Tag: Code Book

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Ciphers and Codes, Oh My!

In previous posts we’ve looked at encryption and decryption, and talked about how messages are obscured, but at a very basic level, have you heard of ciphers and codes? Have you ever wondered about the difference between the two?

On a recent visit to Bletchley Park I came across a notice with the image shown above, so I thought I’d share it with you.

A code is a word, phrase or numbers which is converted into different words, phrases or numbers.  All the recipient needs is some kind of guide to explain what the codes mean – in the case of the image, “You Attack at Dawn” was encoded as “Buy Some Milk”, so the recipient would need to know what “Buy Some Milk” really meant.

As well as the example given in the image, there are others seen in movies, TV shos and elsewhere.  For example, the Wikipedia entry for Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan explains the use of a code by saying “Though Khan believes his foe stranded on Regula I, Kirk and Spock use a coded message to arrange a rendezvous.” This was, as Kirk and Spock said, “by the book” where days became hours and hours became minutes.

A cipher transforms individual letters, or small groups of letters, into some other combination, perhaps even using symbols. To read the message, the enciphered (encrypted) text needs to be deciphered (decrypted) somehow.  This is what codebreakers do – they try to decipher the original message.

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The Code Book

Having seen Simon Singh explaining how the Enigma machine worked while at a conference, I picked up this book. It charts the history of codes and ciphers from well before Roman times to the current day, and shows how they have developed over time. It was also very useful to read the difference between code (replacing words) and ciphers (replacing letters): most of what was discussed in the book fell into the latter category.

Singh writes in a very clear and informative manner, and makes the history of the topic interesting and at times exciting. I have to confess that some of the maths which was used went over my head, though I understood the general meaning in what was being said.

I was fascinated by the work done to understand the Linear A and Linear B languages, and the fact that initially scholars of Ancient Greek were convinced that neither text were part of that language: it must have been incredible for the person who finally worked out that Linear A was indeed Greek, albeit 500 years older than that used by Homer 3000 years ago.

The assertion that the most unbreakable code was that used by the Navajo code talkers in the Second World War is quite an interesting one. I understand that if you use a language that no-one else understands, then you improve the chances of it not being understood, but the fact that new phrases had to be introduced for English words which don’t appear in the native language must introduce some opportunities for the code breakers to make a start. Some form of frequency analysis would have some effect, but I think that the differences between Japanese kanji and English Roman script had something to do with it too.

The development of near-identical public key cryptography technologies by mathematicians in the US and the U.K. at approximately the same time is also an interesting revelation. (Diffie-Helman and RSA were both more or less simultaneously discovered on either side of the Atlantic, though GCHQ were slightly ahead in each case.) The fact that the cryptologists in the UK were based at GCHQ and therefore unable to share any of their work externally (or to review external solutions) shows I think that given enough time any technology can be “discovered” by different people in different locations.

In summary, I believe that this book is a good introduction to many different concepts, along with many good examples of each concept. It is well worth reading.