CB FT MH GR IO TS TA UF SB DN WG NI SB RV EF BQ TA BQ RP EF BK SD GM NR PS RF BS UT TD MF EM AB IM

 

How to break a Playfair encryption

Using a computer, there are two ways to attack a Playfair cipher:

  • Dictionary attack: If a keyword has been used for creating the matrix, it is possible to break a Playfair cipher by key word guessing. For instance, the word SURPRISE is contained in virtually every English dictionary, so a computer that tests one keyword candidate after the other will sooner or later find it.
  • Hill Climbing: Hill Climbing is the current super-algorithm of historical codebreaking. As Nils Kopal and George Lasry have shown, Hill Climbing (enhanced with Simmulated Annealing) can break a Playfair cryptogram of 40 letters.

There are several books that explain how a Playfair can be broken without computer support – for instance Helen Fouché Gaines’ Cryptanalysis, André Langie’s Cryptography, and William Friedman’s Military Cryptanalysis. The concept is to guess a few words in the plaintext and to derive the 5×5  matrix based on the peculiarities of the Playfair cipher (for instance, if AB->XY then BA->YX).

However, breaking a Playfair cryptogram this way is pretty difficult, especially if the ciphertext is short. To make things not too complicated, the books mentioned above use messages containing several hundred letters for demonstration. In addition, these books assume that a few words of the plaintext are known or can be guessed. None of these books describes the complete Playfair codebreaking procedure, as this would require too much space – instead, they simply omit most of the trial-and-error reckoning involved in breaking a Playfair cryptogram.

 

A new Playfair challenge

After my Playfair cryptogram consisting of 40 letters was solved, it made sense to create an even shorter one. I decided to take a 30-letters cleartext. Here is my new challenge:

SXCREDBQUGVZRSMNDSIKRKWRSGNSNXVM

The ciphertext has exactly 30 letters (spaces not included). The plaintext is in English. I used the software CrypTool 2 for encryption. As far as I know, CrypTool implements the Playfair cipher exactly the way it is explained above. The keyword is a random transposition of the alphabet. No keyword is used. So, a dictionary attack won’t work.

As mentioned, solving this challenge will set a new record. Good luck!


Further reading: A mird in the hand is worth two in the mush: Solving ciphers with Hill Climbing

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Kommentare (9)

  1. #1 Enigma
    16. April 2019

    neandlythewantorethithatrestonaf

  2. #2 Max Baertl
    16. April 2019

    outagedbyearinthenasandtheshowmy

  3. #3 Klaus Schmeh
    16. April 2019

    Sorry, both solutions are not correct.

  4. #4 Magnus Ekhall
    Borensberg
    16. April 2019

    You mention that the ciphertext has exactly 30 letters (as well as the cleartext). However, the ciphertext is 32 letters.
    Is there a typo so that the cleartext is 30 and the corresponding ciphertext is 32 characters?

  5. #5 Klaus Schmeh
    16. April 2019

    @Magnus:
    Sorry, you are right. The plaintext has 30 letters, but the ciphertext has 32 (because CrypTool added two filling letters to avoid doubled letters and/or an odd number of letters).

  6. #6 George Lasry
    17. April 2019

    Sorry, this is outside the limits of the attack we integrated into CrypTool. 40 letters could be solved because we were lucky to see the solution for a few seconds.

    Maybe you want to contribute some crib?

  7. #7 Thomas
    17. April 2019

    @George Lasry:
    As Max’s “solution #2 shows, fitness functions based on n-grams can yield correct words, but – esp. with very short cryptograms – no phrases that make sense. What about a fitness function that additionally scores the (correct) word order regarding word classes? For example: preposition, article, adjective, noun – high score, scrambled word order – low score.

  8. #8 Magnus Ekhall
    Borensberg
    3. September 2019

    I think this could be the solution:
    TAKETHELASTXTRAINTOYORKONSUNDAYX

    And the key, for example:
    QZFULHDONIETRSBCVKGYPXWAM

  9. #9 Narga
    4. September 2019

    That’s amazing! What method did you use to find the solution?