Nihilist Cipher
Background
The Nihilists were a Russian group who fought against the Tsar regime in the 1880s.1
Principle
The cipher is based on the Polybius cipher. The message as well as the key are encoded with the Polybius cipher and the results are added.
If the message "GEHEIMNIS" should be encoded and the key would be "KEY", than a Polybious matrix may look like this:
If the message "GEHEIMNIS" should be encoded and the key would be "KEY", than a Polybious matrix may look like this:
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | |
| 1 | Q | W | E | R | T |
| 2 | Z | U | I/J | O | P |
| 3 | A | S | D | F | G |
| 4 | H | K | L | Y | X |
| 5 | C | V | B | N | M |
Encoding the message as well as the key according to this matrix results in:
| Row | 3 | 1 | 4 | 1 | 2 | 5 | 5 | 2 | 3 |
| Column | 5 | 3 | 1 | 3 | 3 | 5 | 4 | 3 | 2 |
Message: "35 13 41 13 23 55 54 23 32"
Key: "42 13 44 42 13 44 42 13 44"
Ciphertext: "77 26 85 55 36 99 96 36 76"
Key: "42 13 44 42 13 44 42 13 44"
Ciphertext: "77 26 85 55 36 99 96 36 76"
Security
The Nihilist cipher can be roughly described as a numeric version of the Vigenère cipher and therefore is vulnerable to similar cracking strategies.
Weblinks
References
1 Kippenhan, Rudolf: "Verschlüsselte Botschaften", Nikol, 2006, P. 127
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