Evolutionary algorithm for decryption of monoalphabetic homophonic substitution ciphers encoded as constraint satisfaction problems

Authors:
David Oranchak
Affiliations:
NTU School of Engineering and Applied Science, Roanoke, VA, USA
Venue:
Proceedings of the 10th annual conference on Genetic and evolutionary computation
Year:
2008

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Abstract

A homophonic substitution cipher maps each plaintext letter of a message to one or more ciphertext symbols [4]. Monoalphabetic homophonic ciphers do not allow ciphertext symbols to map to more than one plaintext letter. Homophonic ciphers conceal language statistics in the enciphered messages, making statistical-based attacks more difficult. We present a dictionary-based attack using a genetic algorithm that encodes solutions as plaintext word placements subjected to constraints imposed by the cipher symbols. We test the technique using a famous cipher (with a known solution) created by the Zodiac serial killer. We present several successful decryption attempts using dictionary sizes of up to 1,600 words.