Decrypting classical cipher text using Markov chain Monte Carlo

  • Authors:

  • Jian Chen;Jeffrey S. Rosenthal

  • Affiliations:

  • Department of Statistics, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada;Department of Statistics, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada

  • Venue:
  • Statistics and Computing
  • Year:
  • 2012

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Abstract

We investigate the use of Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods to attack classical ciphers. MCMC has previously been used to break simple substitution ciphers. Here, we extend this approach to transposition ciphers and to substitution-plus-transposition ciphers. Our algorithms run quickly and perform fairly well even for key lengths as high as 40.