More Ciphers from BnF

I made additions in
"French Ciphers during the Reign of Francis I"
"Spanish Ciphers during the Reign of Philip II"
"Reading Undeciphered Letters to the Duke of Savoy (1593)"
"French Ciphers during the Reign of Henry II of France"
They are solutions provided by George Lasry the other day and others found deciphered in the same volumes in BnF.

A French Cipher Possibly from the Earliest Period: De la Tremoille's(?) Cipher

I tentatively labelled "De la Tremoille's(?) Cipher (ca.1520-1521)" to one cipher in "Decipherment of Hitherto Unsolved Historical Ciphers (by George Lasry)" the other day. The attribution to de la Tremoille was merely because most of the letters in clear in BnF fr.3029 are his, and the dating was taken from the dates of other letters in BnF fr.3092. But if this were really from 1520-1521, it would be the earliest extant French letters in cipher letter. I changed the dating to (??1520-1521) to show the question is open.
To help dating, I added some deciphered text in the article.
The reference to the war in Hungary in one specimen may refer to the Turkish invasion in 1520-1566. So, this does not help update the dating.
In another specimen, the queen mentioned in "sa tante et puis la royne d'Angleterre" may refer to Henry VIII's queen, but may also refer to Elizabeth I. The latter fits "Cardinal ... en Flandres", which may refer to the Cardinal of Granvelle (created in 1561).
Historians' help is needed to read the deciphered text.

Earlier Specimen (1596) of Spanish Cipher Cp.57 Broken by François Viète

The Spanish cipher Cg.57 is peculiar in its code words in the form like "b24", including not only syllables and words but also single letters.
It has been considered that Cg.57 was introduced around 1600-1601, but a new specimen shows that this cipher was used as early as 1596. (I think this cipher (not this specimen) is among "the latest ciphers of Spain" broken by the French codebreaker, François Viète.)
Another interesting feature of the new specimen is that false spacing seems to be used to confuse the codebreaker, though it cannot be determined whether it was intentional.

I now updated "Ciphers during the Reign of Philip III (1598-1621)" and "Major Types of Ciphers during the Reign of Philip II" to reflect these.

15 Solutions to Undeciphered Texts in BnF by George Lasry

Earlier this month, George Lasry sent in his results of codebreaking of undeciphered texts preserved in BnF. He identified no less than 15 ciphers. Most of them were not in my list of unsolved ciphers. Now, I appended these to his previous achievements in "Decipherment of Hitherto Unsolved Historical Ciphers (by George Lasry)". Of the volumes he examined, what remain unsolved are two from BnF fr.3022 (A report to Charles V (1527?), Marquis of Gasto to Charles V (1527) in my list) and a short ciphertext in a letter from Matheo de Segura to connetable de Castille, dated Madrid, 8 August 1596 (BnF es. 336 (Gallica), f.196, no.99).

I plan to mention these newly identified ciphers (as well as some I reconstructed from deciphered letters found in the same volumes) in main articles (such as this, where it can be seen some of the ciphers identified are the same as previously reconstructed ciphers), but it may take a while.

Did Ambassadors Learn Local Ciphers?

I have seen examples that suggests ambassadors employed ciphers commonly used at the place of their residence. Although I have not found any concrete evidence of the local influence, I collected such examples in a new article, "Do Ciphering in Rome as the Romans Do".

OneDriveの同期を解除したらデスクトップのデータが全部消えた！…と思ったら残っていた件

 (This has nothing to do with cryptology. The following is my experience of salvaging Desktop data when I thought I lost them all when I cancelled sync with OneDrive.)

パソコンをOneDriveと同期させるよう促すメッセージがしつこく出るので、仕方なくクリックしてみたが、やばそうだったので同期を解除したところ、デスクトップ上のデータが全部消えてしまった。慌てていろいろ調べたところ、どうやらCドライブのユーザー（またはuser）＞***（私の名前の一部）＞OneDriveというフォルダーの中に残っていた。たとえば「デスクトップ」という項目をクリックすると、もともとデスクトップにあったデータが一通り残っていたようだ。そこからデータをもとのデスクトップにドラッグアンドドロップして、もとの状態に戻った、…と思う。
同じ悩みを抱えている人も多そうだが、私が慌てて調べていた間はこのことを教えてくれるサイトが見当たらなかったので、書いておくことにした。

なお、OneDrive（GoogleDriveとかiCloudなど、他のクラウドストレージも同じだと思うが）では操作を誤るとデータが全部本当に消えて回復できなくなるらしい。以下、私の勘違いもないとは言えないので、必ず確認して裏を取った上で、自己責任で操作してほしい。

しつこいOneDrive設定のメッセージ

そもそものきっかけはOneDriveがしきりにメッセージを出すようになったことだ（下の画像）。「OneDriveを設定」とあって、「OneDriveにファイルを保存すると、どのデバイスからもアクセスできます。」とある。専門用語でいう「同期」というやつだ。「同期」といのは、PC上のデータとネット上のデータを同じに保っていること。そうすれば自宅PCで作業した同じデータを、出先などのPCで開いて作業を続けることができる。
それが便利なのはわかっているが、PCのデータは何十GB（もっと？）もある。有料オプションを使っていないから入りきれないのは目に見えているのでずっと無視していた。

OneDriveを同期して解消したらデータが消えた

あまりにしつこいので、あるときものは試しとクリックしてみた。PCのデータのアップロードが始まったのだが、しばらくすると案の定データ容量が足りませんというメッセージが出て、エクスプローラのアイコンに×マークがつきはじめた。これはまずいと思って慌てて「同期の一時停止」「同期の解消」などの操作をした（やり方はネットで調べたか、適当に設定をクリックしたかどちらかだったと思う）。ところが「同期の解消」をしたときだと思うが、デスクトップ上のデータがきれいさっぱり消えてしまった。

データはOneDriveフォルダーに保存されていた

もちろんアップロードしたファイルはOneDrive上にあるのだが、無料の容量5GBの範囲でアップロードできたデータはごく一部のはず。あふれた大部分のデータは消えてしまったのだろうか。だが不思議なことに、デスクトップ上に見えないデータも開けるようだった。だが、開いたデータのパスを見てみると、PC上のOneDriveというフォルダー内を見ているようだ。そういえば、OneDriveにアップロードしたデータは、PCのOneDriveというフォルダーに保存されるという説明をどこかで読んだような気がする。結局、
Cドライブのユーザー（またはuser）というフォルダーの***（私の名前の一部）というフォルダーの中のOneDriveというフォルダーの中に残っていた。
外付けHDにバックアップしておいたものから、大量のファイルがあるがあまり変更していないフォルダーを選んで、右クリックの「プロパティー」でファイル数を比較してみたが、アップロードできる容量をはるかに超えているにもかかわらず、なくなったデータはないようだ。ここからもとのデスクトップにデータを戻したところ、どうやら正常に使えるようになったようだ。

OneDriveは何を考えているのか？

そもそも、促されてしかたなく同期をはじめたものの、すぐ解消した。それだけなのになぜデスクトップ上のファイルが消えてしまう、なんてことになっているのだろうか。
おそらく、OneDriveと同期した以上は、データ本体はネット上のもの、というのがクラウドストレージの基本的な考え方なのだろう。だから、ひとたび同期した以上、以後は、「ローカルPCでの変更が常にネット上に反映される」のではなく、「ローカルPCで作業していると思っていても、実際のデータはクラウド上にある」というのが基本的な設計思想なのだろう。だから、「同期」したデータはいったん、見えにくいところにあるOneDriveフォルダーに移されるのだ。アップロードしきれないデータも含めて。
だから同期を解消すると、以後は「クラウド（OneDrive）上のデータ本体」と「PCのOneDriveフォルダーに保存されていたローカルコピー」が別々の道を歩むことになるのだ。

本当に取り返しのつかない場合

作業中、OneDriveのフォルダーも開いてみた。同期を一時停止している間、同期はやめるのだからと思ってOneDriveの大きなデータは削除してクラウドの空きを作っておこうとした。だが削除しようとすると、「削除するとローカルコンピューターのデータも消えます」みたいなメッセージが出たので操作をやめた。もしここで削除を実行していたら、ローカルPCのOneDriveフォルダーにあるデータも消えていて（たぶん同期の一時停止を解除したときに）、それこそ取り返しがつかなかったのだろう。（ただし、OneDriveのごみ箱に残っていれば元に戻せるかも。）
なお、どの段階か忘れたが、比較的使っていない「ピクチャ」フォルダーをOneDriveで削除したかもしれない。そのせいかどうか、ローカルPCのエクスプローラのクイックアクセスにいつも表示されているPicturesフォルダーが使えなくなってしまった。データそのものはOneDriveフォルダーに残っていたので、それをデスクトップにコピーしたから実害はないものの、よくわからない。

次に同期したらどうなるのか？

ローカルPCのOneDriveフォルダーのデータをデスクトップに戻した後、ためしにOneDriveフォルダーの一部のデータを消してみたが、やはりデスクトップに戻したデータは消えなかった。というか、同期はまだ解消したままなのでこれは当たり前だろう。将来何かの拍子にまた間違って同期をクリックしてしまったらどうなるのだろう。OneDriveフォルダーの中ではないから、この削除が反映されることはないと思うがどうなのだろう。あるいはデスクトップに戻したデータがまたOneDriveフォルダーに移されてそれが削除される、ということもあるのだろうか。
こわくてOneDriveフォルダーをスタートアップから削除して、ウィンドウズ起動時にOneDriveが立ち上がらないようにしたのだが、それでもPCを使っているうちに「OneDriveを設定」のウィンドウが出てきてしまう。次はうっかりつられないようにしなければ。

追記：「OneDriveの罠に注意！強制同期を切ったり、容量の警告に対処したいならこれをすべし」（PC Watch, 2024.7.18）でも注意喚起されていた。

Samuel Morland's "New Method" Used for Charles II's Ambassadors

Until recently, Samuel Morland's A New Method of Cryptography (1666) has been relatively unknown compared with famous works of John Wilkins or John Falconer published in the same century. I found TNA SP106/6 contains ciphers based on the printed template adapted from this book. See my new article, "Samuel Morland's "New Cipher" Applied in Instructions for Charles II's Ambassador". 

 

Printed Templates during the Reign of Charles II

Different ciphers are used with different correspondents, but main vocabulary of the cipher may be the same for all the channels. So, code making is facilitated if template sheets with necessary words/phrases are printed beforehand. With such templates, a new cipher can be prepared by just filling in code numbers.
I reported such printed templates from ca. 1690 in an article "Diplomatic Codes after the Glorious Revolution", but I noticed there are earlier instances from the Restoration period. So, I now added a section "Printed Templates during the Reign of Charles II" in the article. (I may need to consider renaming the article.)

The Babington Cipher

The most famous cipher of Mary, Queen of Scots, is the one she used in her fatal correspondence with Anthony Babington, in what is known as the Babington Plot. Some pupular books even discuss Mary's cipher as if all her ciphers are like this. It should be remembered that this is only one of the simplest kind among more than a hundred ciphers Mary used with various people at various times.
I now added a section for this famous cipher in "Ciphers of Mary, Queen of Scots". It presents images based on Wikimedia Commons and describes only minimal facts. 

 

A Cipher used between Marchioness of Ormonde and Edward Nicholas (1649)

Kilkenny Castle's website presents an image of a letter partially in cipher from Elizabeth Butler, Marchioness of Ormonde, (Wikipedia) to Edward Nicholas, dated 20 June 1649 (from Egerton MS 2533). At this time, Elizabeth was in Caen, France, while the Marquess of Ormonde was fighting in Ireland for the royalist cause.
The interlined decipherment allows reconstruction of the cipher.
The following is transcription of the ciphertext aligned with the plaintext.

42 36 27 4 21 18 29 366 9 89 264 5 470 452  523  483   4 328  80    37 18
o  b  j  e c  t  i  on  s be in  g the same with those I made again s  t

262 95     551  306    22 12 28 30 525   493             471   44 13 31 320 477
it  before your letter c  a  m  e  which Colonel Traford to    u  l  d  me  that

167        230 76     31 476  32 217 268 471 477  12 21 34 31 30 321 89 194  30 67  36 18 10 30 32
Lord Digby had advise d  thei r  go  ing to  that A  c  a  d  e  my  be for  e  any o  t  h  e  r

90  470 264      12 320 15 18 261 348 550 217 15 438 14 34 32 90
But the arrange? ?  me  n  t  is  not yet go  n  soe f  a  r  but

477  4 453   194  12 520 471 364    523  368 218 268 67  398
that I shall find a  way to  oppose with out giv ing any offense

364     14 46 40 22 57 6 75 130 512
(oppose f  *  *  c  *  *  *  *  *)

(objections being the same with those I made against it before your letter came which Colonel Traford tould me that Lord Digby had advised their going to that Academy before any other But the arrangement is not yet gon soe farre but that I shall find a way to oppose with out giving any offense)

The cipher is like many other royalist ciphers at the time, but this particular cipher is new to me. It is yet to be seen whether the cipher used in a letter from Nicholas to Ormonde, dated 28 October 1648 (see "King Charles I's Ciphers") is the same as this.

Correction: Upon closer look, "oppose" is not in the manuscript. 364=of. So, the last part may read: 398(par...?) 364(of) 14(f) 46(e) 40(n) 22(c) 57(e)

Cipher Letters to Charles I of England (1645) in the Parliamentary Archives

The other day, I ran into a blogpost of the Parliamentary Archives: Katherine Emery (2020), "Cracking the code: Love, war and letters". This made me aware that some images of cipher letters to Charles I are available at the Parliamentary Archives (and reminded me of ciphers in the British Library I had noted before for future study).

(1) Letter in "Cipher with Ministers in Oxford (Spring 1645)"
Nicholas to Charles I, 22 May 1645 (Parliamentary Archives)

(2) Letters in "Third Cipher between Charles I and Henrietta-Maria"
(2-1) Jermyn to Charles I, 12 May 1645 (Parliamentary Archives) *This record cannot be reached by the search terms such as "cipher", "decipher", but the ID in the official blog readily led to the relevant page.

(2-2) Henrietta Maria to King Charles I, 6 January 1645 (Parliamentary Archives)

(2-3)Henrietta Maria to King Charles I, 13 March 1645 (Parliamentary Archives)

(2-4)(Jermyn?) to Charles I, 21 April 1645 (Parliamentary Archives)

(3) Letter in "Second Cipher between Charles I and Henrietta-Maria in Holland and the North (Aug. 1642-Jul. 1643)"
Henrietta Maria to Charles I, 27 June 1643 (Parliamentary Archives)

(4) Letter in "Cipher with Prince Rupert, Digby, and Ormonde (1644-1645)" (formerly called "Cipher with Prince Rupert (Summer 1644)")
(4-1) Charles I to Prince Maurice, 25 June 1644 (Parliamentary Archives)

(4-2) Letters from Charles I to Prince Rupert, March 1643 to April 1645 (Add MS 18983 (BL))
One from 29 April 1645 is not deciphered but can be read.

(5) "D: of Richemonds Cyfer"
Charles I to Prince Rupert, 31 July 1645 (Add MS 18983, ff.15-16).
This letter shows Charles changed his cipher used in correspondence with Rupert after Naseby. There is a note in the margin, "This is in the D: of Richemonds Cyfer." The Duke of Richmond had returned from exile to defend Oxford for the King (Wikipedia).
This is the same as what I previously reconstructed from Add MS 18982 f.79 (privately designated THE=g4). This cipher is interesting in providing for many nulls among low numbers, where typically single letters are assigned.
Specifically, while many of numbers 1-112 are for letters but most of 20-40 are nulls. When these nulls are well used (as in this letter), the codebreaker may have been led off track.
About the same time, Rupert used a different cipher with Nicholas ("Nicholas-Rupert Cipher after Naseby (July 1645)").
These specimens will help fill the gap in my reconstruction of the ciphers.

For the specific ciphers, see "King Charles I's Ciphers" (this article started with the few printed sources available at first, and need an overhaul with many archival materials now available online).

A Letter in Napoleonic Small Cipher found in Dresden

A private email drew my attention to a letter (1813) found in Dresden of General Rapp (defending Danzig for Napoleon). It was posted on Klaus Schmeh's facebook and solved instantly by Geoge Lasry, who had "developed a special tool for syllabary ciphers of this kind" (see my previous post). I now mentioned this achievement in "Great Ciphers of Napoleon's Grande Armée".
For this particular case, General Rapp's small cipher is printed in Bazeries' Les chiffres secrets dévoilés (p.275) as mentioned in my article "A Specimen of Napoleon's Small Cipher (1813)". Bazeries' table allows what couldn't be identified by an algorithm:
44(deux) 44(deux) 7(zero) 8 8
46(une) 5 46(une) 7(zero) 8
46(une) 26(trois) 2(neuf) 46(une) 7(zero) i.e., 13910
*7(zero) is not in Bazeries' table, but I think I saw it somewhere. 5 and 8 most probably represent digits.

Inventory of Edward Nicholas' Ciphers in Egerton MS 2550

After vacillating for a night after uploading an article about Edward Nicholas, I uploaded an inventory of his ciphers in Egerton MS 2550 in a CSV format for what it's worth (I'm sure it includes many transcription errors).

*It seems downloading does not work for security reasons. Try a link in the article "Polyalphabetic Cipher Exercise by Royalist Minister Edward Nicholas".

Royalist Minister Edward Nicholas Studies Vigenere/Beaufort Cipher

Among papers of Edward Nicholas, secretary of state to Charles I and Charles II, I found a worksheet of the Vigenere/Beaufort cipher (Egerton MS 2550, f.39). A printed Vegenere table (f.86) seems too neatly printed to belong to the seventeenth century, but I believe the worksheet (at least the main part of it) shows Nicholas experimented with the polyalphabetic scheme.
I uploaded a new article on this: "Polyalphabetic Cipher Exercise by Royalist Minister Edward Nicholas".
It is yet to be found out how and when Nicholas learned of polyalphabetic ciphers.

Three Ciphers of Nicholas Throckmorton Identified, Two Remain Unsolved

Among Throckmorton's ciphertexts in Add MS 4136 mentioned the other day, I identified three ciphers after all, and reported them in "Ciphers during the Reign of Queen Elizabeth I" (and updated the records in the DECODE database).
Two ciphertexts remain unidentified.

A Telegram from Switzerland (1937)

A private email made me aware that two unsolved encrypted telegrams from Switzerland are on Klaus Schmeh's facebook page. It was sent to "London Mcl." and one has a handwritten note "via angleterre Eastern." The timestamp for both is "8 JAN 37."

Both telegrams begin with "BLUME SALAMANCA", followed by a sequence of five letter groups. These are part of the body text (because they are reckoned in the word counting penciled as "50" and "100".)
While a codebook may have been used, it is pointed out that the index of coincidence matches that of English, pointing to a possibility of transposition.

Side information:
- These telegrams are mentioned in Regula Bochsler (2022), Nylon und Napalm - Die Geschäfte der Emser Werke und ihres Gründers Werner Oswald (Google).
- Bengt Beckman, C.G. McKay (2013), Swedish Signal Intelligence 1900-1945, p.110 Google describes the basic structure of telegrams at the time.
- Klaus' Cipherbrain article presents a telegram, apparently sent from Switzerland to London (1942), where the discussion seems to have agreed on a hypothesis that it is encoded in the British Government Telegraph Code, unofficially called the ABABY Code or the BABY Code for the first codeword ABABY standing for fullstop. I suppose this codebook does not apply to the BLUME telegram because it has codewords earlier than ABABY (e.g., AAATI).
- The Riegner Telegram (Wikipedia) (1942) is a telegram sent from Geneva to London and New York. It was sent from Gerhart Riegner of World Jewish Congress and conveyed an early report of the Nazi's plan of extermination of Jews. It was sent in "CYPHER", but the original cipher message does not seem to be extant.

(Additional Notes) Bochsler, the author quoted above and the historian who discovered the telegrams, provided background information in a comment on Klaus' facebook page. The telegram was sent from an enterprise owned by Werner Oswald. When questioned by the Swiss Federal Police, he claimed that the telegrams were related to "wool business" in Spain, but Bochsler doubts this because he had a good relationship with fascist Spain.

Excerpts of Nicholas Throckmorton's Cipher Letters (1559)

 BL Add MS 4136 includes many papers related to Nichlas Throckmorton. Sheets after sheets are filled with numbered segments in cipher. I found many of them can be read with a key reconstructed from Add MS 35830. Although the papers from Add MS 4136 are annotated with the dates and the writer (Nicholas Throckmorton, ambassador in France, and his successors), the letters calendared in CSP foreign did not seem to quite match.
When I deciphered a sequence "marques d'Alboeuf and Martigues" in one letter, it allowed me to find the decipherment of full letters printed in Forbes (1740), the source of CSP. It confirmed that the cipher segments in Add MS 4136 are excerpts corresponding to the text in italics (i.e., those portions in cipher) in Forbes (1740).
I'm still working on this. Hopefully, I can report the results in near future.

By the way, Nicholas Throckmorton's cipher seems to have a fairly large number of code symbols. Often, a symbol consists of the initial letter of the word it represents and some additional stroke.

I Reconstructed a Cipher but Lost Its Source.

When I reconstructed a cipher from some deciphered material, I don't upload it right away, but usually wait some time until more materials are collected in order to see how best to present them.
The downside of this practice is that I sometimes forget what it is about.
The other day, I made some additions from Henry VIII's time ("Earliest English Diplomatic Ciphers" and "Ciphers during the Reign of Henry VIII"), but I lost a source of one of the ciphers I reconstructed. It may have been taken from the same volume from which I took the other ciphers.

Simulated Paper-and-Pencil Codebreaking of a Ciphered Letter of Mary, Queen of Scots

I uploaded a new article "Simulated Paper-and-Pencil Codebreaking of a Ciphered Letter of Mary, Queen of Scots", which demonstrates how paper-and-pencil codebreakers could have broken a cipher used in a letter from Mary, Queen of Scots, to James Beaton, Archbishop of Glasgow (1586).
Remember that I did not break this cipher myself. The article only "simulates" how it could have been achieved by codebreakers such as Thomas Phelippes without using computer tools.

An English Polyalphabetic Cipher from the Seventeenth Century

I uploaded a short new article "An English Polyalphabetic Cipher from the Seventeenth Century". No specimens enciphered with this are known to me.