Advances in Science, Technology and Engineering Systems Journal Vol. 2, No.

5, 22-25 (2017)
ASTESJ
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ISSN: 2415-6698
2nd International Conference of Computer, Environment, Social Science, Health Science,
Agriculture & Technology (ICEST) 2017 5-7 May 2017, Medan, Indonesia

Combination of Caesar Cipher Modification with Transposition Cipher

Fahrul Ikhsan Lubis*1, Hasanal Fachri Satia Simbolon1, Toras Pangidoan Batubara1, Rahmat Widia Sembiring2
1
Magister Informatics, Universitas Sumatera Utara, Medan, 20155, Indonesia
2
Department of Informatic, Politeknik Negeri Medan, 20155, Indonesia
Email: [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected]

ARTICLE INFO ABSTRACT

Article history: The caesar cipher modification will be combine with the transposition cipher, it would be
Received: 17 March, 2017 three times encryption on this experiment that is caesar modification at first then the
Accepted: 20 April, 2017 generated ciphertext will be encrypted with transposition, and last, the result from
Online: 13 June, 2017 transposition will be encrypted again with the second caesar modification, similarly at the
decryption but the process is reversed. In the modification of caesar cipher, what would be
Keywords:
done is the shift of letters are not based on the alphabet but based on ASCII table, plaintext
Modification
will get the addition of characters before encryption and then the new plaintext with the
Caesar Cipher
addition of characters will be divided into two, they are plaintext to be encrypted and
Transposition Cipher
plaintext are left constantly (no encryption), The third modification is the key that is used
dynamically follows the ASCII plaintext value.

1. Introduction message they are reading is a ciphertext [1]. In another research,

caesar cipher was manipulated by changing the order of plaintext
Cryptography is one way to conceal a message so that it is characters then performed substitution according to the key [2].
not easy to read or understood by people who are no right to access
it. Cryptographic algorithm is divided into two that is classic and The modification of Caesar cipher will be executed by
modern cryptographic algorithm. Classical cryptographic shifting the character based on ASCII table, plaintext will get the
algorithm is an algorithm that used in antiquity that generally this addition of characters before encryption and then the new
plaintext with the addition of characters will be divided into two,
algorithm only uses substitution and permutation method. Along
plaintext that will be in encryption and plaintext which is left fixed
with the development of algorithm technology it is considered less
(without encryption), and the last modification is to use a dynamic
secure so then the new algorithms were created, then the modern key following the value of plaintext ASCII.
cryptographic algorithm was born that use various method and in
the process it used binary, hexadecimal, etc. 2. Materials and Methods
Classical cryptographic algorithm is starting to be In secure communication field, there are many studies which
abandoned by some people because it is considered less secure or involves cryptography. Cryptography would be a well-known
considered it has expired, therefore it is possible to make method for secure communication from the present of intruder. It
modifications to the one of the classical cryptographic algorithm is the algorithm method in which security goals are preferred.
that is caesar cipher and combine it to another classical algorithm There are the processes to transcribe information into different
that is transposition cipher, so the results of ciphertext will be form so that only authorized parties can access it. [3]
more complex and difficult to solve. A cryptographic algorithm would be quite efficient when
Modifications of caesar cipher have been done by other there is a guarantee for the data security. However, time of
execution is more important, since it does not have to spend a lot
research, manipulating ciphertext by making readable ciphertext,
of time to execute. [4]
so cryptanalis or unauthorized parties will not be suspicious if the
*
Corresponding Author: Fahrul Ikhsan Lubis, Magister Informatics, Universitas There are two techniques of encryption: Substitution
Sumatera Utara, Medan, 20155, Indonesia | Email: [email protected] Technique and Transposition Technique. In substitution
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 F. I. Lubis et al. / Advances in Science, Technology and Engineering Systems Journal Vol. 2, No. 5, 22-25 (2017)
technique, the letters of plaintext are replaced by other letters or En (x) = (x + n) mod 26
any number or by symbols. Example Caesarcipher, hill cipher, While in the process of solving the code (decryption), the
monoalphabetic cipher etc. In transposition technique, some sort decryption (Dn) is:
of permutation is performed on plaintext. Example: rail fence
Dn (x) = (x - n) mod 26 [8]
method, columnar method etc[5].
Caesar Cipher can be combined with the vigenere cipher [9].
Cryptography is divided into two types, Symmetric key and
Asymmetric key cryptography. In Symmetric key cryptography a But, it would be possible to combined Caesar cipher with
single key is shared between sender and receiver. The sender uses transposition cipher for secure encryption. Because the
the shared key and encryption algorithm to encrypt the message. combination of this two techniques provides more secure and
The receiver uses the shared key and decryption algorithm to strong cipher. The final cipher text is so strong that is very
decrypt the message. difficult to solve. The transposition method only change position
of characters and substitution method only replaces the letter with
any other letter. The above described method provides much more
secure cipher with combination of both the transposition and
substitution method. [10]
2.2. Transposition Cipher
Figure 1. The encryption and decryption process of symmetric keys Ciphertext is obtained by changing the position of the letters
inside the plaintext. In other words, this algorithm transfers the
In Asymmetric key cryptography each user is assigned a
sequence of letters in plaintext. Another name for this method is
pairof keys, a public key and a private key. The public key
isannounced to all members while the private key is kept secretby the permutation, because transpose each character in the text is
the user. The sender uses the public key which was announced by the same as permutating the characters [11].
the receiver to encrypt the message. Thereceiver uses his own Examples of transposition cipher are as follows:
private key to decrypt the message[6].
Plaintext: "ABCDEFGHI”

A B C
D E F
G H I

The result of transposition cipher is: ADGBEHCFI

Figure 2. The encryption and decryption process of asymmetric keys. Transposition is often combined with other techniques. With
the power of computers, substitution and transposition encryption
2.1. Caesar Cipher
can be easily performed. The combination of these two classic
At the encryption of caesar cipher, each letter in the plaintext techniques provides a more secure and strong cipher. The key is
replaced with another letter with a fixed position apart by a like a password for cipher text which is so strong that no one can
numerical value, it is used as a secret key. [3] break it. Transposition method only provides the rearrangement
of characters of the plaintext. The attacker may attack on the
Caesar cipher would be the simplest method of encryption
because it is very easy to calculate but rarely used because of lack cipher text to known plaintext. Above described method contain
of robustness. The novelty of the introduced encryption technique transposition as well as substitution method which makes secure
is Simple in implementation but difficult in intercepting. And with and strong ciphertext. [12]
caesar cipher data transmission can be successfully delivered 3. Results and Discussions
using LASER. [7]
In cryptography, Caesar cipher is one of the simplest and Encryption and decryption process through 3 processes. In
most famous encryption techniques. The password includes a the encryption process, the plaintext will be encrypted twice with
substitution password in which each letter in the plaintext is the modified caesar cipher and once with the transposition cipher
replaced by another letter that has a certain position difference in algorithm. Modifying the caesar cipher algorithm which the
the alphabet. For example, if using shear 3, B will be E, U caesar not only uses the alphabet letters but also uses the
becomes X, and K becomes N so the plaintext of "buku" will characters in the ASCII table (32-126 characters), Key is used
become "EXNX" in encoded text. Caesar's name was taken from dynamically because the key is one of the ASCII value of one
Julius Caesar a Roman general, consul, and dictator who used this plaintext character. So, different plaintext, different key.
password to communicate with his commander. Mathematically the process of encryption and decryption are as
The encoding process (encryption) can mathematically use follows:
modulus operation by converting the letters into numbers, A = 0, Ex= ((A-32)+K) mod 127)
B = 1, ..., Z = 25. The password (En) of "letter" x with shear n is
mathematically written with: Dx= ((A-32)-K) mod 127
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3.1. Description

A=ASCII character inthe plaintext K= Key(one of the ASCII

characters from plaintext mod 32).
The last modification is by adding certain words to the
plaintext, in the encryption process the system will add a certain
word on the back of the plaintext then plaintext divided into 2
parts: the unencrypted part, and the encrypted part. Conversely in
the process of decryption, system will automatically delete the
additional words so plaintext will be back to normal. The process
of encryption and decryption is as follows:

Figure 4. The process of encryption system

Then, the result of the first Caesar modification is encrypted

with columnar transposition with 5 as key, since the result of the
first encryption just 22 characters then the plaintext will be added
3 characters of ‘!’. There is not any modification at this encryption
step, so it will execute as usual.
Plaintext is ‘1277BDBFBCKEBBBEfS_TSZ’
1 2 7 7 B
D B F B C
Figure 3. The process of encryption and decryption system K E B B B
E F S _ T
The explanation of the first caesar modification is as
S Z X X X
follows: The plaintext used is the NIK Number of KTP (identity
Card) consisting of 16 characters, So the plaintext is So, the ciphertext is :
1277020401930003, then added with the word 'TAMBAH', so the
plaintext on the system become 22 characters, they are “1DKES2BEfZ7FBS!7BB_!BCBT!”
127702040193TAMBAH. Furthermore, the plaintext is divided Furthermore, the result of columner transposition will be
into two, they are the unencrypted characters and the character encrypted again with the second Caesar modification. The second
that will be encrypted. The unencrypted charactersare the the modification is similar to the first modification. The difference is
four characters at the beginning of the plaintext, they are the number of unencrypted characters is 5. The word added into
'1277'and the character that will be encrypted is this step is “KRIPTOGRAFI” and the key used is the first ASCII
'02040193TAMBAH'. The key in this encryption is the ASCII value.
value of the second character ('2') which is 50. Then put into the
formula where the conversion is executedat every character on the The plaintext for the second Caesar modification is
plaintext that will be encrypted. ‘1DKES2BEfZ7FBS!7BB_!BCBT!KRIPTOGRAFI”. The
unencrypted characters is ‘1DKES’. And the character that will
Ex= ((A-32)+K) mod 127) be encrypted is ‘2BEfZ7FBS!7BB_!BCBT!KRIPTOGRAFI’
with The key in from the ASCII value of the first character ('1')
The ASCII Value of character ‘0’, which is 48. which is 49. After all of the part has been known, then put it into
the formula.
Ex = ((48-32)+50) mod 127)
Ex= ((A-32)+K) mod 127)
= ((16+50) mod 127)
The ASCII Value of character ‘2’, which is 50
= 66 mod 127
Ex = ((50-32)+49) mod 127) = ((18+49) mod 127)
= 66
= 67 mod 127
The ASCII value of 66 is character 'B'. And so on until the
last character. So from the above data '127702040193TAMBAH' = 67
become '1277BDBFBCKEBBBEfS_TSZ' The ASCII value of 67 is character 'C'. And so on until the
Since the encryption/decryption key depend on the ASCII last character. So from the above data
value of the message so if the key character changed then all of ‘1DKES2BEfZ7FBS!7BB_!BCBT!KRIPTOGRAFI’ become
ciphertext will be changed. As in the picture below: ‘1DKESCSVwkHWSd2HSSp2STSe2\cZae`XcRWZ’.
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Decryption is the inversion of the encryption process, if
there is character addition at the encryption process then there is
character reduction at the decryption process. The decryption
process is refer to the following Figure 5:

Figure 5. The process of encryption and decryption system

4. Conclusions

From the above explanation, it is known that the original

plaintext and final ciphertext have different number of characters
and in the process occurs 3 times encryption where each process
occurs characters addition. So, the result of ciphertext is very
complex and to solve it there are so many possibilities that should
be tried cryptanalis such as: must find the sequence of algorithms
used, determine the added character part, determine the
unencrypted character part and search for the key used, this is not
simple, because different plaintext, different keys will be used.
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