Grayson Dinsmore English 202C

How to Utilize a Double Transposition Cipher

In cryptography, a cipher is an algorithm for performing the encryption and decryption of messages, both plaintext and ciphertext. Plaintext is information a sender wants to send to a receiver which is normally written in a common language. Ciphertext is that same message that has gone through encryption and is often unreadable to keep the message a secret. A transposition cipher is a method of encryption in which the positions held by units of plaintext in a sentence are shifted according to a particular system. There are many different versions of transposition ciphers however the one that this instruction set will cover is the double columnar transposition, or more simply known as the double transposition. This type of cipher utilizes two specific keywords in order to shift the order of the plaintext to hide the message. This cipher is also known as a pen and paper cipher as a computer and/or complex mathematics are not required and a user is able to utilize the cipher with only a pen and piece of paper.

Setup:
1. To start, the only thing that is required is a pencil, a piece of paper and the two keywords that will be used to encrypt your message. It is important that both you and the receiver of the message know the two words and which order they will be used in; without them the receiver will be unable to decrypt the message. 2. In this example we will be using the keywords guitar and fish, however longer keywords can be used to provide additional security. 3. You must also come up with the message you wish to send; be aware that the longer the message is the harder it will be to encrypt. In this example we will be sending the message: They found us, flee as is shown in the picture to the right.

Step 1 - Placement:
Now that you have your message and keywords selected it is time to encrypt them. 1. To put the message in the correct placement you need to write out the first keyword, in this case guitar, and then write out the message beneath it row by row while keeping

the row length the same number of characters as the keyword. Because our first keyword, guitar, is six characters, the row length of our message will be six, as is shown in the image on the previous page. 2. As you can see, the last row of the message only has three letters (L,E,E). In the event of any spaces in the message, you fill those spaces with nulls, or random letters. In this example we will use the letter X as our null.

Step 2 - Columns:
Now that your message is written out it is time to find the order that your columns will be shifted by in order to jumble the message. We find the order of the columns by using the keyword and the alphabetical ordering of its letters. 1. With guitar, A is the first letter so it is designated as number one with the number placed above it. Since G is next in the alphabet, it receives a two. Continue this until each column has a number. In the event that your keyword has more than one of the same letters, they are numbered the same however their order goes from left to right.

Step 3 - First Encryption:

1. In this step we will see our message become cipher text. In order to do this you will want to write out each column in the order they have been designated in the last step. 2. If we write out each column in the correct order we get the message: FSX TUL EDE OFX YUX HNE. Now that you have the first iteration of your cipher text, it is time to jumble it again using your second keyword.

Step 4 - Second Placement:

1. To encrypt your message a second time you will use the same steps as before, however with the keyword fish. As shown in the image to the right, you take your cipher text of: FSXTULEDE OFXYUXHNE and write it out row by row underneath the word

fish. Once you have done that you must also number the columns once again by their alphabetical order. 2. Because of the two gaps in the last row we must once again use nulls. For the second keyword it is recommended that you use different null letters than the first. In this case we will use Z instead of X. An image of our new cipher is shown to the left.

Step 5 Completed Ciphertext

Once you have figured out the ordering of the columns you can now write out your fully encrypted cipher text. Congratulations you have now encrypted your original message of: They have found us flee, into: FUEYNTDXHZSLOUEXEFXZ. When sending your newly encrypted message it is important to not include any spaces between letters as well as make all letters capitalized. This will make it harder for unwanted readers to figure out what your message says.

Decryption:
You may not always be the one encrypting messages, sometimes youll need to decrypt them. The steps taken to decrypt a message are the same that are done to encrypt, just backwards. In order to describe decryption we will be using the same message we just encrypted. 1. When you receive your jumbled message you first will need to figure out the column lengths for the first keyword. This can be done by dividing the message length by the keyword length. In this case: FUEYNTDXHZSLOUEXEFXZ is twenty letters long. When you divide it by the four letters in fish you get five, which is the length of the columns for the first keyword. 2. Once you have written out fish and numbered the columns by alphabetical order you can then take the first five letters in the message (FUEYN) and place them under the first column. 3. Then take the next five letters and place them under the second column and follow this pattern until each column is filled.

4. Once each section of the text has been written out, you can then take that completed message and figure out the column length for the next keyword: guitar. 5. Once each of those columns has been filled out properly in the right order you will then have your decrypted plaintext.

Conclusion:
You have now learned how to properly utilize a double transposition cipher in order to encrypt and decrypt secret messages. Double transposition ciphers are only the beginning of cryptography as there is many more complex and secure ways to encrypt not only words, but images and videos as well. I hope you enjoyed learning about this topic and will look further into cryptography and its amazing potential.