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The cipher described in this article was so secret that even President Lincoln "was denied access to the codes."

Can you crack the code?

A brief look at the science of cryptology and the simple encryptions found in the Old Testament. Has a couple of examples and explains the three main transformations used.

For longer ciphers, Kasiski analysis is useful for determining possible keywords using a modified frequency analysis and repetition analysis. This is an online tool to find repeat sequences in a ciphertext, and can be used to quickly decrypt a Vigenere ciphertext.

I'm just going to resubmit the bookmark directly to this page so I'll be sure it ends up publicly in the group. This wasn't mentioned in Singh chapter 2, but it was created around the time period discussed in the chapter. (Plus, it's one of my favorite articles I've read in Wired so I really wanted to use it as a bookmark.) The article discusses the strategies used to break this cipher, some of which, such as frequency analysis, we have talked about in class. It's also just fascinating to read about the Oculists and their history.

Thanks to Cliff Anderson from the library for putting together this resource.