Israeli Deciphers ‘Unsolvable’ WWI Encryption Code

Israeli Deciphers ‘Unsolvable’ WWI Encryption Code.

-- Tom

 

What are the implications for current algorithms?

 

I don't know enough about the "double transportation cipher" to even attempt to answer your question, but my guess is that it may be useful in combination with other approaches mixed in with it in various forms - if that is even possible.

-- Tom

 

I think this is the same thing as the double transposition cipher?
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/decoding/doubtrans.html
This encryption method looks similar to mixing functions found in modern ciphers but something like AES uses many rounds of mixing plus other methods that go way beyond this cipher.
This double transposition was secure mainly because the number of characters in the key is a large percentage of the number of characters in the message.
If you wanted to encrypt a 1 meg file for example you would need to scale it up to thousands of rows/columns plus use a key that was about .3 meg to maintain the level of security. If you scaled it without increasing the key size, a standard statistical analysis would reveal repeating patterns and make cracking fairly simple.

 

@chiraldude

Thanks, that's reassuring.

I'm reminded of "They Cracked This 250-Year-Old Code, and Found a Secret Society Inside" <http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/11/ff-the-manuscript/all/>.