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This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 28 May 2019 and 2 July 2019. Further details are available
on the course page. Student editor(s):
Potatocircle.
Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT ( talk) 16:31, 16 January 2022 (UTC)
What is key space in caesar cipher? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 137.111.13.33 ( talk) 06:48, 29 April 2003 (UTC)
A cryptogram (in the English meaning) and a cryptic crossword are not the same kind of puzzle at all. A cryptic crossword is a crossword with particular styles of clues. It does not involve any encryption. A cryptogram is a piece of text which has been encrypted with a simple substitution cipher (each letter replaced throughout with some other letter). It's meant to be solved by frequency analysis and recognizing letter patterns.
(If, as the cryptic crossword page suggests, those are called "cryptograms" in Dutch, that might be part of the confusion. The intended reference in this article is to what is called a cryptogram in English.) -- FOo
I've had a quick thumb through Kahn (and the Internet), but I can't find any reference to shift ciphers before Caesar; I don't think we can say "certainly not invented by him", or can we? An NSA page (admittedly for kids) attributes it to him: http://www.nsa.gov/kids/ciphers/ciphe00002.htm — Matt 04:57, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC)
The History section relates cryptanalysis of the caesar cipher and frequency analysis. That's the nice way to do it, but since brute force is so trivial and obvious for this cipher, can we really even talk about "methods of breaking the cipher" being unavailable? I mean, it's a *Caesar cipher*. :) Lunkwill 21:21, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Hmm..yeah, having thought about it, perhaps this cryptanalysis section would be better merged into frequency analysis or substitution cipher; most of it is pretty general. — Matt 00:45, 24 Nov 2004 (UTC)
I just wanted to congratulate the authors of this article. Although a very simple topic, they've really done a great job of explaining it while using it as a demonstration of simple cryptography and cryptanalysis. I'm impressed. Deco 03:24, 12 Apr 2005 (UTC)
One of the examples in the article stated that "AFCCQ" would rotate to either "jolly" or "cheer". It doesn't; it rotates to "jollz" and "chees". I fixed the example to read "AFCCP" instead. This is my first edit of a featured article in particular, so I hope I wasn't meant to go through any sort of process for it; something I only thought about after I'd done so. -- Ciaran H 15:14, Apr 12, 2005 (UTC)
Where could I find an advanced caesar Cipher breaker? I need it to figure out strings such as delta=-?,+?,-?,+?,-?,+?,... and possibly do it backwards for me too. I have no idea where to even begin to break a cipher in which the delta is unknown!!! Jaberwocky6669 05:06, Jun 21, 2005 (UTC)
This article got recommended in an a feature in School Library Journal this month, where they had a feature on websites about codes and ciphers. Apparently, "they select a topic, in this case Codes and Ciphers, and present websites that they believe will be helpful to students and teachers. Each one has a short summary/review". The review for this article was, "This Wikipedia article shows you how the Caesar Cipher works, and how to break it! It also explains some of the history of how Julius Caesar used it" [1]. — Matt Crypto 18:25, 1 September 2005 (UTC)
This article is in the Stream ciphers category. Does it really qualify? Beacuse it doesn't do what is described on the stream cipher's article "the transformation of successive digits varies during the encryption." I think I could argue it either way (it's just a really simple stream cipher), but I thought someone should at least bring it up. Broken S 22:52, 21 November 2005 (UTC)
Could someone write about the cipher's relevance today? When learning cryptographic methods, one inevitably is told of the Caesar Cipher. Perhaps someone should write about how it's used as a building block on developing more complex methods... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.104.85.250 ( talk • contribs)
There have been a couple of incorrect reverts. There is no generally used definition of when is negative. E.g., the remainder of can be either -2 or 3. Which of this two values is used depends widely on the context, where the operator is used. In crypto is usually defined such that and (assuming ). To be correct the article should clearly state the definition of mod. 81.62.90.36 09:21, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
I'm not a cryptographer but my reading of Suetonius is that Julius Ceasar's code was a shift of -3, or three to the left. The examples given, while not specifically being noted as having Caesar's shift do have a shift of three, but three to the right. For example, in the example:
From Suetonius: "If anyone wishes to decipher these ... he must substitute the fourth letter of the alphabet, namely D, for A, and so with the others."
This implies to me that to read the encoded text you would substitute the letter D whenever the letter A is encountered in the cipher. The example above the result would be an X for A. Jhohorst 02:54, 17 July 2007 (UTC)
In the Romanian article it is:
In the English article it is:
And in the Spanish one it is:
All these are featured articles. So, which formula is correct in the end? diego_pmc ( talk) 17:26, 28 March 2008 (UTC)
Kudos to Hut8.5 for his cleanup and tracking down some sources for this article. I'm a bit worried, though, by the Daily Mail cite -- the newspaper is not a particularly scholarly source. I wouldn't at all be surprised, for example, if the Daily Mail had used Wikipedia as a source itself (given that this article was featured on Wikipedia's main page a couple of weeks before the newspaper article was published). — Matt Crypto 18:14, 16 June 2008 (UTC)
Hi :)
I'd like to add something about the last sentence of the article "In mathematical terms, the encryption under various keys forms a group."
I think that it should be reformulated. Actually, saying that the encryption forms a group means nothing to me. It would be better to write that the set of ciphers, with the law of composition for applications, forms a group.
Finally, i'd like to say that i'm french so maybe I misunderstood the sentence ! Sorry if this is the case. -- Shiningfm ( talk) 01:20, 29 September 2008 (UTC)
I have just removed the infobox from this page. It has been around since 2007 and I am surprised that no one has complained about it. It's use for modern encryption schemes is fine, the template was designed for that. In this instance however, too few fields are filled in and the result looks like a malformed infobox. If you feel that for uniformity there should be an infobox on this page, then don't use the template, just build one as a table so that it can be customized for this cipher. Bill Cherowitzo ( talk) 04:00, 13 October 2015 (UTC)
I would like to remove this line:
In April 2006, fugitive Mafia boss Bernardo Provenzano was captured in Sicily partly because some of his messages, written in a variation of the Caesar cipher, were broken. Provenzano's cipher used numbers, so that "A" would be written as "4", "B" as "5", and so on.[11]
This is because it doesn't really add to the article and popularises a modern crime figure compared with a historical leader. Theblogger01 ( talk) 20:40, 7 April 2016 (UTC)
Quite some time ago, I created a Caesar cipher decryption tool, based on a frequency heuristic, where you can paste some text and the right key is guessed. The tool is the most linked and most frequently visited page of my blog, which might be a slight indicator, that people see in it a valuable resource.
As Wikipedia is a collection of valuable resources and information, I proposed to add the tool https://www.xarg.org/tools/caesar-cipher/ for the external pages section.
Unfortunately, the change was reverted automatically as I got explained here: /info/en/?search=User_talk:Xarg
However, as I wrote, I don't think this is an advertising other than bringing in a valuable reference to Wikipedia and so I would be glad if you add the link permanently if the resource meeds your quality demands. I assure that this link will be available and that I own the site. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Xarg ( talk • contribs) 03:15, 21 July 2018 (UTC)
Hey there i have implemented the algorithm in python, perhaps it will help the programmers to understand how it works. Please feel free to comment here — Preceding unsigned comment added by 182.75.188.170 ( talk) 14:06, 4 July 2019 (UTC)
This article often gets implementations of the cipher in common programming languages added, e.g. this JavaScript example. I don't think these add anything meaningful to the article. The algorithm for the Caesar cipher is so simple it can be encapsulated in one simple formula, as in the "Example" section. Any well-written code example will also only have one line devoted to the actual enciphering, which is the same as the formula given earlier. Most of the code is invariably devoted to iterating through the input string, converting the string characters into numbers, and assembling the output, instead of implementing the actual cipher itself. As a result the reader doesn't gain anything from reading the example. Hut 8.5 15:38, 26 April 2020 (UTC)
ole — Preceding unsigned comment added by 209.216.186.111 ( talk) 01:06, 18 November 2021 (UTC)
This older featured article contains a proportionately significant amount of uncited text, and the history section is largely a list of events that aren't connected well. Modern FAs have higher expectations for sourcing and structure, and a featured article review may be necessary if improvements towards WP:FACR are not made. Hog Farm Talk 13:54, 1 September 2022 (UTC)
Ndj rpc atpkt bt, udg ndjg etprt du bxcs. 2001:4453:28D:A00:54F5:4BD:821B:8774 ( talk) 01:35, 10 March 2024 (UTC)
This is the
talk page for discussing improvements to the
Caesar cipher article. This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject. |
Article policies
|
Find sources: Google ( books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL |
![]() | Caesar cipher is a featured article; it (or a previous version of it) has been identified as one of the best articles produced by the Wikipedia community. Even so, if you can update or improve it, please do so. | |||||||||||||||
![]() | This article appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page as Today's featured article on April 12, 2005. | |||||||||||||||
| ||||||||||||||||
Current status: Featured article |
![]() | This ![]() It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | ||||||||||||||||||||
|
This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 28 May 2019 and 2 July 2019. Further details are available
on the course page. Student editor(s):
Potatocircle.
Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT ( talk) 16:31, 16 January 2022 (UTC)
What is key space in caesar cipher? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 137.111.13.33 ( talk) 06:48, 29 April 2003 (UTC)
A cryptogram (in the English meaning) and a cryptic crossword are not the same kind of puzzle at all. A cryptic crossword is a crossword with particular styles of clues. It does not involve any encryption. A cryptogram is a piece of text which has been encrypted with a simple substitution cipher (each letter replaced throughout with some other letter). It's meant to be solved by frequency analysis and recognizing letter patterns.
(If, as the cryptic crossword page suggests, those are called "cryptograms" in Dutch, that might be part of the confusion. The intended reference in this article is to what is called a cryptogram in English.) -- FOo
I've had a quick thumb through Kahn (and the Internet), but I can't find any reference to shift ciphers before Caesar; I don't think we can say "certainly not invented by him", or can we? An NSA page (admittedly for kids) attributes it to him: http://www.nsa.gov/kids/ciphers/ciphe00002.htm — Matt 04:57, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC)
The History section relates cryptanalysis of the caesar cipher and frequency analysis. That's the nice way to do it, but since brute force is so trivial and obvious for this cipher, can we really even talk about "methods of breaking the cipher" being unavailable? I mean, it's a *Caesar cipher*. :) Lunkwill 21:21, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Hmm..yeah, having thought about it, perhaps this cryptanalysis section would be better merged into frequency analysis or substitution cipher; most of it is pretty general. — Matt 00:45, 24 Nov 2004 (UTC)
I just wanted to congratulate the authors of this article. Although a very simple topic, they've really done a great job of explaining it while using it as a demonstration of simple cryptography and cryptanalysis. I'm impressed. Deco 03:24, 12 Apr 2005 (UTC)
One of the examples in the article stated that "AFCCQ" would rotate to either "jolly" or "cheer". It doesn't; it rotates to "jollz" and "chees". I fixed the example to read "AFCCP" instead. This is my first edit of a featured article in particular, so I hope I wasn't meant to go through any sort of process for it; something I only thought about after I'd done so. -- Ciaran H 15:14, Apr 12, 2005 (UTC)
Where could I find an advanced caesar Cipher breaker? I need it to figure out strings such as delta=-?,+?,-?,+?,-?,+?,... and possibly do it backwards for me too. I have no idea where to even begin to break a cipher in which the delta is unknown!!! Jaberwocky6669 05:06, Jun 21, 2005 (UTC)
This article got recommended in an a feature in School Library Journal this month, where they had a feature on websites about codes and ciphers. Apparently, "they select a topic, in this case Codes and Ciphers, and present websites that they believe will be helpful to students and teachers. Each one has a short summary/review". The review for this article was, "This Wikipedia article shows you how the Caesar Cipher works, and how to break it! It also explains some of the history of how Julius Caesar used it" [1]. — Matt Crypto 18:25, 1 September 2005 (UTC)
This article is in the Stream ciphers category. Does it really qualify? Beacuse it doesn't do what is described on the stream cipher's article "the transformation of successive digits varies during the encryption." I think I could argue it either way (it's just a really simple stream cipher), but I thought someone should at least bring it up. Broken S 22:52, 21 November 2005 (UTC)
Could someone write about the cipher's relevance today? When learning cryptographic methods, one inevitably is told of the Caesar Cipher. Perhaps someone should write about how it's used as a building block on developing more complex methods... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.104.85.250 ( talk • contribs)
There have been a couple of incorrect reverts. There is no generally used definition of when is negative. E.g., the remainder of can be either -2 or 3. Which of this two values is used depends widely on the context, where the operator is used. In crypto is usually defined such that and (assuming ). To be correct the article should clearly state the definition of mod. 81.62.90.36 09:21, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
I'm not a cryptographer but my reading of Suetonius is that Julius Ceasar's code was a shift of -3, or three to the left. The examples given, while not specifically being noted as having Caesar's shift do have a shift of three, but three to the right. For example, in the example:
From Suetonius: "If anyone wishes to decipher these ... he must substitute the fourth letter of the alphabet, namely D, for A, and so with the others."
This implies to me that to read the encoded text you would substitute the letter D whenever the letter A is encountered in the cipher. The example above the result would be an X for A. Jhohorst 02:54, 17 July 2007 (UTC)
In the Romanian article it is:
In the English article it is:
And in the Spanish one it is:
All these are featured articles. So, which formula is correct in the end? diego_pmc ( talk) 17:26, 28 March 2008 (UTC)
Kudos to Hut8.5 for his cleanup and tracking down some sources for this article. I'm a bit worried, though, by the Daily Mail cite -- the newspaper is not a particularly scholarly source. I wouldn't at all be surprised, for example, if the Daily Mail had used Wikipedia as a source itself (given that this article was featured on Wikipedia's main page a couple of weeks before the newspaper article was published). — Matt Crypto 18:14, 16 June 2008 (UTC)
Hi :)
I'd like to add something about the last sentence of the article "In mathematical terms, the encryption under various keys forms a group."
I think that it should be reformulated. Actually, saying that the encryption forms a group means nothing to me. It would be better to write that the set of ciphers, with the law of composition for applications, forms a group.
Finally, i'd like to say that i'm french so maybe I misunderstood the sentence ! Sorry if this is the case. -- Shiningfm ( talk) 01:20, 29 September 2008 (UTC)
I have just removed the infobox from this page. It has been around since 2007 and I am surprised that no one has complained about it. It's use for modern encryption schemes is fine, the template was designed for that. In this instance however, too few fields are filled in and the result looks like a malformed infobox. If you feel that for uniformity there should be an infobox on this page, then don't use the template, just build one as a table so that it can be customized for this cipher. Bill Cherowitzo ( talk) 04:00, 13 October 2015 (UTC)
I would like to remove this line:
In April 2006, fugitive Mafia boss Bernardo Provenzano was captured in Sicily partly because some of his messages, written in a variation of the Caesar cipher, were broken. Provenzano's cipher used numbers, so that "A" would be written as "4", "B" as "5", and so on.[11]
This is because it doesn't really add to the article and popularises a modern crime figure compared with a historical leader. Theblogger01 ( talk) 20:40, 7 April 2016 (UTC)
Quite some time ago, I created a Caesar cipher decryption tool, based on a frequency heuristic, where you can paste some text and the right key is guessed. The tool is the most linked and most frequently visited page of my blog, which might be a slight indicator, that people see in it a valuable resource.
As Wikipedia is a collection of valuable resources and information, I proposed to add the tool https://www.xarg.org/tools/caesar-cipher/ for the external pages section.
Unfortunately, the change was reverted automatically as I got explained here: /info/en/?search=User_talk:Xarg
However, as I wrote, I don't think this is an advertising other than bringing in a valuable reference to Wikipedia and so I would be glad if you add the link permanently if the resource meeds your quality demands. I assure that this link will be available and that I own the site. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Xarg ( talk • contribs) 03:15, 21 July 2018 (UTC)
Hey there i have implemented the algorithm in python, perhaps it will help the programmers to understand how it works. Please feel free to comment here — Preceding unsigned comment added by 182.75.188.170 ( talk) 14:06, 4 July 2019 (UTC)
This article often gets implementations of the cipher in common programming languages added, e.g. this JavaScript example. I don't think these add anything meaningful to the article. The algorithm for the Caesar cipher is so simple it can be encapsulated in one simple formula, as in the "Example" section. Any well-written code example will also only have one line devoted to the actual enciphering, which is the same as the formula given earlier. Most of the code is invariably devoted to iterating through the input string, converting the string characters into numbers, and assembling the output, instead of implementing the actual cipher itself. As a result the reader doesn't gain anything from reading the example. Hut 8.5 15:38, 26 April 2020 (UTC)
ole — Preceding unsigned comment added by 209.216.186.111 ( talk) 01:06, 18 November 2021 (UTC)
This older featured article contains a proportionately significant amount of uncited text, and the history section is largely a list of events that aren't connected well. Modern FAs have higher expectations for sourcing and structure, and a featured article review may be necessary if improvements towards WP:FACR are not made. Hog Farm Talk 13:54, 1 September 2022 (UTC)
Ndj rpc atpkt bt, udg ndjg etprt du bxcs. 2001:4453:28D:A00:54F5:4BD:821B:8774 ( talk) 01:35, 10 March 2024 (UTC)