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Monoalphabetic Cipher: A B C D E F G H I - Z C Z S G

The document discusses the monoalphabetic cipher, which was an improvement over the Caesar cipher by having 26! possible keys instead of just 26. It explains how cryptanalysis can decrypt ciphertext without the key by using letter frequency analysis and common letter combinations in the English language to identify the most likely plaintext. Examples are given of common letters, digraphs, and trigrams that can help reveal the key through patterns in the encrypted text.

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Mohammed Danlami Yusuf
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191 views6 pages

Monoalphabetic Cipher: A B C D E F G H I - Z C Z S G

The document discusses the monoalphabetic cipher, which was an improvement over the Caesar cipher by having 26! possible keys instead of just 26. It explains how cryptanalysis can decrypt ciphertext without the key by using letter frequency analysis and common letter combinations in the English language to identify the most likely plaintext. Examples are given of common letters, digraphs, and trigrams that can help reveal the key through patterns in the encrypted text.

Uploaded by

Mohammed Danlami Yusuf
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PPTX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Monoalphabetic cipher

Remember that monoalphabetic cipher emanated because of the problem with


Caesar cipher. This cipher has only 26 letters of the alphabet, thus, was subject
easily to brute force attack. Hence, the introduction of monoalphabetic cipher which
has 26! = 4x1026 combinations. Thus, was not as easy to attack as the Caesar cipher.
Here, you substitute another letter for the letters of the alphabet. For instance,
draw an alphabetic table such as;

A B C D E F G H I - - - Z
C Z S G

Given a C = SCZ, you can encrypt the letter P= C A B


Now, substituting C A B in the table above we get the cipher C= S C Z. Note the key
and the ciphertext are the same.
Monoalphabetic cipher cont’d
The receiver will use the same ciphertext SCZ to decrypt the ciphertext
to get back P = C A B.
The method here is that the sender and receiver receives the key to
encrypting and decrypting the text.

How cryptoanalysis decrypt the ciphertext without knowing the key


The attacker uses the lapses in the frequency of English language
known as letter frequency analysis to attack the message. For instance,
T T E
E
C=U Z Q S O V Z W PX M O P
E E E T T
V G P O G P E P S Z W S Z
Monoalphabetic cipher cont’d
To break this, use the frequency of letters in English language. The most frequently
used letter is E, followed by T, …using this method, the cipher can be broken.
The most frequently used two letter word is TH, while the most frequently used
three letter word THE. Similarly, the most frequently used four letter word is THAT.
Using this, you can easily break the code.
Order of words as used in English language are as follows in some instances:
a. The commonest first letters in a word in order of frequency are:
E,T, O, A, W, B, C, D, S, F, M, R, H, I, Y, E, G, L, M, N, O, U, J, K
b. The commonest second letter in a word in order of frequency are:
H, O, E, I, A, U, N, R, T
c. The commonest third letter in a word in order of frequency are:
E, S, A, R, N, I
Monoalphabetic cipher cont’d
d. The commonest last letter in a word in order of frequency are:
E, S, T, O, N, R, Y, F, L, O, G, H, A, K, M, P, U, W
e. More than half of all the words end with:
E, T, D, S
f. Letter most likely to follow E in order of frequency:
R, S, N, O
g. The commonest digraphs in order of frequency:
TH, HE, AN, ER ON, RE, ED, ND, HA, AT, EN, ES, OF, NT, EA, TI, TO, IO, LE, IS, OU, AR, AS,
DE, RT, VE
h. The commonest trigraph in order of frequency:
THE, AND, THA, ENT, ION, TIO, FOR, NDE, HAS, NCE, TIS, OFT, MEN
i. The commonest double letters in order of frequency:
SS, EE, TT, FF, LL, MM, OO
Monoalphabetic cipher cont’d
These are the letters the attacker used to decipher messages without knowing
the key.
The frequency of letters according to Stallings (2017) is stated as follows;
P 13.33
Z 11.67 F 3.33 J = 0.83
S 8.33 W 3.33 C = 0.00
U 8.33 Q 2.50 K = 0.00 These will help in
O 7.50 T 2.50 L = 0.00 decrypting
M 6.67 A 1.67 N = 0.00 ciphertext using
H 5.83 B 1.67 R = 0.00
letter frequency
D 5.00 G 1.67
E 5.00 H 1.67
analysis
V 4.17 7 1.67
X 4.17 I 0.83
Monoalphabetic cipher cont’d
Assignment
Write the plaintext of
C = U Z Q S O V Z W P X M O P.

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