Priestnovykh's Blog

100 things you could go by without knowing about!

Caesar Cipher May 22, 2011

Filed under: Ciphers — priestnovykh @ 4:42 am

Hello Believers!

Its been long now and Im just thrilled at starting my blog again and reaching out to you all again!

A Caesar cipher is one of the simplest (and easiest cracked) encryption methods. It is a Substitution Cipher that involves replacing each letter of the secret message with a different letter of the alphabet which is a fixed number of positions further in the alphabet.

Because each letter in the message has a direct translation to another letter, frequency analysis can be used to decipher the message. For example, the letter E is the most commonly used letter in the English language. Thus, if the most common letter in a secret message is K, it is likely that K represents E. Additionally, common word endings such as ING, LY, and ES also give clues.

A brute-force approach of trying all 25 possible combinations would also work to decipher the message.
Example

In this example, each letter in the plaintext message has been shifted 3 letters down in the alphabet.
Plaintext: This is a secret message
Ciphertext: wklv lv d vhfuhw phvvdjh

Thanks for believing!

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