The Caesar Cipher: A Timeless Classic in the History of Cryptography
Caeser Cipher is one of the best-known substitution ciphers in today’s world. It was famously employed by Julius Caesar to communicate with his generals. Multiple accounts can be found throughout the history of Julius Caesar using this ciphering method. Although it is unknown how useful this technique was, there are no records from the time which depict solving this cipher.
The Caesar cipher was also found on the back of a mezuzah, which encrypts the names of God. The letters of the cryptogram themselves comprise a religiously significant “divine name,” which is believed to keep evil forces in check.
In the 19th century, it could be found in personal advertisement sections of newspapers and would sometimes be used to exchange encrypted messages.
It was also employed in multiple forms during the First World War, paving the way for more substitution ciphers such as the Vigenère cipher. Confederate soldiers made use of this cipher during the American Civil War, employing multiple encodings.
This ciphering method can be found now being used by children and occasionally popping up in the news to be used by mafia boss Bernardo Provenzano, who was captured in 2006 as his messages were decoded easily.
In the 9th century, Al-Kindi broke the Caesar cipher by using frequency analysis, making it easy to decipher the coded texts.
The Caesar cipher works by replacing each character with a certain places down the alphabet. For example, if we shift 2 places, then A turns to C, B to D and C to E.
Plain Text : Quick brown fox
Cipher Text(Shifted by 4): Uymgo fvsar jsbMathematical Description:
E[x] = (x+k)(mod 26)
D[x] = (x-k)(mod 26)
This cipher method is very unsafe as there can only be a maximum of 25 shifts in the cipher and can be broken easily by a brute force attack.
Try out Caeser Cipher!
