Designing a secure and convenient encryption algorithm that doesn’t require a computer program or a machine is quite a challenge. The Handycipher is an interesting method of this kind.
Imagine a spy operating in a foreign country, who needs a method for encrypting messages to his contact person. Using an encryption machine, like the Enigma, or some other cipher device is prohibive in this situation, as this might raise suspicion. Nowadays, a computer program would do this job, but computers were not available until a few decades ago.
For the reason mentioned, the design of purely manual ciphers has played an important role in cryptography for centuries. However, this has proven a hard problem. It is extremely difficult to design a purely manual cipher that is both secure and convenient – especially if it is desired that such a cipher withstands modern cryptanalysis.
Today, the Double Column Transposition (DCT, also known as double cube), is considered one of the best manual ciphers. George Lasry has pointed out that ADFGVX (a World War I cipher) is another interesting candidate, provided that the second step of this method (a transposition) is carried out twice.
Others have suggested encryption algorithms that use unsuspicious aids, such as Rubik’s cube encryption and Solitaire (uses a deck of cards). Recently I heard of a new manual cipher named Elsiefour – I will certainly take a closer look at it soon.
The Handycipher
Today I am going to introduce another manual encryption system: Handycipher. It was created by Bruce Kallick a few years ago.
Handycipher encrypts each plaintext letter into a letter group. This means that the ciphertext is longer than the plaintext. Such a property is usually not desired. Among other things, it results in the fact that an encrypted file needs much more storage space than the plaintext file.
However, when it comes to manual ciphers (especially, spy ciphers), writing five letters instead of one is acceptable, especially, if this avoids a lengthy and cumbersome encryption procedure.
Handycipher encrypts text strings taken from a 31-character alphabet comprising the 26 uppercase letters together with the five
symbols “,”, “.”, “-“, “?”, and “ˆ”. Here’s an example of a plaintext:
CATS AND DOGS
Handycipher ciphertexts are strings over a 50-character alphabet comprising of the letters A, B, …, Y and a, b, c, …, y.
A Handycipher key is a permutation of the 50 letters of the ciphertext alphabet and the symbol “ˆ”. Here’s an example key:
QjufGCtwbUSNLqHAgVDOoansIhyBKJWFdxvPk^peXMTlirYRmcE
The key (without the “ˆ” character) is written in a table with ten columns and five rows. Using our example key this looks as follows:
A second table is derived by omitting the 20 lowercase letters f-y and substituting the characters “Z”, “,”, “.”, and “?” for the letters a, b, c, d, and e. As Q is the first letter in the table above that is not omitted, it is assigned to the number 1. G, the second letter not omitted, is assigned to 2. C is assigned to 3, and so on. Here’s the second table:
The numbers in the lower line range from 1 to 31. For the encryption process we need the binary representation of each number: 1=00001, 2=00010, 3=00011, …, 31=11111.
As an example, let’s now encrypt the plaintext character “?”, which is represented by 21 = 10101. As one possibility, “?” can be encrypted to QuG, because the first line of the left half of the first table is QjufG and 10101 indicates that the first, the third and the fifth letter have to be taken. Alternatively, “?” can be encrypted to SLH, because the second line of the same table is SNLqH.
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