2012年11月25日日曜日

海外高校生向け暗号講座(3)


Let me explain with using a concrete example.
First, this is the list of the Caesar Ciphers used in Vigenere Cipher.

Each alphabet represent one of the Caesar Ciphers.
For example, the alphabet “a” represents the Caesar Cipher with zero 
shifts, that means that the alphabets are not changed at all.
The alphabet “b” represents the Caesar Cipher with one shift, that 
means that “a” is substituted with “b”, “b” is substituted with “c”, and so son.
The alphabet “c” represents the Caesar Cipher with two shifts like this, and so on.

Now I will show you how the sentence “this is a pen” is ciphered with the key “age”.
The first line represents the plain text “this is a pen”.
The second line is the repetetion of the key.
Then the cipher text is obtained by substituting each alphabet in the plain text 
by using the Caesar Cipher designated just below the character. 
As the conclusion,  we obtain the cipher text:    tnmsowavin

It is known that Vigenere Cipher is the ultimate cipher, that is, it is impossible 
to break it if it is properly used, where "properly used" means that you have 
to use a very long key consisting of random alphabets.