Image via WikipediaWelcome back everyone. I’m continuing with my cryptography kick with the Vigenere Cipher. Like the Caesar Cipher, this one is also involves substitution, but instead of one cipher text for encrypting and decrypting (scrambling and unscrambling in plain English). To work with this cipher you need the Vigenere Square, which is right below.
On top of having two cipher texts a keyword is also used for encrypting and decrypting. The following link can describe it much better and I can, plus you get to play around with it: http://www.simonsingh.net/The_Black_Chamber/v_square.html You can now officially drive your friends nuts.
Unlike the Caesar Cipher, Vigenere does a better job at hiding the letter “E” since it is encrypted twice. Like the Caesar Cipher, it is a mono-alphabetic cipher because letters are used to both hide and unhide the plaintext and it is a stream cipher; meaning that one letter is encrypted/decrypted at a time.
Again, the information contained in here is based off of one of my professors’ lectures, so I can’t take credit for it. I think the next post I will wrap things up with current methods of cryptography.
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Tags: cryptography, Vigenere Cipher