[UA] THE BEALE CIPHERS

[Doug Stalker]

Gareth Hanrahan wrote:

>
> 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?

A one time pad is unbreakable IF you don't have a copy of the pad.

If you now the DOI was used as the pad, the one-time-pad loses all it's
security.


What could possibly render the cypher unbreakable is only a small sample is
possessed and the algorithm used is unknown - if the writer created a custom
secure algorithm and all detail related to it's working are lost and the key is
lost as well, combined with the fact you don't know what the plain text is, it
may be unbreakable.

 - Doug


--
_____________________________________________________________
  Network Operations Engineer - Big Pond Advance Satellite
 Ericsson Australia - Level 5, 184 The Broadway, Sydney 2000
  Ph: +61-416-085-390   Email: doug at satellite.bigpond.com



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