[UA] THE BEALE CIPHERS

[Gareth Hanrahan]

> If an actual copy of this pamphlet can be located, then the cipher can
> almost certainly be broken using modern cryptanalysis techniques.

Hmm. Not sure about that. Glancing at a site on the Beale ciphers:
================
The Beale Cipher Table

As the Beale Papers author explains, Cipher #2 is a "book" cipher for which
the Declaration of Independence is the key
document. Beale, whoever he was, numbered the words of the DOI and used
these numbers as his cipher elements. Whenever he
needed an "A", for example, he found a word in the  DOI beginning with "A"
and used the corresponding word number as a
substitute for the letter.
===============
It's not a simple substition cipher. He took a different word beginning with
A for each instance of A. Basically, he used the Declaration of Independence
as a sort of one-time pad. One-tiime pads are still pretty much unbreakable,
yeah?

> -Allen

Gar


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