Cryptography claims its roots from the latin root of kryptos, which means hidden secret, and graphein, which means writing. According to Dictionary.com, "Cryptography is the science or study of techniques of secret writing and message hiding." In today 's fast paced and tech savvy world, it isn 't strange to have at least a fleeting knowledge of cryptology and encryption specifically but this relatively young science and field of engineering has very deep roots. The generally agreed upon first example of cryptography at work occurred nearly four thousand years ago and is found in the ancient tomb of the Egyptian pharaoh Khnumhotep, where "...[the scribe] uses some unusual hieroglyphic symbols here and there in place of more ordinary ones." (Kahn 71) While it 's believed that the anonymous scribe responsible for the hieroglyphics wasn 't doing so to deliberately obfuscate his message as there was "no fully developed code of hieroglyphic substitution" according to Kahn. However, his actions, perhaps intended to add dignity to the carvings, had another effect - an essential ingredient of cryptography, the deliberate transformation of a message. While the scribes reasoning will forever remain unknown, modern scientist have given a name to the technique he used - a substitution cypher.
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A substitution cypher is "any cipher system which substitutes one symbol or character for another." While, the scribe 's carvings aren 't a true substitution cipher, one doesn 't need to look far to find one. Consider, the world-famous Julius Caesar. In the first century BC, the Roman general turned dictator used a cipher of his own. The "Caesar Cipher" is an Additive/Substitution cypher and one of the earliest, if not earliest of its kind. It works by replacing the original letter with one farther down the alphabet. For instance, "B" becomes "G" with a left shit of five in the English alphabet. Over 400 years before Julius Caesar 's rise to power, there were the Greeks and among the many city states that dotted the land, stood Sparta. The Spartans were an adept warrior society, basing the entirety of their fame on military might, and like every modern military, they had a means of encrypted communication. The Spartans used a technique called a Transposition Cypher. This cypher works by rearranging letters rather than outright replacing them. How they did it was by creating a cylindrical device called a Scytale of which is "the first mechanical enciphering device" (Leighton 149) and giving one to both the sender and recipient of exactly the same diameter. The message would be prepared by the sender on a long thin strip of leather or papyrus that would be wrapped around the Scytale to reveal the message to its recipient. Transposition techniques are both popular and in-use to this day. Time marches on, though the next major break through in cryptography wouldn 't happen until 1466 by a man named Leon Battista Alberti, often credited as "the father of western cryptology". His contribution to the world of cryptology was the concept of a "cipher disk" and with it, Polyalphabetic Ciphers. According to Appelbaum, a polyalphabetic cipher is any cipher based on substitution, using multiple substitution alphabets." While an incredible breakthrough, it wasn 't Alberti who developed a practical model. This task fell to a man by the name of Giovan Battista Bellaso, in 1553 and was later misattributed to a french cryptographer by the name of Blaise de Vigenère. No matter who it 's true inventor was, the fact remains that the cipher remained unbroken for nearly three centuries earning it the epithet "le chiffre indéchiffrable" or the indecipherable cipher. In the mid 1850 's it was broken by the incredible scientist and "father of computers" Charles Babbage. Unfortunately "Babbage 's breakthrough was not publicized. The British intelligence office needed to keep this valuable discovery confidential as they were in the midst of the Crimean War.."(Stanoyevitch 187) This meant that the credit for solving the cipher would be misattributed to an infantry officer by the name of Friedrich Kasiski in his book "Die Geheimschriften und die Dechiffrir-Kuns", german for "Secret writing and the Art of Deciphering". The story doesn 't end there though as a major breakthrough happened via the US Army 's own Major General Joseph Mauborgne, of the
A substitution cypher is "any cipher system which substitutes one symbol or character for another." While, the scribe 's carvings aren 't a true substitution cipher, one doesn 't need to look far to find one. Consider, the world-famous Julius Caesar. In the first century BC, the Roman general turned dictator used a cipher of his own. The "Caesar Cipher" is an Additive/Substitution cypher and one of the earliest, if not earliest of its kind. It works by replacing the original letter with one farther down the alphabet. For instance, "B" becomes "G" with a left shit of five in the English alphabet. Over 400 years before Julius Caesar 's rise to power, there were the Greeks and among the many city states that dotted the land, stood Sparta. The Spartans were an adept warrior society, basing the entirety of their fame on military might, and like every modern military, they had a means of encrypted communication. The Spartans used a technique called a Transposition Cypher. This cypher works by rearranging letters rather than outright replacing them. How they did it was by creating a cylindrical device called a Scytale of which is "the first mechanical enciphering device" (Leighton 149) and giving one to both the sender and recipient of exactly the same diameter. The message would be prepared by the sender on a long thin strip of leather or papyrus that would be wrapped around the Scytale to reveal the message to its recipient. Transposition techniques are both popular and in-use to this day. Time marches on, though the next major break through in cryptography wouldn 't happen until 1466 by a man named Leon Battista Alberti, often credited as "the father of western cryptology". His contribution to the world of cryptology was the concept of a "cipher disk" and with it, Polyalphabetic Ciphers. According to Appelbaum, a polyalphabetic cipher is any cipher based on substitution, using multiple substitution alphabets." While an incredible breakthrough, it wasn 't Alberti who developed a practical model. This task fell to a man by the name of Giovan Battista Bellaso, in 1553 and was later misattributed to a french cryptographer by the name of Blaise de Vigenère. No matter who it 's true inventor was, the fact remains that the cipher remained unbroken for nearly three centuries earning it the epithet "le chiffre indéchiffrable" or the indecipherable cipher. In the mid 1850 's it was broken by the incredible scientist and "father of computers" Charles Babbage. Unfortunately "Babbage 's breakthrough was not publicized. The British intelligence office needed to keep this valuable discovery confidential as they were in the midst of the Crimean War.."(Stanoyevitch 187) This meant that the credit for solving the cipher would be misattributed to an infantry officer by the name of Friedrich Kasiski in his book "Die Geheimschriften und die Dechiffrir-Kuns", german for "Secret writing and the Art of Deciphering". The story doesn 't end there though as a major breakthrough happened via the US Army 's own Major General Joseph Mauborgne, of the