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Beaufort Cipher
Beaufort Cipher
The Beaufort cipher, created by Sir Francis Beaufort, is a substitution cipher similar to the
Vigenère cipher, with a slightly modified enciphering mechanism and tableau.[1] Its most famous
application was in a rotor-based cipher machine, the Hagelin M-209.[2] The Beaufort cipher is
based on the Beaufort square which is essentially the same as a Vigenère square but in reverse
order starting with the letter "Z" in the first row,[3] where the first row and the last column serve
the same purpose.[4]
For example if encrypting plain text character "d" with key "m"
the steps would be:
In the above example in the column with "m" on top one would find in the reciprocal "d" row the
ciphertext "K". The same is true for decryption where ciphertext "K" combined with key "m" results
in plaintext "d" as well as combining "K" with "d" results in "m". This results in "trigram"
combinations where two parts suffice to identify the third. After eliminating the identical trigrams
only 126 of the initial 676 combinations remain (see below) and could be memorized in any order
(e.g. AMN can be memorized as "man" and CIP as "pic") to speed up encoding and decoding.[5]
AAZ ABY ACX ADW AEV AFU AGT AHS AIR AJQ AKP ALO AMN
BBX BCW BDV BEU BFT BGS BHR BIQ BJP BKO BLN BMM BZZ
CCV CDU CET CFS CGR CHQ CIP CJO CKN CLM CYZ
DDT DES DFR DGQ DHP DIO DJN DKM DLL DXZ DYY
EER EFQ EGP EHO EIN EJM EKL EWZ EXY
FFP FGO FHN FIM FJL FKK FVZ FWY FXX
GGN GHM GIL GJK GUZ GVY GWX
HHL HIK HJJ HTZ HUY HVX HWW
IIJ ISZ ITY IUX IVW
JRZ JSY JTX JUW JVV
KQZ KRY KSX KTW KUV
LPZ LQY LRX LSW LTV LUU
MOZ MPY MQX MRW MSV MTU
NNZ NOY NPX NQW NRV NSU NTT
OOX OPW OQV ORU OST
PPV PQU PRT PSS
QQT QRS
RRR
Algebraic description
The Beaufort cipher can be described algebraically. For example, using an encoding of the letters
A–Z as the numbers 0–25 and using addition modulo 26, let be the characters of
the message, be the characters of the cipher text and be the
characters of the key, repeated if necessary. Then Beaufort encryption can be written,
References
1. Franksen, Ole Immanuel, Babbage and cryptography. Or, the mystery of Admiral Beaufort's
cipher. Mathematics and Computers in Simulation 35 (1993) 327-367
2. Mollin, Richard A., An Introduction to Cryptography, page 100. Chapman & Hall/CRC, 2001
3. Jörg Rothe (2006). Complexity Theory and Cryptology: An Introduction to Cryptocomplexity.
Springer Science & Business Media. p. 164. ISBN 9783540285205.
4. Arto Salomaa (2013). Public-Key Cryptography: Volume 23 of Monographs in Theoretical
Computer Science. An EATCS Series. Springer Science & Business Media. p. 31.
ISBN 9783662026274.
5. Rijmenants, Dirk. "One-time Pad" (https://www.ciphermachinesandcryptology.com/en/onetimep
ad.htm#top). Cipher Machines and Cryptology. Retrieved 28 December 2020.