A cryptogram is a cipher text, that is, a text deliberately written so that only the addressee could read it and understand its meaning. However, any means of hiding information invented by a person can be disclosed by another person. Therefore, the cryptogram can be read.
Instructions
Step 1
In modern terms, any encrypted message has an author who composed it; the addressee to whom it is intended; and the interceptor is a cryptographer trying to read it.
Step 2
There are two main methods used in manual encryption - substitution and rearrangement. The first is that the letters of the original message are replaced with others according to a certain rule. The second is that the letters, again according to the rule, are reversed. Of course, these two methods can be combined, which makes the cipher more secure.
Step 3
The simplest type of replacement cipher is cryptography. In this case, the letters are changed to conventional icons: numbers, symbols, images of dancing men, and so on. To reveal a secret message, it is enough to determine which symbol corresponds to which letter.
For this purpose, frequency tables are usually used, showing how often one or another letter occurs in the language of the message. For example, in Russian, the first places in such a table will be the letters "a", "e", "o". Substituting them instead of the most common symbols, you can decipher some words, and this, in turn, will give the meanings of other symbols.
Step 4
In more reliable ciphers, letters are replaced by key. For example, a multi-digit number can become a key. To encrypt the text in this way, the number-key is written over it many times so that there is a number above each letter. After that, the letter is replaced with another one following it alphabetically through as many positions as indicated by the number. In this case, the alphabet is considered to be closed in a ring, that is, for example, the second letter after "I" will be "b".
Step 5
It is more difficult to uncover such a cryptogram, since there are ten readings for each letter of the cipher. To decrypt, you first need to determine the length of the key and divide the text into words. This is usually done using a table, where the first line is the cipher text, and below it there are options where each cipher letter is replaced with a possible letter of the original text. Thus, there are eleven lines in the table.
Step 6
Looking at which options lead to the most natural-looking division of the text into words, the cryptographer determines which letters are used to encode spaces, which means he finds one or more digits of the key. From this, you can already begin to draw conclusions, how many times the key is repeated in the text.
Substituting variants from the table in place of as yet unknown letters, the cryptographer determines in which cases meaningful words and fragments appear in the text.
Step 7
To facilitate the work, the cryptographer usually seeks to find out any information about the content of the text or key. If you know what signature is at the end of the document, or what word should be repeated there often, then using this information you can reveal part of the encryption key. Substituting the found fragment in other places of the document, the cryptographer finds out the length of the key and recognizes a few more parts of the original text.
