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Classical cipher. In cryptography, a classical cipher is a type of cipher that was used historically but for the most part, has fallen into disuse. In contrast to modern cryptographic algorithms, most classical ciphers can be practically computed and solved by hand. However, they are also usually very simple to break with modern technology.
In cryptography, a cipher (or cypher) is an algorithm for performing encryption or decryption —a series of well-defined steps that can be followed as a procedure. An alternative, less common term is encipherment. To encipher or encode is to convert information into cipher or code. In common parlance, "cipher" is synonymous with "code", as ...
A book cipher is a cipher in which each word or letter in the plaintext of a message is replaced by some code that locates it in another text, the key . A simple version of such a cipher would use a specific book as the key, and would replace each word of the plaintext by a number that gives the position where that word occurs in that book.
The cipher illustrated here uses a left shift of 3, so that (for example) each occurrence of E in the plaintext becomes B in the ciphertext. In cryptography , a Caesar cipher , also known as Caesar's cipher , the shift cipher , Caesar's code , or Caesar shift , is one of the simplest and most widely known encryption techniques.
However, in cryptography, code has a more specific meaning: the replacement of a unit of plaintext (i.e., a meaningful word or phrase) with a code word (for example, "wallaby" replaces "attack at dawn"). A cypher, in contrast, is a scheme for changing or substituting an element below such a level (a letter, a syllable, or a pair of letters, etc ...
The Vigenère cipher ( French pronunciation: [viʒnɛːʁ]) is a method of encrypting alphabetic text where each letter of the plaintext is encoded with a different Caesar cipher, whose increment is determined by the corresponding letter of another text, the key . For example, if the plaintext is attacking tonight and the key is ...
In cryptanalysis, frequency analysis (also known as counting letters) is the study of the frequency of letters or groups of letters in a ciphertext. The method is used as an aid to breaking classical ciphers . Frequency analysis is based on the fact that, in any given stretch of written language, certain letters and combinations of letters ...
(And on occasion, ciphers have been broken through pure deduction; for example, the German Lorenz cipher and the Japanese Purple code, and a variety of classical schemes): [5] Ciphertext-only: the cryptanalyst has access only to a collection of ciphertexts or codetexts.