0

I am given a text:

Xli wigsrh qiwweki aew irgvctxih ywmrk xli pmriev gshi amxl e xlvii erh o wmb.

I need to dechiper it. How to decipher a text without knowing which method was used to encode it? I just need some hints.

Thanks in advance.

CosmicGiant
  • 6,275
  • 5
  • 43
  • 58
Jack Jackson
  • 77
  • 1
  • 3
  • 11
  • 3
    Hmm. Probably a [substitution-cipher](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Substitution_cipher) of some nature given that there are just letters involved. Search the web first and try before you ask. Hint: think about how vowels and consonants are placed in words – nickhar Oct 25 '12 at 23:15
  • @nneonneo You devil you. You removed all the hard work! – nickhar Oct 25 '12 at 23:20
  • @nneonneo - He means the OP's hard work toward solving he's homework assignment. - It's not very nice to give him the solution instead of teaching him and letting him practice. – CosmicGiant Oct 25 '12 at 23:30
  • Seeing `xli` twice, I would have just guessed it meant `the` and worked it out from there. – Neil Oct 25 '12 at 23:35
  • @TheLima, Ive mentioned that, I need hints, general approach to these kind of problems. Anyway, thank you for answers guys. – Jack Jackson Oct 25 '12 at 23:36

2 Answers2

1

Deciphering works by achieving the reversal of the encryption's (ciphering's) effect:

  • Through brute force, basically meaning "trial and error", either by hand or with automated or semi-automated tools; And usually including finding out what type of cipher you are dealing with, to make deciphering easier.

or

  • Through obtaining and reverse-engineering the encryption or decryption code, which is hardly ever obtainable unless the application is 100% local; Not to mention doing so is almost always completely illegal.

This applies to deciphering all types of encryption, but please notice that this considers ciphering only, and that ciphering is almost never applied alone: Things like hashing, message-digesting and obfuscation exist and are widely used along with it.

As for your specific case, it is as @nickhar mentioned: A substitution-cipher, meaning the alphabet's element's positions were rotated and/or swapped.

I won't lie to you: This is a very weak cipher that can be deciphered by hand with a little bit of word-letter-counting and guesstimation, and as such, there are plenty of automated tools out there that will decipher it with the press of a button.

But then again, I wont lie to you: If you want to really understand the stuff, get your head down, your hands dirty, and do it (decipher) yourself.

If you study and learn, you will be answering this type of question in no time! =D

Community
  • 1
  • 1
CosmicGiant
  • 6,275
  • 5
  • 43
  • 58
0

Deciphering is not a big deal. You just have to check for every value of k, i.e. 25 as there are total 26 letters.

After deciphering it gives "The second message was encrypted using the linear code with a three and k six", and the K used was 4(k=4).

Aaron Bell
  • 852
  • 2
  • 11
  • 26
Akshansh Bhandari
  • 1