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Caesar Cipher

The document describes the Caesar cipher, one of the earliest known substitution ciphers. The Caesar cipher involves shifting each letter of a plaintext message by a set number of positions in the alphabet, known as the key. Both the sender and receiver must know the key in order to encrypt and decrypt messages. The document provides examples of encrypting and decrypting messages with a key of 1. It also describes how cryptanalysis of the Caesar cipher involves trying each possible key through brute force. Frequency analysis of letters in the ciphertext can also reveal the key by comparing against known frequency distributions of letters in languages like English.

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25 views12 pages

Caesar Cipher

The document describes the Caesar cipher, one of the earliest known substitution ciphers. The Caesar cipher involves shifting each letter of a plaintext message by a set number of positions in the alphabet, known as the key. Both the sender and receiver must know the key in order to encrypt and decrypt messages. The document provides examples of encrypting and decrypting messages with a key of 1. It also describes how cryptanalysis of the Caesar cipher involves trying each possible key through brute force. Frequency analysis of letters in the ciphertext can also reveal the key by comparing against known frequency distributions of letters in languages like English.

Uploaded by

areej.saad
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Caesar Cipher

• earliest known substitution cipher


• by Julius Caesar
• first attested use in military affairs
• Each character of a plain text is replaced by replaces each letter by a
character n position down in the alphabet
Caesar Cipher
• Both parties (sender and receiver) have the 'key' for the cipher,
• For the caesar cipher, the key is the number of characters to shift the cipher alphabet.

Example 1:
Encryption with key=1
plaintext: defend the east wall of the castle
ciphertext: efgfoe uif fbtu xbmm pg uif dbtumf

Example 2:
Decryption with key=1
plain: abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz
cipher: bcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyza
Caesar Cipher
• Both parties (sender and receiver) have the 'key' for the cipher,
• For the caesar cipher, the key is the number of characters to shift the cipher alphabet.

Example 1:
Encryption with key=1
plaintext: defend the east wall of the castle
ciphertext: efgfoe uif fbtu xbmm pg uif dbtumf

Example 2:
Decryption with key=1
ciphertext: efgfoe uif fbtu xbmm pg uif dbtumf
plaintext: defend the east wall of the castle
Caesar Cipher
Mathematical Description
• First we translate all of our characters to numbers, 'a'=0, 'b'=1, 'c'=2, ... , 'z'=25.
• We can now represent the caesar cipher encryption function, e(x), where x is the character we
are encrypting, as:

• Where k is the key (the shift) applied to each letter.


• After applying this function the result is a number which must then be translated back into a
letter.
• The decryption function is :
Cryptanalysis of Caesar Cipher
• only have 26 possible ciphers
• A maps to A,B,..Z
• could simply try each in turn
• a brute force search
Cryptanalysis of Caesar Cipher- Example
Our ciphertext is the following:

YMJHFJXFWHNUMJWNXTSJTKYMJJFWQNJXYPSTBSFSIXNRUQJXYHNUMJWX
Monoalphabetic Cipher
• rather than just shifting the alphabet
• could shuffle (jumble) the letters arbitrarily
• each plaintext letter maps to a different random ciphertext letter
• hence key is 26 letters long

Plain: abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz
Cipher: DKVQFIBJWPESCXHTMYAUOLRGZN

Plaintext: ifwewishtoreplaceletters
Ciphertext: WIRFRWAJUHYFTSDVFSFUUFYA
Monoalphabetic Cipher Security
• now have a total of 26! = 4 x 1026 keys
• with so many keys, might think is secure
• but would be !!!WRONG!!!
• problem is language characteristics
Language characteristics and Cryptanalysis
• in English E is by far the most common letter
• followed by T,R,N,I,O,A,S
• other letters like Z,J,K,Q,X are fairly rare
• have tables of single, double & triple letter frequencies for various
languages
English Letter Frequencies
Use in Cryptanalysis
• key concept - monoalphabetic substitution ciphers do
not change relative letter frequencies
• calculate letter frequencies for ciphertext
• compare counts/plots against known values
Example Cryptanalysis
• given ciphertext:
UZQSOVUOHXMOPVGPOZPEVSGZWSZOPFPESXUDBMETSXAIZ
VUEPHZHMDZSHZOWSFPAPPDTSVP

• count relative letter frequencies (see text)


• guess P & Z are e and t
• guess ZW is th and hence ZWSZ is that
• proceeding with trial and error finally get:
it was disclosed yesterday that several informal but
direct contacts have been made

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