Wikipedia Trail: Code talker to Scytale
Code talker Wikipedia
Stemming from my interest in Native American mythology/folklore, I also wanted to learn more about this specific part of their history. I had of course heard of the Navajo code talkers, but I did not realize just how many tribes were involved in code talking (fourteen, according to this page). I found the fact that there were two code types especially interesting; type one codes used words from specific tribes' languages for each letter of the English alphabet, and type two codes were directly coded from English into a tribe's native language.
I went to this page because I honestly had no idea what this term described. I learned that this specific cipher is a way of encrypting where units of plaintext (unencrypted information) are replaced with ciphertext (encrypted plaintext information) according to a fixed system or algorithm. I was also surprised to read about the huge variety of ciphers that exist and are still used (this page describes five different types of substitution ciphers alone).
The reason I chose this page was again because I had no idea what the term was describing. I discovered they are similar in principle to substitution ciphers, but differ by being a method of encryption where positions of units of plaintext are shifted specific ways so that the resulting ciphertext appears as a permutation. Again I was surprised to learn about how many types of transposition ciphers exist (seven discussed on this page).
This topic was briefly discussed in the transposition cipher page and intrigued me because it was used by Ancient Greeks. I did not realize how long ciphers have been in use and this technique, although quite simple, seems rather effective. By wrapping a strip of parchment around a cylinder rod and writing plaintext horizontally across the rod, the receiver would simply rewrap the parchment and read the message. When the parchment was unwrapped, it would read nonsense.
Comments
Post a Comment