30/12/2021

Enciphered Proclamation Attributed to Napoleon in Elba

When I searched for use of the term "système à double clef" in studying popularization of the Vigenere cipher (see here), I came across a description (Auguste Héraud) that the double-key cipher like Vigenere was used by Napoleon when he returned from the island of Elba. Googling readily found publications containing the actual ciphertext, which showed Héraud's description is inaccurate.
I uploaded a new article "Enciphered Proclamation to the Army Attributed to Napoleon in Elba", which presents the cipher and some background information. Help of historians and cryptographers is desired to assess its authenticity.
I also added a reference to this in "Great Ciphers of Napoleon's Grande Armée"

25/12/2021

Extensive Syllable Representation with Symbols in a French Cipher (ca. 1601-1607?)

It often happens the original key of a cipher I reconstructed from deciphered letters is found in some other place in the archives. For example, after reconstructing a cipher from BnF fr.15578 for my article "French Ciphers during the Reign of Henry IV of France", I found the original key in BnF fr.7131.
Now, I found the original keys for "Savary de Breves' Cipher (1602-1603)" and "Beaumont-Fresne Cipher" reconstructed therein in BnF fr.3462.

By the way, the Beaumont-Fresne Cipher is interesting (albeit inconvenient for use) in having an extensive syllable representation by arbitrary symbols rather than Arabic figures.



18/12/2021

Patents (1928) for Japanese Cipher Machine -- Prototype of RED (or ORANGE)

Prototypes of the Japanese cipher machine, dubbed RED by US codebreakers, were used during the London Naval Conference in 1930. They were based on secret patents no. 79061 and no. 79062, as described in "Development of the First Japanese Cipher Machine: RED". The 79062 patent works electromagnetically, while the 79061 works mechanically. When I wrote the article, they seemed quite different. But now I've come to think they share the same cryptologic principle, which I now described in a new section "Additional Remarks (18 December 2021)". (I should have noticed it from the first, but the description of 79061 is very cursory, and I still cannot figure out its drawings.)

By the way, the label on the apparatus in the photo below reads "91-Shiki Injiki" [Type 91 Printing Machine], which is ORANGE, rather than "91-Shiki Obun Injiki" [Type 91 Alphabetical Printing Machine], which is RED. This is the reason I labelled the photo as "Variant of RED Cipher Machine." From what I read, I understand the main difference between RED and ORANGE is whether to encipher alphabetical letters or Japanese kana characters, but I have to say I do not know them very well, still less their difference from the prototype used in the London Conference or the mechanism described in the patents. 



12/12/2021

Sun Yat-sen's Coded Telegram (1916)

Sun Yat-sen's undecoded telegram (1916) is presented in "Unsolved Historical Ciphers". The basic principle is probably as follows: the Chinese characters in the plaintext are translated into four-digit codes according to a standard codebook; some manipulation may be applied to the figures (in some known examples, 111 was added); every pair of digits is converted to a consonant-vowel pair with a code condenser table; and the resulting sequence of figures are regrouped into ten-letter groups.
I presented two known code condensers at "Chinese Cryptography: 1871-1945". Although they belonged to Yamada Junzaburo, who supported Sun Yat-sen, I now found that an explanatory note, preserved in the Aichi University Archives, of encoding for correspondence between Yamada and Sun Yat-sen employed one of these (the one preserved in Guoshiguan).
When I applied it, the following character codes were revealed, but they do not decode well with the standard codebook.
2001 0174 5078 2348 7093 1963 4088 7850 5418 7709 5132 4463 ....
Subtraction of 111 yields:
1890 0063 4967 2237 6982 1852 3977 7739 5307 7598 5021 4352 ....
Again these result in a garble when decoded with the standard codebook.

Just in case, I tried the other of Yamada's known code condensers (the one preserved in the Michigan University).
Simple application leads to:
4037 3771 4692 8186 5095 6089 4494 9246 6780 1278....
Subtraction of 111 yields:
3926 3660 4581 8075 4984 5978 4383 9135 6669 1167....
Neither decodes to a meaningful plaintext.

I report these unsuccessful results as a starting point for further study.



11/12/2021

Chinese Coded Telegram (1916) from Huang Xing

I presented a coded telegram (1916) from Huang Xing to Lin Hu and Li Genyuan in "Chinese Cryptography: 1871-1945" and also included in "Unsolved Historical Ciphers". The other day, I found my memo that the reading is filed after the telegram. (The telegram is followed by the decoded text and an annotated text to read it in Japanese word order (Wikipedia).) After all, this is not "unsolved", but the specific encryption scheme (e.g., the specific code condenser used) is yet to be identified.


For what it's worth, the following is my preliminary analysis made some years ago. But I cannot get further at least because I have some difficulty in the handwritten Chinese characters.

The decoded text has 2+12+11+12+11=68 characters.

KUTA may be 電 (7193).
While 電 should occur three times, the only quadgram occurring three times is KINI, which does not seem right.

KISU at the end may be 径 (1777).
NIRA, the second last, may be 興 (5281).
OSO, the fourth from the last, may be 電 (7193)?

Transcription in kana:
れくたた うほやかて せかなおく さけきにせ おすかくち れうほにうす まかすさく ふれおひへ
YEにきYEひ たかすれう さしきへ わおにああほ さYEひて うひなくた ねあてむYE すへうはか
YEそみかぬ てあすうく すはこせ けきになき てあけたし こぬおひけ ひみかの しくさへ
うはたかさ けきにか あたれうさす おそゆあにら きす
(May be YE is え.)

There are 139 syllables:
RE KU TA TA
U HO YA KA TE
SE KA NA O KU
SA KE KI NI SE
O SU KA KU CHI
RE U HO NI U SU
MA KA SU SA KU
FU RE O HI HE
YE NI KI YE HI
TA KA SU RE U
SA SHI KI HE
WA O NI A A HO
SA YE HI TE
U HI NA KU TA
NE A TE MU YE
SU HE U HA KA
YE SO MI KA NU
TE A SU U KU
TSU HA KO SE
KE KI NI NA KI
TE A KE TA SHI
KO NU O HI KE
HI MI KA NO
SHI KU SA HE
U HA TA KA SA
KE KI NI KA
A TA RE U SA SU
O SO YU A NI RA
KI SU

Frequency:
A 7
CHI 1
FU 1
HA 3
HE 4
HI 6
HO 3
KA 10
KE 5
KI 7
KO 2
KU 7
MA 1
MI 2
MU 1
NA 3
NE 1
NI 7
NO 1
NU 2
O 6
RA 1
RE 5
SA 7
SE 3
SHI 3
SO 2
SU 8
TA 7
TE 5
TSU 1
U 9
WA 1
YA 1
YE 5
YU 1

Frequency in descending order:
KA 10
U 9
SU 8
A 7
KI 7
KU 7
NI 7
SA 7
TA 7
HI 6
O 6
KE 5
RE 5
TE 5
YE 5


10/12/2021

Cryptic Stone Monuments Inscribed with Kanji Numerals near a Mountain Pass in Japan

There are three stone monuments near the Usui Pass between Nagano and Gunma Prefecture in Japan. They are inscribed with succession of kanji numerals. I was intrigued by their cryptic look when I first read about them in newspaper (photos with captions) in 2019.

One of them reads:
八万三千八 三六九三三四七 一八二 四五十三二四六 百四億四六
("8 ten-thousand 3 thousand 8 3 6 9 3 3 4 7 1 8 2 4 5 ten 3 2 4 6 hundred 4 hundred-million 4 6")
The "8" at the beginning reads "ya", the following "ten-thousand" reads "ma", the following "3" reads "mi", the second instance of "3" reads "sa", etc. The numeral "3" may read "mi" or "sa" from the two forms of the Japanese numeral three: "mittsu" and "san."
In Japanese, such assignment of syllables to numerals is commonly used as a mnemonic to memorize a number. It works by converting a series of digits to some meaningful phrase, which is facilitated by multiple possible readings of each digit. (It's a bit like a polyphonic cipher.) I mentioned "codebooks" on the basis of such a scheme the other day.
In all, the inscription reads as a tanka poem:
山道は 寒く寂しな 一つ家に 夜ごと身にしむ 百(もも)夜置く霜
Ya-ma-mi-chi-wa sa-mu-ku sa-mi-shi-na hitotsu-ya-ni yo-go-to mi-ni-shi-mu momo-yo oku-shi-mo
(Roughly translated as "The mountain path is cold and lonely. In one house, it is penetrating to the body every night. For a hundred nights, frost falls.")
From a passage in this poem, this is called "hitotsu-ya no hi" (一つ家の碑). Photos are also found at Google Map (the text of the guide plate shown in a photo here is slightly different from the actual inscription), a page of the Karuizawa village.

Another is called "mi-ku-ni-fu-mi no hi" (みくにふみの碑). See also the Karuizawa village, Virtual Nakasendo.
四四八四四 七二八億十百 三九二二三 四九十四万万四 二三四万六一十
(4 4 8 4 4 7 2 8 hundred-million ten hundred 3 9 2 2 3 4 9 ten 4 ten-thousand ten-thousand 4 2 3 4 ten-thousand 6 1 ten)
よしやよし 何は置くとも み国書(ふみ) よくぞ読ままし 書(ふみ)読まむ人
(yo-shi-ya-yo-shi na-ni-wa o-ku-to-mo mi-ku-ni-fu-mi yo-ku-zo yo-ma-ma-shi fu-mi-yo-ma-mu hi-to)
(Roughly translated as "So be it. There is nothing like a precious national letter. It would have been good to read for people who are willing to read letters.")

The third is called a numeral poem of Watanabe Ikarimaro (1837-1915) (Wikipedia) (渡辺重石丸の数字の歌). See also a Usui Pass website.
四八八三十 一十八五二十百 万三三千二 五十四六一十八 三千百万四八四
4 8 8 3 ten 1 ten 8 5 2 ten hundred ten-thousand 3 3 thousand 2 5 ten 4 6 1 ten 8 3 thousand hundred ten-thousand 4 8 4
世は闇と 人は言ふとも 正道(まさみち)に 勤しむ人は 道も迷はじ
(yo-wa ya-mi-to hito-wa i-u-to-mo ma-sa-mi-chi-ni i-so-shi-mu hi-to-wa mi-chi-mo ma-yo-wa-ji)
(Roughly translated as "Although people say the world is a darkness, one striving for righteousness will not lose the way.")

08/12/2021

Historic Site in Japan That Relayed Coded Message Signalling the Pearl Harbor Attack


Today is the 80th anniversary of the Pearl Harbor Attack in 1941 (in Japan time). I learned in newspaper that there remains a radio transmission station that is said to have relayed the famous coded message "Niitakayama nobore 1208", signalling the date of attack (Wikipedia (in Japanese)). It is the Hario Transmission Station (former Sasebo Radio Transmission Station) in Sasebo, Japan. Today, it is a designated important cultural property and is a sightseeing spot (Wikipedia; official site (in Japanese), with QR codes for downloading an app for multilingual explanation (which I have not tried); Wikipedia (in Japanese)).
The photo, created by Lettuce in the Lattice (Wikipedia Commons), is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.


After posting the above, I remembered of the Funabashi Radio Transmission Station (Wikipedia (in Japanese)) in Gyoda in Chiba Prefecture, of which I learned from Kazuhiko Yoshida some years ago. It was the station that transmitted the coded message "Niitakayama Nobore 1208" to the Japanese task force in the Pacific heading for Hawaii. Seen from the above, a circular road characteristic of this kind of transmission station is still visible. (In the photo below, the railroad on the left is the Musashino Line.) Although there are no longer transmission towers, the site is designated as a Heritage of Industrial Modernization. 




06/12/2021

Papal Ciphers from the 16th to the 18th Century

Vatican ciphers are difficult to solve even with computer algorithms that can solve homophonic ciphers in an instant. This is because they used variable-length symbols written continusouly without a break, as I reported in "Variable-Length Symbols in Italian Numerical Ciphers" in 2017. I succeeded in solving three such ciphertexts found in the French archives, as I reported in "Identifying Italian ciphers from continuous-figure ciphertexts (1593)" (Cryptologia).
"Deciphering papal ciphers from the 16th to the 18th Century" by George Lasry, Beáta Megyesi, & Nils Kopal, now included in Volume 45 of Cryptologia, studied many ciphertexts in the Vatican archives systematically and identified no less than 16 keys. I should have mentioned this when the paper was published online in June 2020. Until now, I mentioned it in "Unsolved Historical Ciphers" only as a footnote to "New Vatican Challenges." Now, I mentioned it in a separate entry "Papal Ciphers from the 16th to the 18th Century."

05/12/2021

A Reconstruction of the First Cipher between Charles I and Henrietta-Maria

Charles I of England and Queen Henrietta-Maria used several ciphers between them, as described in "King Charles I's Ciphers". Of these, I have not seen an actual specimen of the first cipher used by them. Now, I reconstructed it from two pages of manuscript copy. (One may further supplement it by inspecting more pages.)
While it was described as "The alphabet is expressed by figures or symbols, small words by a combination of figures and letters, and proper names by pseudonyms ..." by Green, I found that letter pairs are also used in the substitution alphabet. (The two pages I referred to did not contain code for small words or pseudonyms.)

I also found an additional example of what I call the Second Cipher between Charles I and Henrietta-Maria (Aug. 1642-Jul.1643) in Harley MS 7379, f.86. The letter is dated 9/19 January, but the year is not given. I think it is 1643. This is partly because of use of this very cipher and partly because the letter begins by acknowledging receipt of the King's letters of 22, 25, and 28 December. Considering that the Queen was still in England in December 1641, the dating of this letter at January 1642 seems unlikely.
I post the following provisional (not very accurate) transcription in the hope that someone may help establish the date of this letter.

Harley MS 7379 f.86
Henrietta-Maria to Charles I, 9/19 January

Mon cher coeur jay receu trois de vos lettres
en mesme jour une datee du 22 decembre lautre
du 25 et 28 dans lune desquelles vous me mandes
laisidant* qui est arive a ma lettre qui e s
t o i t d a n s l a c a n e
jan suis bien fachee car il y avoit beaucoup
de choses de dant elle estoit je ne me puis plus
souvenir de ce que estoit jay fait tout les
diligances que tous ques desiree e n [p48] et
jatans w:m: t o u t l e s
i o u r s mais il d o n n e fort
p e u d e s p e r a n c e d e
F: je vous avois desja escrit par lordinaire
de devant le dernier comme javois selon vos
ordres e n u o y e en F: pour
d e s a r m e s comme [189] avoit
comande a [260] sest pour quoy il fault que vous
ayes soing de envoyer l a r e n
a f o s t e r et lordre ou il l e
s f e r a t r a n s p o r
t e r car sest luy qui en prand le
soing pour mon voyage vous naves que
faire de man courager car je suis ases
mepariance de partir i l n i a
que l e u e n t qui e n p
e s c h e d e p a r t i r
jespere que s e r a s i
t o s n8[with] 189 que 260 remeteray a
respondre auec lettres de p a r b o
t c h e seulement je vous prie de
dire a 189 que tout se quil ordonne sera
fait touchant l e P: Tre: je serois bien
ayse de savoir les particuliarites sest pour
(verso)
quoy je vous prie de me les envoyer a
226[Ven:] car il est necessaire que je le
sache pour votre service je nay plus
rien a dire et espere que s e s t e
l e t r e sera l a d e r
n i e r e que o r a d
e m o y de Holl: a dieu mon cher
cocur sy sette lettre est prie il gora
a desifre ce 19/9 janvier

lette a 113 que je ne luy escris
point mais quil asure
et a 82 aussy.

27/11/2021

Who Made "the Vigenère Cipher" as Known Today?

The Vigenère cipher as known today is not what Blaise de Vigenère proposed in his Traité de Chiffres (1586). The scheme known as "the Vigenere cipher" today became popular by Dlandol (1793). Vigenère's name was associated with it by Kerckhoffs (1883) in a classified description of polyalphabetic ciphers. While Kerckhoffs did not mean to identify the inventor, his work was so influential that the term "Vigenère cipher" took root in the vocabulary of cryptology. See my new article "Who Made "the Vigenère Cipher" as Known Today?" at Academia.edu. (I may have misunderstood the term "Published Papers" at Academia.edu. So, this is uploaded as "Draft.")
I made additional remarks in "Did Beaufort Really Use the Beaufort Cipher?"


 

21/11/2021

A Chinese Telegraph Codebook from 1941 (printed in 1968)

Following the previous post, I acquired a copy of Chinese Telegraph Codebook. This time, it is a 1941 edition from Commercial Press, printed in Hong Kong in 1968. Again, it is substantially the same as what I already described, but I added seven images in "Chinese Telegraph Code (CTC), or A Brief History of Chinese Character Code (CCC)" (and a full version in Japanese). 



 

14/11/2021

A Chinese Telegraph Codebook from 1916

Many Chinese telegraph codebooks are on sale on Chinese websites (much more than Japanese telegraph codebooks sold on Japanese websites), but I cannot order them from Japan (at least because I cannot read Chinese). The other day, I found some Chinese codebooks are available from secondhand booksellers in Japan. I was so glad of the findings that I ordered one from 1916, though I was aware that it was one I've seen on the web. As long as I got a copy, I added pictures to "Chinese Telegraph Code (CTC), or A Brief History of Chinese Character Code (CCC)" (and a full version in Japanese). 

The picture below shows the oriental binding, with two pages printed on a folded sheet (Wikipedia).


 

This was not the case when I acquired another codebook which I think is from the 1930s (reported here).

29/10/2021

Did Beaufort Really Use the Beaufort Cipher?

I uploaded a new article: "Did Beaufort Really Use the Beaufort Cipher?".
The Beaufort cipher is a variant of the Vigenere cipher, so called because it was invented by Admiral Francis Beaufort. But it appears that Beaufort himself never used the cipher himself. The cipher Beaufort used in letters to his brother or his secret diary was more primitive.
The article also discusses when the Beaufort cipher was published. (I was induced to check this when I read Lewis Carroll may have known of the Beaufort cipher.) Some say it was published in 1857, but considering that Beaufort died on 17 December 1857, this dating does not seem to refer to an actual date of publication. Maybe, some writers simply quoted the year of the admiral's death. At least, it was only after the (re?)publication in 1870 that the Beaufort cipher became widely known. (The version published in 1855 on a magazine was actually the conventional Vigenere cipher, as pointed out by Franksen.) 



 

16/10/2021

Two-Part Code vs. One-Part Code: Degrees of Irregularity

I mentioned Karl de Leeuw's book the other day. I (re)read it because I remembered it described code in which figures runs vertically, while words are arranged horizontally. Such a two-dimensional arrangement introduces some irregularity without the need to have separate tables for encoding and decoding. I occasionally used the term "two-part code" to describe such a system, but I realized that when the code is "dense" (including many words with the same initial letter in one row), it does not seem appropriate to call it "two-part." I added a new sectioin on this terminology in "Code, Cipher, Nomenclator -- Notes on Terms in Cryptology".
I checked my usage of the term "two part" for this kind of arrangement. In most of the cases, I used the term with a reservation that the arrangement is not completely random. But I'm going to add a note about this in one of my previous posts: "Cardinal Mazarin Used Two-Part Code ".

11/10/2021

Dutch Crypto-History

I uploaded a new article about Dutch crypto-history in Japanese ("オランダ暗号小史").
I started it as excerpts from Karl de Leeuw's book for my personal memorandum, but it grew into a bit more than that. I included some undeciphered ciphertexts I found in Thurloe State Papers more than ten years ago. For a long time, I thought the plaintext was in Dutch, but I now think French is more probable.

04/10/2021

Athanasius Kircher and Codebreaking

I read that Athanasius Kircher occasionally deciphered intercepted Swedish letters (presumably during the Thirty Years' War). I mentioned this in "Habsburg Codes and Ciphers" as a stub for future expansion.

03/10/2021

A Danish Diplomatic Cipher with Table Swtiching in the 17th Century

I uploaded another small article "A Danish Diplomatic Cipher with Table Swtiching in the 17th Century" using the same source as yesterday. One interesting feature of this cipher is that it has five different substitution alphabets, which are switched by indicators. This appears to belong to the 1680s or thereabout, not to the time of Christian IV.

A Letter Code of Emigres in Koblenz

I uploaded a small article "A Letter Code of Emigres in Koblenz." It presents a cipher used by exiled royal princes in the years immediately after the French Revolution in 1789.

02/10/2021

Which Cipher of Henrietta-Maria Did Babbage Solve?

Mathematician Charles Babbage's papers show he solved a cipher of Henrietta-Maria, queen of King Charles I of England. Now, I identified it is what I call "Third Cipher between Charles I and Henrietta-Maria" in King Charles I's Ciphers.
I reflected it in "Charles I's Cipher Revealed: Sir Charles Wheatstone's Codebreaking", the first update since its release in 2009 (which was even before I posted "King Charles I's Ciphers", by the way).

26/09/2021

Undeciphered Superscription by Edward Hyde in Brussels (1659-1660)

When I was browsing the Latin edition of Life of John Barwick, I noticed some letters by Edward Hyde in Brussels just before the Restoration have superscription in cipher (probably concealing the recipient(s)). The superscription is omitted in the English version. (The Latin version leaves letters in the appendix in English.) I added a section "Undeciphered Superscription by Hyde (1659-1660)" about this in "King Charles II's Ciphers during Exile". I also mentioned it in "Unsolved Historical Ciphers".

24/09/2021

Another Specimen of Scytale Not As a Transposition Cipher

The scytale is known as a device for transposition cipher. But in my opinion, such an understandnig was established only around the 1890s. I quoted many materials in "Scytale Not as a Transposition Cipher". Now, I added another specimen in Schooling, "Secrets in Cipher" (1896).

23/09/2021

Decoded but not Identified Code of Luzerne, French Minister to the United States

When browsing my past notes, I found a passage in code of a letter dated 8 January 1781 of Chevalier de la Luzerne, minister to the United States. The original is at Rochambeau Papers and Rochambeau Family Cartographic Archive. General Collection, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University. The passage in code is as follows. (Repeating symbols are marked by using two-byte characters.)

445 538 819 177 960 60 315 854 442
971 202 919 391 610 133 177 1173 555 1183 1096
118 664 575 812 959 1173 874 992 739 32
736 894 1173 486 1198 595 860 921 937 309
1171 239 68 1096 1183 967 612 1050 622 769
r.
216 159 700 361 646 740 329 664 1185 215 804
713 803 100 416 799 573 139 34 1117 814 921
309 1098 226 680 181 573 1052 324 193 761
195 745 835 297 32 766 921 892▽ 937 547 239
532 161 185 881 179 177 199 797 874 642 828
736 1062 4 957 896 769 766 834 1002 709 1177
161 909 456 913 438 710 1094 872 874 472
664 1012 1077 613〇 1199 1123 1010 45 482 50
874 960 485 1023 329 616 756 959 297 350
965 38 613〇 664 975 842 32 999 953 328 470
711★ 1022 736 1019□ 264■ 886 1163 905◇ 424 864
860 134 531 535 391△ 664 575 278 959 903◆ 416
p.8
250 256 717 78 903◆ 983 383 892▽ 912 56 389▲
986● 872 391△ 880 676 430 444 337◎ 711★ 864
135 905◇ 806 660 1092 892▽ 96 986● 1023 610
292 896 713 646 638 159 337◎ 1096 12 785 606
1032 1173 555 389▲ 577 616 516 558 337◎ 117
1019□ 264■ 28 814 532 362 305 511 372 148 334

Decoding on a separate reads as follows. (* marks where I'm not sure of my transcription.)

quelques membres du congres furent abord Morris*
du danger d'une pareille defection dans le teste de Larmee
et dans le premier moment d'epouvante l'un
d'eux quitter la seance pour venir me proposer
de vous expedier un courier pour que vous vous approchez
de Westpointe et vous chargiez s'il etoit necessaire de la
deffense de ce poste. Je l'assure promptement du tete* avec le
quel votre arivee concouroit a la deffense des treze etats mais je
lui dis qu'il ne paroissoit que le soir de ces mesures devoit
etre laisse avec general Washington a qui le congres pouvoit
donner les directions necessaires. J'ai cree devoir decliner de la sorte
cette demarete* parceque si l'armee ameriquaine
est reellement disposee a la defection ce que rien n'anouma*
jusques ici ce parti ne seroit que la prescipiter et
si elle n'y est pas portee ce seroit donnez lieu a une
p.10
mefiance et une jalousie dangereuse entre les francois et
les ameriquains

This is not an undecoded ciphertext, but I could not identify the assignment of figures when I examined this many years ago.

For contemporary French code, see, e.g.,
French Code between General Rochambeau and Admiral de Barras (1781)
"Code Switching in French Diplomatic Correspondence and Intercepted Letter of Barbé-Marbois (1782)"

21/09/2021

An Unsolved Letter of Richard Forster in the household of Henrietta-Maria (1644)

 An undeciphered letter dated 13 May 1644 is found among papers of Sir Richard Forster, treasurer of Queen Henrietta-Maria's household, according to Karen Britland (2013), "Reading between the lines: royalist letters and encryption in the English civil wars", Critical Quarterly, vol.55 (4), pp.15-26. It is in the hand of Forster, and may have been addressed to Henrietta-Maria. The Queen had, leaving Oxford threatened by the parliamentarians, come to Exeter, where she would give birth to a girl in June before leaving for France.

 d. c., t. g., p., 4. 30. q. 30. 19., x. 30. f. 16. 2. 50., a. 0. 40. 12. 20.
30. y. 30. c. 2., 7. 0., u. 4. t. 88. 30. 0. l. p., a. d. 2. 30.,
ie vous en responds et mesmes dans c. 0. x. l. 2. d. e. c.
0. 40., 7. 2., y. 0. 20. n. 2. 12. 50. 16. s. t., 90. 20. 0. t. 2. 14.
x. a. 30. c. 2. u. 0. t. b., 80. 2. x. 30. s. g. 0. x. a. 2., 90. 20.
30. a. 0. t. q. 2., 90. 16. 30. 20., 12. s. t. q. 0. l. 30. 2. 20., 30. s.
50. 20. 2., 30. d. 0., y. s. 30. 20., 2. 19. n. p. d. l. 0., 4., a. 16.
2. 30., 30. t., y. c. 30. x., 5. 20. 4. 19. 7., 40. 4. 12. l. 16. 70.
d. g. 0., 90. 4. 20. c. p., u. 30. 80. 50. 16. y. c. d. q. 4. 8.
16. s. 19., a. 2. 40., 30. s. x., 40. 0. 20. 30. d. 12. 2. x., y.
s. 30. 20., 80. 0. x. 4. c. 30. 50., 7. 0., 30. s. x., 70. 20
2. l. 0. 40. et mesurer a cela sil est meilleur d’agir, ou
de soupir 13. de may. 1644


 

17/09/2021

Charles I-Boswell Cipher (1643)

Unsolved letters from Charles I to Boswell (2 November 1643) and Nicholas to Boswell (2 November 1643) are preserved in The National Archives (TNA). I included an entry for these in Unsolved Historical Ciphers.

I obtained a copy of them many years ago, but exact information is not at hand now. (I'm not even sure of the recipient's name. It may be Bosvil, Bothwell, or the like.)
The following is my provisional transcription I made back then. It may include many errors because I was not familiar with reading old handwriting at the time (not that I am now). Asterisk (*) marks where I was particularly unsure.

Charles I to Boswell, 2 November 1643
Sir, Wee have received 873 69 72 65 361 ill 26 102 92 97 45 86
85 17 516 588 134 be* 6_ 132 106 8_ 32 46 100 1643. But never
heard of any 514 516 588 Our 47 86 △ 110 33 17 93 122 中 41 112 m.y^w
291 588 362 21 41 52 49 and 40 15 873 61 116 88 □ 77 70 28
saue* 134 35 86 112 70 in 41 24 53 in 71 374 158 + 150 to 14
64 end 800 y^w Funerals of the Lave*≪→Late?≫ 303 291 40 his 34 44 29 hir &
65 50 60 25 22 16 376 deceased of happy memory 800 851 102 154
made an 1 4 40 30 69 28 3 but 18 10 5 36 now not 78 59 it.
380 he 149 364 29 he same ar 76 24 135 33 289 safe The Difficul
ty of passage in* 34 22 are hash* preiudiced + look*. Our 中 873
□ 40 20 34 58 22 21 45 38 26 40 & 588 82 70 123 124 are
soe 149 146 362 all & 153 93 69 46 27 29 381 able 800 + spe-
cially in this coniuncture of our Affaires, as w*[with?] 20 21 18 10 knowledge
591 749 there 223 high 25 79 4 62 80 49 48 71 70 81 w* 629
you therefore 800 27 28 70 15 sent 62 89 100 prince 97 159 16 2
77 107 an* 84 88 177 on this behalf 800 205 148 151 123
said 中 873 □ & to lett him 835 33 22 100 stand that w 64
83 15 all most 854e 45 62 120 ly 123 138 69 94 96 89 118 his
185 w[with?] in 755 188 539 40 16 61 at 45 83 & 639 in rebat* w 636por
it 5 124 107 all 99 97 1 5 lease* 35 24 61 16 800 134 123 an
112 120 it the 150 14 am 70 6 800 + 800 y^w 640 588 30 70 31 61
110 77 107 10 33 20 28 & 61 62 u 101 107 18 90^ 46 29 70 52
386 106 all 85 110 41 53 107 or 228 Not doubting but God
will shortly enable Us to recompence soe 8 82 100 46 154 & soe
406ous 20 69 591 & 70 88 126 ^w doe as 40 89 100 118 17 103
(verso)
Our self also of our 58 68 113 our particular & doe take your
addres by 213 800 + in very good part, as also that you haue taken
care to avoyde the dangerousnes of the passage hither. And soe
wishing you a safe returne back 800 62 89 100 △ 中 873 □
to whom w herewith 750 79 122 135 28 70 6* 76 118 105 94
121 53 72 92 49 64 Wee commit you to the Protection of the
Almighty. Given at our court at Oxford the second day of Nobember
in y^w e [N]ineteenth yeare of Our Reigne 1643.

.....

①Nicholas to Boswell, 2 November 1643
Sir, 484 21 86 85 127 131 128 142 800
40 24 23 n 48 44 31 2 35 24 64 pleasure 800
873r 29 59 at 55 38 41 6 65 88 118 all
27 0 88 112 72 56 49[b?] 70[y?] diligence & industry
80[-?] 79[of?] y^w[your?] 37 94 20 26 118 112 588 the 170 &
other 54 96 112 22 746 25 103 800 59 72
98 105 118 123 the 21 62 61 47 110 113 70 52
588 y^w 181 40 15 from y^w 726 82 122 141 18
it 147 150 107 94 123 118 12 153 27 51 100
129 83 138 121 33 22 81 that 125 he 126
374 854 117 62 more 107 41 76 101 14 27
he 50 2 95 62 86 117 for that 53 14 17 he
79 190 understood 35 70 52 129 11 50 62 29
800 145 106 82 94 98* 53 377 109 122 131
44 100 69 79
His Ma^ys two letters herewith sent with
flying Seales are put into yo^r character, because
most safe & ready, your are to decifer & interpret
them. Monsieur 82 48 52 42 40 64 appeares
not here.
(Page 2)
I must entreat yo^r care over the enclosed in
this & another pacqt going herewith, and having
acknowledged the receipt of yo^rs of the 8th 22/12
& 29/19 of October with many thanks, I must
remit you to the not* for more account upon
them, & ever remains


12/09/2021

Japanese "Codebook" for Texting on Pagers from 1994

Before mobile phones came into use, young people communicated with pagers for some time. At a time when pagers could send figures but not letters, they managed to exchange relativly complicated messages by using only figures: 0906 (I'll be late), 105216 (Where are you?), 87410971 (I don't want to part with you.), etc. This was possible because mnemonics to remember names or phrases by representing syllables with figures are common in Japan. Of course, there are much more syllables in Japanese than the number of Arafic figures. Thus, it may be viewed as a polyphonic cipher (see here).
The above examples can be parsed as follows:
0(o)9(ku)0(re)6(ru)
10(do)5(ko)2(ni)1(i)6(ru)
8(ha)7(na)4(shi)10(ta)9(ku)7(na)1(i). (*By the way, this can also mean "I don't want to talk to you"!)

I got a "codebook" for such numerical messages at an auction site the other day. Actually, I had a copy of this book back then (not that I used it myself, but I bought it out of curiosity), but I think I discarded it some years ago. I also had a similar texting codebook for English that I bought in London around 2000. I hope I have not discarded it.
Notes (25 September 2021)
About the English "codebook" for texting, I was sure it would be in a stack of boxes in my study if I had not discarded it. Today, I had time to check them, and found nothing. It seems I threw them away with the Japanese "codebook".
Instead, I found my memo of the titles. They are still on Amazon:

text me --All the text messages you need for your mobile phone (2000)
WAN2TLK? ltle bk of txt msgs (2000)
LUVTLK! ltle bk of luv txt (2001)

17/08/2021

Solved: the Rabenhaupt Cipher and Another Maximillian II Cipher

The Rabenhaupt cipher (1646), which has resisted codebreakning efforts for some years, was finally solved by finding the key in the archives. The result is now published by a paper of Eugen Antal, Pavol Zajac, Jakub Mírka in HistoCrypt 2021. See "Some German Ciphers: 1540-1815".

The same proceedings also include a report of a preliminary decipherment of letters to Emperor Maximilian II (1574, 1575) by Nils Kopal, Michelle Waldispühl ("Habsburg Codes and Ciphers") as well as other interesting findings mentioned yesterday and the day before yesterday and more.

16/08/2021

Cipher Letter of French Ambassador Published by the Prince of Orange (1684) Identified and Verified

One of my favourite historical characters is William III, Prince of Orange, as I wrote before. When I encountered a cipher used by Comte d'Avaux, French ambassador in the Hague, some months ago (see here), I remembered an episode that the Prince published d'Avaux's letter that was intercepted and deciphered, and I wanted to inspect the original some day.
To my pleasant surprise, it was done by George Lasry. He conducted codebreaking of a ciphertext found in the Dutch Royal Archives, and when some plaintext was revealed, found that it was this famous letter. He verified that the decipherment published by the Dutch was correct, disproving d'Avaux's claim that the Prince deliberately distorted it for propaganda. This result is now mentioned in Section (1C) in "French Ciphers during the Reign of Louis XIV".

15/08/2021

Polish Codebreaking as part of UNESCO Memory of the World

I learned that documents including Polish codebreaking activities was added to the UNESCO Memory of the World register in 2018 in Marek Grajek, "Documents of Polish-Soviet War of 1919-1920 Codebreaking" in HistoCrypt 2021 (pdf) (p.64). The official title is "Documents of Polish radio intelligence from the period of the Battle of Warsaw in 1920." The official recommendation explains "The documents of Polish radio intelligence of the Battle of Warsaw are one of the first testimonies to the use of radio monitoring and of new methods of deciphering e enemies' codes. lt was also the Battle of Warsaw here the radio monitoring and those new deciphering techniques played a role that determined the outcome of the battle."
I wonder whether there are other examples where codebreaking is registered as Memory of the World.

The above article interests me for another reason. The codebreaking activities were led by Jan Kowalewski, who taught cryptology to Japanese military officers (in 1923). I didn't know the episode of his first codebreaking in 1919:
"One of the officers of the emerging cipher service of the Polish Army wished to dance at his sister's wedding and asked a colleague for replacement at the night duty. Lieutenant Jan Kowalewski had no previous experience with the ciphers or the codebreaking, but his perfect knowledge of Russian language plus common sense permitted him to break the cipher before the morning. Kowalewski was immediately transferred to the cipher section of the General Staff, where during the following months he managed to organize an effective and efficient codebreaking service." (p.63)

By the way, Kowalewski's job was facilitated by a key the Soviet lost to the enemy, which revealed common features of the Soviet cipher used at the time (p.68). I think it was the one provided by the Japanese military to Poland (see David Kahn, The Reader of Gentlemen's Mail, p.86).

14/08/2021

Ciphers for Military Correspondence in the 1640s in BnF NAF 1045

BnF NAF 1045 includes ciphers for military correspondence of Turenne and others. I inspected the first 20 folios out of 57, and described it in "Ciphers Early in the Reign of Louis XIV".

13/08/2021

Three More Unsolved Letters of Catherine de Medicis, Charles IX, and Henry III

I was made aware of three undeciphered letters in the 1560s-1570s by Cipherbrain: one from Catherine de Medicis to Philibert du Croc, ambassador in Scotland (1567), one from Charles IX to Philibert du Croc, and one from Villeroi to Henry III (1577). I made references to these in "Unsolved Historical Ciphers" and "French ciphers during the Reigns of Charles IX and Henry III"

Note (20 September 2021): The following is my preliminary assignment of symbols in Villeroi's letter. It was derived from the few plaintext written between the lines. It can recover some meaning text such as "tout cest" or "aurons tout", but I cannot yet derive further meaningful text from these.


 

 

10/08/2021

Another Cipher Letter from Charles I at the Isle of Wight

Cipher letters of King Charles I, executed by the Parliamentarians in 1649, continue to attract attention. The other day, the King's letters of September to November 1648 to Prince Charles during his captivity in the Isle of Wight were deciphered by Norbert Biermann and Matthew Brown (see "What It Takes to Break Charles I's Cipher Used in the Isle of Wight").
Now, I came across a record of another cipher letter of Charles I from the same period. It is a copy of a cipher letter from Charles I at Newport to the Duke of Ormonde dated 28 October 1648, preserved in Northumberland Archives. I have not seen it and does not even know whether it is deciphered. At least, I added a reference to this in "King Charles I's Ciphers".

27/07/2021

Solution of Encoded Telegrams of First Prime Minister of Canada

I learned at Cipherbrain that telegrams from John A. Macdonald, the first prime minister of Canada, were solved by Matthew Brown. He knew that the Canadian government used a codebook by Slater, but unlike other telegraph codebooks, decoding is not a straightforward table lookup with Slater's code. Specifically, Slater's code involves translating a word into a number and, after some manipulation of the number, translating it back into a different word. Brown succeeded in identifying the key for the manipulation (addition) by running a computer program to check every possibility.
I added a section of this achievement in "How to Break a Code (Not a Cipher)". I also made related changes in "Nonsecret Code: An Overview of Early Telegraph Codes" and "Unsolved Historical Ciphers".

24/07/2021

A Cipher Disk and Treatise on Cipher from ca.1590-1650

I uploaded a new article, "Brûlart de Léon's Cipher Disk and Treatise on Cipher" at Academia.edu. I got interested in the image of a cipher disk included in BnF fr.17538, and found that the volume also includes a treatise on cipher that describes many cipher schemes.
To me, ciphers with a double meaning are the most interesting. (I found Pascal's reference to "cipher" the other day when searching for "chiffre a double sens".)
Some schemes are similar to Francis Bacon's biliteral cipher. At first, I was thrilled, thinking that I might have discovered a work that anticipated Bacon's idea. But similar ideas (triliteral cipher etc.) had already been described by Porta and Vigenère.
I also uploaded a draft version in Japanese.



19/07/2021

"Cipher" mentioned in the Pensées de Blaise de Pascal

I uploaded a small article, ""Cipher" mentioned in the Pensées de Blaise de Pascal".
It is a collection of some references to "cipher" in an English translation of Pascal's Pensees. Although it is not a cipher in the cryptologic sense, I included this in my website so that other people do not need to check again.

18/07/2021

Struggling for Cryptiana on Smartphones

I bought my first smartphone the other day.
I found that my pages in Cryptiana leave much to be desired for viewing on small screens of smartphones efficiently.
I made some changes in the CSS stylesheet by using "media screen" options, but have not been successful in obtaining the resuls I planned.
Please be patient until my pages get tuned for viewing on Smartphones.

23/06/2021

Transcoding of Message in Code by Napoleon's General (1812)

I read of a partially enciphered letter addressed to Napoleon's general during the Peninsular Campaign (Cipherbrain). It is a dispatch of Clarke, Minister of War in Paris, to General Caffarelli in Spain dated 19 October 1812. Karsten Hansky acquired it at an auction site and described it in "A dispatch from the French Minister of War Clarke to General Caffarelli, the commander of the Northern Army in Spain, from the year 1812" (17.06.2021) (pdf).
The passages in code are short, but the plaintext is attached. The code in use is what wac called "Great Paris Cipher" by the British (see also my article "Great Ciphers of Napoleon's Grande Armée"). It is code table #24 in the archives of the SHD (Service Historique de la Défense) in Vincenne (SHD box 1M-2352).
What is interesting to me is the marginal note including the coded message (apparently) transcoded into another code (#29). From the range of numbers, the code #29 appears to have about the same size as #24, but the number of codegroups is different (that is, there is no one-to-one correspondence between the code groups.)

09/06/2021

More Cipher Letters of Le Tellier

I added references to more letters from Le Tellier's correspondence in "Ciphers Early in the Reign of Louis XIV". They are found in BnF fr.6884, fr.6889, and fr.6891.
I have already reported that the correspondence between Le Tellier and Colbert appears to have switched to two-part code (Le Tellier-Colbert Cipher 2 (DE=13/59~)) between November and December 1650 (though the arrangement is not completely random), and Mazarin also used it in 1650. This time, it was found DE=13/59~ was used by Mazarin as late as December 1652, while Le Tellier-Colber correspondence used a different two-part code (Le Tellier-Colbert Cipher 3 (DE=18^)) in January 1652.

29/05/2021

Codebreaking through Comparison of Two Independently Enciphered Texts

I uploaded a new article "Codebreaking through Comparison of Two Independently Enciphered Texts", which presents my solution of a cipher used in a letter from Abel Servien to Melchior de Sabran (1632). It was quite simple a job, because some words in the clear gave a clue. More interesting would be the very comparison of the two independently enciphered ciphertexts.
I also added references to unsolved ciphers in Sabran's letters in "French Ciphers during the Reign of Louis XIII" and "Unsolved Historical Ciphers."

 



 

22/05/2021

Colbert de Croissy Switched to Numerical Cipher in Italy, but Reverted to Figures with Diacritics in London

I made several additions, mainly related to Colbert, to "Ciphers Early in the Reign of Louis XIV" and "French Ciphers during the Reign of Louis XIII" from the Baluze collection in BnF. In this update, the most interesting is the changes of ciphers used by Colbert de Croissy. He used cipher consisting of figures with diacritics, typical in French ciphers at the time, in 1659 (DE=28) and 1660 (DE=42~) when he was Intendant of Alsace. But he switched to a purely numerical cipher (1660-1661) during his mission to Rome (DE=91). He used another numerical cipher in Cleves in 1666 (DE=151), but reverted to figures with diacritics (1668-1674) in his London embassy (DE=68). Somehow, specimens of purely numerical ciphers in France are often related to Italy.

18/05/2021

A Cipher between Cardinal Mazarin and Anne d'Autriche

I added a section "Mazarin-Anne d'Autriche Cipher (1651)" in "Cardinal Mazarin and Ciphers". Although the nomenclature of the cipher is printed in Ravenel (1836), the substitution alphabet is not included therein. I reconstructed the substitution cipher by comparing the manuscript letters and the version printed in Ravenel (1836). (Though Ravenel suggests the manuscript key is extant, I could not find it online.)

01/05/2021

Cardinal Mazarin Used Partially Two-Part Code

When I posted "Cardinal Mazarin and Ciphers", I thought Mazarin's letters in cipher would not be available online (this is why the article is not titled "Cardinal Mazarin's Ciphers") and thought his cipher might be little more than a short nomenclature, judging from a specimen printed in Ravenel (1836).
Contrary to my expectations, I found a specimen that shows Mazarin('s secretary) used two-part code in June 1651 during his exile in Germany (though the arrangement is not completely random). It is the same cipher as the one used between Le Tellier and Colbert in December 1650. At present, I think the Le Tellier-Colbert cipher was given to Mazarin, who went to exile in Germany, rather than Le Tellier and Colbert were using the cipher given by Mazarin. More specimens are necessary to make a call.
I now added a section "Mazarin's Cipher" to describe these findings.

Note (16 October 2021): The original title of this post was "Cardinal Mazarin Used Two-Part Code." Although I included a reservation "the arrangement is not completely random" in the body, I thought I should add "Partially" in the headline, too (see today's post).

25/04/2021

Charles I's Letters from the Isle of Wight Broken after Centuries

Some years ago, I presented three letters in cipher from Charles I to Prince Charles and another to Mr. Worsley in "King Charles II's Ciphers during Exile" and also included them in the list in "Unsolved Historical Ciphers". When Klaus Schmeh and Elonka Dunin chose them as one of the topics in their webinar, they found additional materials in the archives, which allowed Norbert Biermann and Matthew Brown to solve the cipher used in two of the four letters in my list. I presented their achievement in "What It Takes to Break Charles I's Cipher Used in the Isle of Wight".

14/04/2021

Ciphers in Colbert's Correspondence

I reconstructed about dozen ciphers from Melanges de Colbert 101-176, and put them in a new section in "Ciphers Early in the Reign of Louis XIV". It is noted that Colbert did not use two-part code in the correspondence in this series (1659-1674), though he once used Le Tellier's two-part code in 1650 as I reported the other day.
There are three undeciphered ciphertexts (relatively short), which I put in a new section "Colbert Correspondence (1665, 1673, 1674)" in "Unsolved Historical Ciphers".

24/03/2021

Misplaced? English Cipher Letter in French Archives

The cipher of a wholly enciphered letter in BnF fr.2988, f.1, was broken by Torbjörn Andersson in 2017. Unexpectedly, the plaintext turned out to be English. The recipient is called "your ...", and an obvious candidate is "your Majesty" (Henry VIII). Such an identification is supported by references to "your realm" in the text. But the text also refers to "your son". Although Henry VIII famously lacked a son until 1537, I noticed that he had a bastard son known as Henry FitzRoy.
I posted my decipherment in a new article "Misplaced? English Cipher Letter in French Archives" to help historians to identify the nature of this letter.

Another reason of this post is its possible relation to another undeciphered ciphertext signed Hieronimo Ranzo on the following folio (see "Venetian Ciphers with Superscripts"). Since f.1 and f.2 are treated as one item in catalog information, I wondered whether one is an enclosure of the other. But at least the decipherment of f.1 does not appear to refer to an enclosure.

23/03/2021

A Cipher Delivered to Charles I by Mazarin's Ambassador

When Charles I of England was under close watch of the parliamentarians in Holdemby in 1647, some communication with the outside was conducted clandestinely. When searching for Cardinal Mazarin's cipher, I came to know that Mazarin bade Bellievre to obtain a peace between the King and the parliament, and the latter even managed to deliver a cipher to the King.
I added this episode to "King Charles I's Ciphers".

21/03/2021

More Undeciphered Texts (Italian, Spanish) in BnF

I recently added more undeciphered materials in "Unsolved Historical Ciphers".
Many letters (Italian?) in BnF fr.2988, f.21 ff., seem to be written in the same cipher, probably simple homophonic substitution.
More specimens of the Venetian? cipher with superscript are found in BnF fr.2988, fr.3019, fr.3022.
Undeciphered letters to Emperor Charles V are found in BnF fr.3022.

20/03/2021

Cardinal Mazarin and Ciphers

I uploaded a new article, "Cardinal Mazarin and Ciphers", which I wrote in January. Though I planned to expand it a bit more, I may not have time for it for some time, so I decided to post it as it is.
Since many of Mazarin's papers in the Archives des Affaires étrangères are not found online, this article consists of references to ciphers in Mazarin's correspondence. They may be nothing new, but, as with the case in Catherine de Medici, they may allow a glimpse of practice in use of ciphers.

19/03/2021

An Early French Cipher (Gramont) Solved from Other Materials

I mentioned three unsolved cipher letters of Gabriel de Gramont (1529 from BnF Clair.330, 1530 from BnF fr.2980) in "French Ciphers during the Reign of Francis I". Now, I found another specimen with interlined decipherment in BnF fr.3019, and the reconstruced cipher can solve the letters in BnF fr.2980. The cipher used in BnF Clair.330 seems different.
It often happens that an unidentified cipher used in one volume can be reconstructed from deciphered materials found in other volumes. Some such examples, found through systematic search of BnF Clair.312-452, are already mentioned in my article. I'm now doing a systematic search for another part of the BnF collection. Maybe I should do the same for volumes around BnF fr.2900-3020.

15/03/2021

Secret Letters Left Unbroken by John Wallis Solved After 400 Years

In 2020, letters in cipher from Louvois, Louis XIV's Secretary of War, to Count Lauzun (1690) were deciphered by Norbert Biermann by finding the key in the archives.
It is one thing to decipher a ciphertext, but it is quite another to understand what is written. Norbert provides a background account at Cipherbrain (in German). Since the letters relate to one of my favourite historical characters, William III (the Prince of Orange), I wrote my own version of background article: "Secret Letters Left Unbroken by John Wallis Solved After 400 Years"

14/03/2021

A New Book on Shorthand, Ciphers, and Universal Language by D.P.J.A. Scheers

I got a pdf version of a new book Zealous with Language and Ciphers: Shorthand, ciphers and universal language around the 17th century (independently published on 9 March 2021; 261 pp.) by D.P.J.A. Scheers (Google).

When studying ciphers, one often encounters references to universal language or shorthand.
I once mentioned Athanasius Kircher's Polygraphia nova (1663). This work is more about universal language ("lingua universalis") than cryptography, and was to allow people to exchange letters without speaking each other's language (Wikipedia). John Wilkins, the author of Mercury, the first book in English about cryptography, also proposed a universal language in a 1668 work (Wikipedia). Leibniz, who corresponded with John Wallis, also had an interest in universal language. Similarity between code and universal language can be seen in, e.g., a dictionary for Kircher's universal language shown below.

Regarding shorthand, it is well-known that Samuel Pepys' diary is written in shorthand, which looks like a cipher and is sometimes called as such.

Text in shorthand looks like a ciphertext to untrained eyes (examples may be found in Cipherbrain), and may be used to conceal the content.

Zealous with Language and Ciphers has chapters I - Abbreviations and Numerals, II - Shorthand, III - The Development of Universal Language, IV - Universal languages, V - Characteristics and decipherments, VI - Other Language Developments, plus many appendices.
 

I have to say I know little of shorthand and universal language. So, of these topics, I can only say that the chapters include many names (including all I mentioned above and more) and many illustrations. The short Chapter VI deals with sign language and international maritime flag signals. The latter is, of course, related to code. I'm interested in whether "universal language" is possible with sign language.
 

Some of the appendices are directed to ciphers:
Pages 194-220 deal with "Urquhart's ciphers" presented in Cipherbrain.
Pages 220-227 deal with ciphers described by Porta.
Pages 228-231 deal with "Lodwick's "The Lords Prayer"".
Pages 232-234 deal with "Jane Seager's text from The Divine Prophecies of the Ten Sibills."
Pages 242-244 deal with "the secret numbers of Thoth".
Page 245 deals with "Unsolved cipher 1681 Dr. Wallis". Actually, this was (re-)solved by Malcolm V. Hay (1934) (see my article).
Etc.
 

What interested me is the author's map of the route of development of Italian ciphers (Mantua, Modena, Florence, Siena, Genoa) created from Aloys Meister's book by examining "the dating of the published letters, the 'cipher intelligence', the type of symbols, properties, length, usage of nulls and other relevant aspects." I wish there were more discussions to support his map. I look forward to "a future publication" the author seems to plan (p.41, n.89).


12/03/2021

Four Hundred Years of Habsburg Cryptography

I added a section "Four Hundred Years of Habsburg Cryptography" in "Habsburg Codes and Ciphers". It is based on Benedek Láng (2020), "Was it a Sudden Shift in Professionalization? Austrian Cryptology and a Description of the Staatskanzlei Key Collection in the Haus-, Hof- und Staatsarchiv of Vienna", which outlines a collection of nearly 500 manuscript ciphers preserved in the Austrian archives.
I learned of this paper in Nils Kopal & Michelle Waldispühl (2021), "Deciphering three diplomatic letters sent by Maximillian II in 1575". These authors succeeded in cryptanalysis of three letters of Maximilian II (and thereafter found that the key is among the above collection). I also added this cipher in the above article.

02/03/2021

One of the Oldest French Ciphers Solved (1525/1526?)

The oldest French ciphertexts known date from 1525 or 1526, some of which still remain unsolved.
One of them is now solved by Norbert Biermann. It is written in the margin at the bottom of a letter dated 25 September [1525 or 1526?] from Jean de Calvimont to Antoine Duprat. See "French Ciphers during the Reign of Francis I".
Norbert solved Louvois-Lauzun Code (the one that the famous codebreaker John Wallis could not solve) last year by finding the key in the archives (see "French Ciphers during the Reign of Louis XIV" (5)). I hope he will solve more unsolved ciphers in my list.

28/02/2021

Louvois' Ciphers in the Archives (1688-1713)

About dozen ciphers from Louis XIV's time gathered from various sources have been listed in "French Ciphers during the Reign of Louis XIV". I added another dozen to the list from BnF fr. 6204, of which I was made aware of by Norbert Biermann's paper (2020). They appear to be Louvois' ciphers (at least some are annotated as such), characterized in that not only syllables and words/names but also letters of the alphabet are mixed in random arrangement.
Now that the list has more than twenty ciphers, I introduced designation of ciphers such as "DE=34/42/97." (The cipher of this example enciphers "de" into 34 or 42 or 97.) This nomenclature will facilitate identifying a new cipher with those already on the list. I have employed similar schemes for American ciphers (e.g., here). (I think I've seen other people use this scheme, but I do not remember specific instances now.)

09/02/2021

Two-Part Code between Le Tellier and Colbert (1650)

I added two ciphers used between Le Tellier and Colbert in "Ciphers Early in the Reign of Louis XIV". This is something more than a routine addition, because this shows that the same corresondents used one-part code in November 1650 and two-part code in December 1650. Is this the first two-part code in mainstream French ciphers? Apart from sporadic examples (Duke of Nevers, Edward Stafford), the first two-part code known to me has been Louvois' code (1676). Considering that Louvois was son of Le Tellier, it is probable that he learned of two-part code from his father. It is often said that two-part code was invented by the codebreaker Rossignol. It is wondered whether Le Tellier learned of it from Rossignol or he devised it himself or learned of it from any other source.

02/02/2021

Religious Grandmother's Abbreviation Cipher Deciphered on the Web

Back in 2014, a certain JannaK posted what looks like an enciphered message wirtten on an index card by Grandmother (1927-1996), who lived in Minnesota. It begins with:
PDGNHBOBVPNSNHANAOENCNANHPNCPND,NUOCP
NNPNAPNMSMDKBMLPOWP,NAP,]NEENTGBTMLS
HHSSSTMALHFFTMOFPANSTP,NIOOIPNTPNROA
NTRSANTOTTAPOD,PLUADONNOANPBOOLL,PKUA
SASIMAB,PAGA,]PMOMTAVMAJAMMSSSLLAB
....

Thirteen minutes later, harperpitt pointed out that the last AAA on the front side may be "Amen, Amen, Amen." Then, TYAGF appearing earlier may be "Thank you Almighty God for..."
The back side begins with OFWAIHHB, which jessamyn pointed out is used as user names by many people and should be something well-known. Then, harperpitt came up with an idea that OFWAIHHBTN is "Our Father who art in Heaven, hallowed be thy name." This led to revealing the meaning of many phrases. The very frequent PST turned out to be "Please see that ...."
This is not a cipher in the usual sense, but initialism. I didn't know such a system is used for a text of some length until I read Chapter 13 of Elonka Dunin and Klauss Schmeh's book Codebreaking (see another post), where the system is called "abbreviation cipher".

References:
Decoding cancer-addled ramblings
"おばあちゃんが最期に残し20年間も未解決だった謎の暗号がネットの集合知によって爆速で解明へ"

19/01/2021

Encrypted Diary in Japanese Solved in 4 Hours on Twitter

I wrote about solution (2014) of an encrypted diary (1995-1996) in Japanese posted on twitter in a separate entry in Japanese. The diary belonged to a deceased uncle of the poster. (Hence, the hash tag #叔父日記暗号 (Uncle's Diary Cipher).) The solution was achieved in four hours. The entries of 1995 turned out to be based on Japanese Morse Code. A character is enciphered by interchange of dots and dashes of the Japanese Morse code. In 1996, a simple Caesar cipher was used, but it was based on old Japanese syllabary I-RO-HA.

「叔父日記暗号」の解読

(Abstract in English)
数年前、「亡くなった叔父の日記」の暗号をツイッターでのやりとりを通じて有志が解読したというニュースを見たのだが、このたび一連のツイートをここで読んだ。

発端は2014年11月19日に投稿された「亡くなった親戚の叔父さんの日記が全然解読できない! 」というツイート。11月23日になって言語学専攻の院生が関心を示したところ20:34に追加画像が公表され、「#叔父日記暗号」というハッシュタグが付けられて盛んに議論が交わされた。暗号は4時間ほどで解読された。
問題の暗号文は7日分あり、次のとおり。
【1995年のはじめに】
ヌサヌヨ.フ.ヤリミサ
゛ミシ.シホフ.゛ウフ.シホカヨーフ.(イム
ヨーフ)タマンタ.イムヨマヨ.クフツツ.フヌ
ミキ.エソヌア。ヤサチサフ.ヤリミサ.
トツウ.ミサ゛リメマヨ.ツマヨ.リイケヨリ.ヌア。
92872014
【'95 1/5】
ロマネヱリ.トイイケ.チ.ワワ
ムサワ゛トカ.ツーワソ ヲラヲミヨセヰ.
トタナモヰアヨ(ヤサイキ)ンシマア(イムヨ
ーフ)ロ.タソ.イヨ゜ヨサソヨ.
ノアサヤミ.ケメヨマ゛ソワマイフキヨ
ヲホソミツリ.゛ミシ゛ウキヰ.ケワオ
フカサ.タケワタヌアロミイ.
メサウヱリ.ケテトカヨ.トミイアリケサ.
【'95 1/6】
ミソ.(゛アヨヲヨミケセン)トテロタソ.
エエタマヨシーミソ.ヲヨ(ス)ロフヰケムウ
ーエワミヨ.ミソキヨ.ヲヨ(ス)ツネフアテソー
ウケメヨマ゛ソワウ.アキーンヘソワマ*イ
ケテケケレマヨ.アミサロ.キヨヰロヲア
キー゛タ.メサウヱリ.゛ミンヨナアリケ
サミイ.
【'95 1/8】
ロミヨヌヨニ゛ウ.レ*ミヨエテソ.
ケセレフ.ソヰツ゛リ.ヌモアヨ.シマカ
゛リアミイケヨ.イヨセ(ムヨマアミイ)
リアテソンアウ.
タネロネセ.イヨ゜ヨサソヨ.
イヨタノヨケケマイ.
トミイヲ.リッソホニリ.
【'96 1/5】
アラーワス.カオロタヨテヨヨ
ワネヱエンテソヨ.テセフミキサ
ヰヨユメクマンワム.テモワオ
オナーヨン.ロ゛レフスサヨ
ラツエヌテチ.ワツミンキスヱ
ンミヨ.ミヨヰノロン゜アスハ
ロミンユエテム.
【'96 1/6】
フミキサ.イオミン~ミンキイオミ
ン.ノヒソヨカチ.マンスサヨンソ
ヨ.カヘンロンミワユナハカチ
ワツロナソエオヌ.ヱ゛チスヨ゜
ノヒワソヨ.モソユーミカカラ
ヰヨーホスヨン.ワンロンイム.
【'96 1/8】
ヱアミケンチハ.オヒチワナ.セフ
アユワン.ケソヨ.ニスヰノミユ
チエ゜ヘン.クヤヘハ.ヨホン
ヒヰワーハーオ.
セヒム.ノノテタ.ヲワヰロネ.テ
マニンヰ.ケヨチ.タスロ゛ーミヨ.
フスクワナ.アラオネ*ヌ.
テセヰテアロ.ハヘンオナー?
1995年の分と1996年の分では異なる暗号が使われていた。
1995年のほうは和文モールス信号のトンとツーを入れ替えるモールス反転方式と判明した。たとえば「い」は和文モールスでは・-だが、このトンとツーを入れ替えて-・とすると、これはモールス符号で「た」を表わすことになる。突き止められた暗号表は次のとおり。
アイウエオ とたりおえ
カキクケコ けてそかぬ
サシスセソ んみ?めく
タチツテト いねまき?
ナニヌネノ わろこちふ
ハヒフヘホ を゜のむや
マミムメモ つしへせー
ヤ/ユ/ヨ ほ/ゑ/゛
ラリルレロ れうゑらに
ワヰ/ヱヲ なる/ゆは
ンー゛゜/ さもよひ/
最初の項目の冒頭は次のようになる。
  ヌ    サ     ヌ   ヨ . フ   . ヤ   リ    ミ     サ
・・・・ -・-・- ・・・・ --  --・・  ・-- --・ ・・-・- -・-・-

---- ・-・-・ ---- ・・  ・・--  -・・ ・・- --・-・ ・-・-・

  こ    ん     こ   ゛   の     ほ   う    し     ん
どのようにしてこのような突飛な暗号方式を見破ったのかの過程に興味があるが、1:29に紗衣さんが「多分解けた.和文モールスでトンとツーを入れ替えてる.ヌサヌヨフヤリミサ→今後の方針 しか確認してないので他は各自復号して下さい.」といって突然解読を宣言しており、途中経過はわからない。想像するとすれば、一連の議論の中でも指摘されていたように、暗号文に「ヰ」「ヱ」が使われており、「゛」「゜」がカナと同様に使われていたことから、電信符号を疑ったのだろう。最も頻度の高い文字「ヨ」が濁点を表わす可能性も言及されていたので(そのツイートを見ていないとしても)両者のモールス符号を見比べてひらめいたということはありうるだろう。

和文モールス反転方式とわかって一件落着だと思いきや、1996年の分はこのやり方では解読できないことがわかった。その後こちらは、いろは歌方式の「シーザー暗号」という、ごく単純な方式と判明した。
イ→ろ
ロ→は
ハ→に

ン→゛
゛→゜
゜→ー
のように文字をずらしていくものだ。これはМэй Аренбергさんが解読したのだが、同氏は発想の経緯を簡単に語ってくれている。
「いろは歌」は前半からカンで疑ってた(私はこの筆者が戦前生まれとかなんか思い込んでたんで五十音じゃなくていろは歌だろ~とか勝手に思ってた)んですが、後半の頻度分析で「ん」が最初に来て、日本語の頻度は「い」が最初なので、「ん」を「い」に置き換えて、あれ?「ゑひもせす(ん)」→「いろはにほへと」だからつながってるのでは?と思ってずらしたら文章になったので、いろは歌だっていう結論に達しました。ただ、「ん」は「い」じゃなかったですけどね。
あとから「そう思ってた」というのは簡単なのだが、氏は0:07の時点で「いろは歌でずらすアルゴリズムって作るのむずい?」と問いかけを投げており、このときすでに考えていたことがわかる。同氏が全体の解読文をここに載せてくれている。

巷ではネット民の集合知の成果だなどとして話題になったようだが、結局、解読は二人の個人のひらめきのおかげだったようだ。
とはいえ、解読に至るまでの議論はたしかに面白い。他の暗号を解読するときのヒントになるかもしれないので、その間に出されたコメントをいくつか紹介しておく。

「.」が文節などの境界だろうという当初からの予想は当たった。
「゛」「゜」がそのまま濁点・半濁点だろうという予想は外れた。途中、ヌル(捨て仮名)という仮説も出たが、外れた。
「ヨ」の頻度が高いことは早くから気づかれていたが、結局は濁点(前半)だった。
途中、「ヨ」=「い」という仮説も出た(日本語の音では「い」が最も高頻度)。こういうとき、その文字が近くに続けて出現するパターンがヒントになることがあるので、「イムいマい」に当てはまるフレーズがいろいろ検討された。「思いたい」という仮説が出てくると、今度はそれらの文字が集中して現われるパターンをさがし、「おいセ(もいたアミお)」というのがみつかった。正解であれば、このあたりから芋づる式に対応が判明していくのだが、今回は袋小路に至った。
「イムヨマヨ」「イヨセ(ムヨマアミイ)」
 こしいたい  こいつ しいたけのこ
のような面白い案も出たのだが(www付きで)。

2回連続して出現するツツ、イイ、ワワ、エエ、ケケ、ヨヨは、濁点・半濁点、捨て仮名、棒引き、「ん」ではないとされた。
小さい「マ」が「ヤユヨツ」のどれかだとの予想は当たりで、「ツ」だった(前半)。
「.」を区切りと考え、2度出てくる単語として「イヨ゜ヨサソヨ」「メサウヱリ」が指摘された。
「.」の前にどういう文字がくるかも調べられた。単語の区切りがわかっていれば、単純な頻度分析だけでなく、語頭文字、語末文字の頻度も手がかりになる可能性がある。
今の日本語では普通は使わない「ヰ」「ヱ」がある一方、「コ」と「ル」が出現していないことも注目された。
先鞭をつけた院生のつながりからか言語の専門家が多かったらしく、マレー語とかアイヌ語とか中国語とかアラビア語などの可能性も検討されていたのがすごかった。
書き誤りがヒントになることもある。「ヰ」を「ヌ」と間違えているところがヒントになる可能性も指摘された。
全体が同じ暗号で書かれているという保証はない。項目によって暗号方式が異なり、日記の天気の項が暗号方式を示しているのではという可能性も指摘された。そうだとすると頻度分析などのデータが役立たなくなる。だが天気の違う日に「イヨ゜ヨサソヨ」という共通の文字列が出現していることがわかり、この可能性は排除できた。ただ、その後も天気の記載が「晴」「はれ」「ハれ」と不自然なバリエーションがあることが指摘された。結果的に、前半と後半で2通りの暗号が使われていたので全体を通した頻度分析はノイズの多いデータだったことになるが、幸い「ヨ」の高頻度は埋没せず、解読の手がかりになったと思う(上述)。

17/01/2021

Lewis Carroll's Ciphers

I heard of Francine F. Abeles's work on Lewis Carroll's ciphers by a recommendation email of Academia.edu and described them in a new article in Japanese "ルイス・キャロルの暗号".

12/01/2021

A New Book on Codebreaking by Elonka Dunin and Klaus Schmeh

I got a new book, Codebreaking, A Practical Guide by Elonka Dunin and Klaus Schmeh, hot from the press.
I have long known Elonka's name by her webpage formerly titled "Elonka's List of Famous Unsolved Codes and Ciphers" without knowing her other achievements in codebreaking, authoring, and public speaking (her bio).
I have known Klaus by his blog Klausis Krypto Kolumne, where many people in the world discuss crypto mysteries and solve hitherto unsolved cryptograms. I'm greatly honored to be credited as one of the proofreaders in the book by these two authors of world fame. (I also contributed a blurb to the official page of the authors.)

This comprehensive book provides separate chapters for just about every major encryption scheme historically used: Caesar ciphers, simple substitution ciphers, homophonic ciphers, codes and nomenclators, polyalphabetic ciphers, complete columnar transposition ciphers, incomplete transposition ciphers, turning grille transposition ciphers, digraph substitution, abbreviation ciphers, dictionary codes and book ciphers, among others. One can see variants of ciphers that may be treated in one chapter in other books are given separate chapters. Each chapter not only provides cracking techniques for each scheme, but also presents "success stories", "challenges", and "unsolved cryptograms" from actual examples.

To me, the chapter "16. Solving ciphers with hill climbing" was the most interesting. Hill climbing is a computer-based technique that has proven very successful in solving historical ciphers. This chapter introduces no less than thirteen "success stories", which I believe is the most comprehensive list up to now of achievements in codebreaking by hill climbing. This chapter may be worth publication as a book on its own, with more details on designing of specific fitness functions and techniques for randomising.

Many actual examples and images, ranging from encrypted postcards to epistles written by famous historical persons, are not the least appeal of this book. (Elgar's Dorabella cipher is well-known, but I didn't know cryptograms of Beatrice Potter and Rudyard Kipling.) Although many of them can also be seen on the authors' websites, it is good to see them in classified chapters in a book.

04/01/2021

The DECODE Database

I was invited to collaborate with the DECODE database. It is a part of the interdisciplinary DECRYPT project. The DECRYPT project aims to develop resources and computer-aided tools for decoding of historical documents. The tools facilitate transcription and decryption including (but presumably not limited to) cryptanalysis, among others. The DECODE database is a collection of digitized images of ciphertexts and keys along with metadata. Even nonregistered users can search and view metadata.
During the last week, I made my first uploads about cipher letters of Philip II to Juan de Vargas Mexia (which can be found with the search term "BnF_es132"), which are the ones I want to see deciphered the most (see a previous post). Although the status of the records is "decrypted", it merely means the key has been identified. The plaintext is yet to be recovered by using the key.
I have not yet completed the batch, but after these, I hope to upload many others when time allows.

03/01/2021

Euler's "Logogriph"

I heard of breaking of the cryptogram left by the Swiss mathematician Leonhard Euler at Klausis Krypto Kolumne. I compared the solution of the same cryptogram by two people: Pierre Speziali and Hans Rohrbach in a new article in Japanese "数学者オイラーの残した暗号文の解読" and mentioned the cryptogram in "Unsolved Historical Ciphers" (which also covers cryptograms that remained unsolved for some time).
Rohrbach's solution (1973) involves counting symbol frequencies with contact characteristics. So, I also mentioned it in the section "Contact Chart in the Days of Manual Work" in "Creating a Contact Chart with Microsoft Excel".