The Caesar Cipher (AKA Caesar Shift) was one of the earliest and simplest forms of encoding messages to keep the information in them secure. It was nearly 800 hundred years before a non brute force approach was discovered that could beat the cipher and another 800 hundred years before military leaders came up with a more secure cipher. While this cipher offers little security to information in modern times, it is still offers an interesting look into the past and shows the basics to encryption.
The Caesar Cipher is fairly simple, it takes the original message and shifts the letters to either the right or the left. For example, a message attacknow shifted right 3 would become dwwdfnqrz, becoming illegible to the common reader until it is decrypted. This would be able to shield the information from common people intercepting it, but anyone with sufficient motivation would be able to crack it by using a brute force method of simply shifting the letters around until the message appears.
This is one of the greatest weaknesses for the Caesar Cipher, there are only 26 possible combinations, making it easy to test all of them in a short time. Another weakness is that every language has a finger print of how frequently each letter is used. An example of this is in English “e” is the most common letter followed by “t.” By looking at the most frequently used letters, you can almost immediately see how large of a shift there and shift the letters in the message.
Because this method of encryption is so simple it can easily be broken, but that hasn’t stopped mafia bosses from using a variation of it in modern times. Because of the simplicity of the codes, when the messages were intercepted, the codes were easily broken by law enforcement and the used as evidence in their trials.
Ultimately, the Caesar Cipher is a great way to leave notes for friends, but very ineffective at offering real security to information. If you really want to secure your information, learning Chinese might be more effective, but modern translation systems might soon throw a wrench in that.
Cheers!
FlyCode 