Chaocipher

The Chaocipher is a cipher method invented by John Francis Byrne in 1918 and described in his 1953 autobiographical Silent Years. He believed Chaocipher was simple, yet unbreakable. Byrne stated that the machine he used to encipher his messages could be fitted into a cigar box. He offered cash rewards for anyone who could solve it. Byrne tried unsuccessfully to interest the US Signal Corps and Navy in his system. Although numerous students of classical cryptanalysis attempted to solve the challenge messages over the years, none succeeded. For 90 years, the Chaocipher algorithm was a closely guarded secret known only to a handful of persons. In May 2010 Byrne's daughter-in-law, Patricia Byrne, donated all Chaocipher-related papers and artifacts to the National Cryptologic Museum in Ft. Meade, Maryland, USA. This led to the disclosure of the Chaocipher algorithm.

The Chaocipher is a cipher method invented by John Francis Byrne in 1918 and described in his 1953 autobiographical Silent Years. He believed Chaocipher was simple, yet unbreakable. Byrne stated that the machine he used to encipher his messages could be fitted into a cigar box. He offered cash rewards for anyone who could solve it. Byrne tried unsuccessfully to interest the US Signal Corps and Navy in his system. Although numerous students of classical cryptanalysis attempted to solve the challenge messages over the years, none succeeded. For 90 years, the Chaocipher algorithm was a closely guarded secret known only to a handful of persons. In May 2010 Byrne's daughter-in-law, Patricia Byrne, donated all Chaocipher-related papers and artifacts to the National Cryptologic Museum in Ft. Meade, Maryland, USA. This led to the disclosure of the Chaocipher algorithm. John F. Byrne's Chaocipher Revealed: An Historical and Technical Appraisal by Moshe Rubin, Cryptologia, Volume 35, Issue 4, October 2011 Decoding Chaocipher Exhibits 2 & 3 by Esa Peuha (PDF). Retrieved April 23, 2014. Chaocipher Exhibit 5: History, Analysis, and Solution of Cryptologia's 1990 Challenge by Jeff Calof, Jeff Hill & Moshe Rubin, Cryptologia, Volume 38, Issue 1, January 2014, pages 1–25 ==External links== The Chaocipher Clearing House - Basic resources and analyses for working on the Chaocipher The Crypto Forum - Discussion and analysis of the Chaocipher Cracking Chaocipher - A visual description of how Chaocipher works, and an explanation of cracking Exhibit 1 Interesting ciphers and computer methods for solving - A review of Chaocipher. Famous Unsolved Codes and Ciphers - Elonka Dunin's site dedicated to unsolved codes and ciphers, including Chaocipher. Retrieved April 23, 2014

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