted to give five licenses of the following program (here the review) to the first five who will send by e-mail the answer to georgios.koliou [at] iguru.gr :)

The plot is as follows. We receive the following message in Morse code (Greek characters):
- .-. -.- -.-. -.-. -.-. ... -..- .- .. .-. -.- -. .-. - -. - - - - .. - .-. . ..-. -.- -.-. ..-. .- .. ..-. - .- .- .- .-. ..-. - ... - .. - ... -.-

Morse Code (PDF).

Which is self-key encrypted. The auto-key is the last name (in Greek characters as attributed by wikipedia) of a WWII hero who was criticized for his controversial nature, but his contribution to ending WWII was huge.

We made extensive reference to this person here in iGuRu. By following the instructions in the above article and finding the self-key you will be able to decipher the sentence!

Good luck!

1th winner: Ioannidis Lazaros

2th winner: Akasidis Athanasios

3th winner: Thimaras Eleftherios

 

Solution

 

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Written by Dimitris

Dimitris hates on Mondays .....

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