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Caesar Cipher

The document discusses the Caesar cipher, which is one of the earliest and simplest substitution ciphers. It involves shifting each letter of the alphabet by a fixed number of positions, such as three positions. The document also provides the encryption and decryption algorithms for the Caesar cipher and demonstrates brute force cryptanalysis on a short ciphertext.

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16 views

Caesar Cipher

The document discusses the Caesar cipher, which is one of the earliest and simplest substitution ciphers. It involves shifting each letter of the alphabet by a fixed number of positions, such as three positions. The document also provides the encryption and decryption algorithms for the Caesar cipher and demonstrates brute force cryptanalysis on a short ciphertext.

Uploaded by

komal.260186
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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2.

2 / SUBSTITUTION TECHNIQUES 39
A substitution technique is one in which the letters of plaintext are replaced
by other letters or by numbers or symbols.1 If the plaintext is viewed as a sequence
of bits, then substitution involves replacing plaintext bit patterns with ciphertext bit
patterns.

Caesar Cipher
The earliest known, and the simplest, use of a substitution cipher was by Julius
Caesar. The Caesar cipher involves replacing each letter of the alphabet with the let-
ter standing three places further down the alphabet. For example,

plain: meet me after the toga party


cipher: PHHW PH DIWHU WKH WRJD SDUWB

Note that the alphabet is wrapped around, so that the letter following Z is A.
We can define the transformation by listing all possibilities, as follows:

plain: a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z
cipher: D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z A B C

Let us assign a numerical equivalent to each letter:

a b c d e f g h i j k l m
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12

n o p q r s t u v w x y z
13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25

Then the algorithm can be expressed as follows. For each plaintext letter p , substi-
tute the ciphertext letter C:2
C = E(3, p) = (p + 3) mod 26
A shift may be of any amount, so that the general Caesar algorithm is
C = E(k, p) = (p + k) mod 26 (2.1)
where k takes on a value in the range 1 to 25. The decryption algorithm is simply
p = D(k, C) = (C - k) mod 26 (2.2)

1
When letters are involved, the following conventions are used in this book. Plaintext is always in lowercase;
ciphertext is in uppercase; key values are in italicized lowercase.
2
We define a mod n to be the remainder when a is divided by n. For example, 11 mod 7 = 4. See Chapter 4
for a further discussion of modular arithmetic.
40 CHAPTER 2 / CLASSICAL ENCRYPTION TECHNIQUES

If it is known that a given ciphertext is a Caesar cipher, then a brute-force


cryptanalysis is easily performed: simply try all the 25 possible keys. Figure 2.3
shows the results of applying this strategy to the example ciphertext. In this case, the
plaintext leaps out as occupying the third line.
Three important characteristics of this problem enabled us to use a brute-
force cryptanalysis:
1. The encryption and decryption algorithms are known.
2. There are only 25 keys to try.
3. The language of the plaintext is known and easily recognizable.
In most networking situations, we can assume that the algorithms are known.
What generally makes brute-force cryptanalysis impractical is the use of an algo-
rithm that employs a large number of keys. For example, the triple DES algorithm,
examined in Chapter 6, makes use of a 168-bit key, giving a key space of 2168 or
greater than 3.7 * 1050 possible keys.

PHHW PH DIWHU WKH WRJD SDUWB


KEY
1 oggv og chvgt vjg vqic rctva
2 nffu nf bgufs uif uphb qbsuz
3 meet me after the toga party
4 ldds ld zesdq sgd snfz ozqsx
5 kccr kc ydrcp rfc rmey nyprw
6 jbbq jb xcqbo qeb qldx mxoqv
7 iaap ia wbpan pda pkcw lwnpu
8 hzzo hz vaozm ocz ojbv kvmot
9 gyyn gy uznyl nby niau julns
10 fxxm fx tymxk max mhzt itkmr
11 ewwl ew sxlwj lzw lgys hsjlq
12 dvvk dv rwkvi kyv kfxr grikp
13 cuuj cu qvjuh jxu jewq fqhjo
14 btti bt puitg iwt idvp epgin
15 assh as othsf hvs hcuo dofhm
16 zrrg zr nsgre gur gbtn cnegl
17 yqqf yq mrfqd ftq fasm bmdfk
18 xppe xp lqepc esp ezrl alcej
19 wood wo kpdob dro dyqk zkbdi
20 vnnc vn jocna cqn cxpj yjach
21 ummb um inbmz bpm bwoi xizbg
22 tlla tl hmaly aol avnh whyaf
23 skkz sk glzkx znk zumg vgxze
24 rjjy rj fkyjw ymj ytlf ufwyd
25 qiix qi ejxiv xli xske tevxc

Figure 2.3 Brute-Force Cryptanalysis of Caesar


Cipher

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