Wednesday, October 05, 2005

HCIA RNPAG PC!YK!

No, its not the font nor your locale but just a cryptic title :).
Cryptography is an interesting subject. I remember my initial encounter with them in competitive exams.
if cat is dbu then what is dog
Though 90% of the time you are thinking "I give a damn what it is" you take your time to figure out whatz done in the first sample, whether its substituting the next alphabet or the previous or does a -> z or is it a series.
Though I used to enjoy deciphering these while at home over tea ..... I remember appearing for entrance exams & job interviews and cursing them while sweating profusely to decipher these kinds. Before the joy of decoding one could settle in you have a more complex one staring at you in the face and the time clock ticking by.

I think why people loved “Da Vinci Code” by Dan Brown is because it was full of these code-decoding Techniques. How many actually know about the life of Jesus & Mary of Magdelene and the Holy Grail and how many actually care if Jesus was married or not. More than the controversy it drew in about the life of Jesus and the Catholic Church people merely enjoyed Robert Langdon & Sophie Neveu decode the clues and the explanation of the logic behind the clues.

So herez an another interesting encryption methodology I came across, God alone knows how I landed browsing through this.

In anycase this is Shannon’s Principle of Confusion & Difusion,

In a classical transposition cipher the plaintext is written on a piece of paper in horizontal rows of c characters each. The number of columns c is part of the secret key. After the whole text has been written down in this fashion, the ciphertext is read out vertically column after column. In simpler versions this is done in increasing column order, but in a generalized method the columns could be chosen in any order (known of course by the authorized receiver) thereby extending the number of possible keys.

Example:
MESSAGE FROM MARY STUART KILL THE QUEEN

M  E  S  S  A  G  E  F  R
O  M M  A R  Y  S  T  U
A  R  T  K  I  L  L  T  H
E  Q  U  E  E  N

MOAEE MRQSM TUSAK EARIE GYLNE SLFTT RUH


Isnt that smart :). I loved it. So the blog & now encrypt the Title ;) (The secret key is 5)

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