Re: Stupid is what stupid does

On 18 maalis, 16:19, "ike" <i...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
This may be a stupid question, but here goes:

Even I - being just a simpleminded person - can think of many ways to "code" text. I might change letters to codes in a number of different ways. 'A' might be 65 but it might as well be anything else, like 12345. Or maybe I "code" pairs or even triples of letters, say 'SPY' as a number 0 ... 16777215 or something like that.

These different "codings" are not cryptography, true. They are rather simple, true. But surely using ASCII-codes is not the only alternative. Maybe the number of different simple codings is not unlimited but I believe it is quite big.

So, how can cryptoanalysis work? Does a cryptoanalyst check for every possible simple coding of letters? How can he do that?

I suppose a cryptoanalyst thinks he has found a solution when he sees text he understands. Well, the "codings" are simple, but they make it unlikely that the cryptoanalyst sees normal text.

I have a feeling this is wrong but I don't know why and how.


If the encoding is unknown, it can be thought of as a simple
substitution cipher applied before the proper encryption, for example.
Plain substitution cipher can be easily broken with only ciphertext.

Also, asking this question demonstrates you know little of modern
cryptography. I would be more specific but I fear I'd have to write a
very long message.
.