Author: Simon Singh
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Secret communication achieved by hiding the existence of a message is known as steganography, derived from the Greek words steganos, meaning “covered,” and graphein, meaning “to write.”
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In turn, cryptography itself can be divided into two branches, known as transposition and substitution.
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Each distinct cipher can be considered in terms of a general encrypting method, known as the algorithm, and a key, which specifies the exact details of a particular encryption.
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legacy of Islamic scientists is evident from the number of Arabic words that pepper the lexicon of modern science such as algebra, alkaline and zenith.
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The letters a and l are the most common in Arabic, partly because of the definite article al-, whereas the letter j appears only a tenth as frequently. This apparently innocuous observation would lead to the first great breakthrough in cryptanalysis.
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Focusing on words with only one letter is a standard cryptanalytic trick, and I have included it among a list of cryptanalytic tips in Appendix B. This particular trick works only because this ciphertext still has spaces between the words.
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Atbash involves taking each letter, noting the number of places it is from the beginning of the alphabet, and replacing it with a letter that is an equal number of places from the end of the alphabet.
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In English this would mean that a, at the beginning of the alphabet, is replaced by Z, at the end of the alphabet, b is replaced by Y, and so on.
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Technically, a code is defined as substitution at the level of words or phrases, whereas a cipher is defined as substitution at the level of letters.
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One of the greatest tributes to their abilities is that the word rossignol became French slang for a device that picks locks, a reflection
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One of the greatest tributes to their abilities is that the word rossignol became French slang for a device that picks locks, a reflection of their ability to unlock ciphers.
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“Propose to an Englishman any principle, or any instrument, however admirable, and you will observe that the whole effort of the English mind is directed to find a difficulty, a defect, or an impossibility in it. If you speak to him of a machine for peeling a potato, he will pronounce it impossible: if you peel a potato with it before his eyes, he will declare it useless, because it will not slice a pineapple.”
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The Rosetta Stone, as it became known, appeared to be the equivalent of a cryptanalytic crib, just like the cribs that helped the codebreakers at Bletchley Park to break into Enigma.
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the four fundamental principles of hieroglyphics. First, the language of the script is at least related to Coptic, and, indeed, examination of other hieroglyphics showed that it was Coptic pure and simple. Second, semagrams are used to represent some words, e.g., the word “sun” is represented by a simple picture of the sun. Third, some long words are built wholly or partly using the rebus principle. Finally, for most of their writing, the ancient scribes relied on using a relatively conventional phonetic alphabet. This final point is the most important one, and Champollion called phonetics the “soul” of hieroglyphics.
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“She once told me that the only way to know when you have done something truly great is when your spine tingles.”
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outlining the decipherment of Linear B. The following day it was reported in The
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Ellis immediately looked for a radical and complete solution. “He would always approach a problem by asking, ‘Is this really what we want to do?’ ” says Walton. “James being James, one of the first things he did was to challenge the requirement that it was necessary to share secret data, by which I mean the key.