Difference between revisions of "Rolling cipher"

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Revision as of 11:31, 11 July 2019

A ring model depicting a Caesar cipher rotated forward 4 letters so that A will encipher to E, B to F, and so forth.

A rolling cipher, incrementing cipher, or progressive Caesar cipher, is a primitive form of substitution encryption which uses a rolling key. Like the Caesar cipher, each letter is shifted forward along the alphabet, looping back around the beginning of alphabet as needed. However, while the Caesar cipher uses a fixed value to shift each letter in the message, a rolling cipher uses an incrementing value to make it harder to crack. For example, the word HELLO would be encrypted with the H shifting forward one letter in the alphabet, the E two letters, the L three letters and so forth, which would result in IGOPT.

The starting number to shift, as well as how many times to increment that number before returning to the starting number make up the key and must be known to both encrypt and decrypt the message.

Encryption

To encrypt text using a rolling cipher, first, decide on the number to being shifting at, then, decide on how many times you'll increment before returning to the starting number. For example, starting at 3 and incrementing until 8 will produce a shift that looks like 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 3, 4, ... With this pattern, take your plain text and shift each letter forward along the alphabet according to the incrementing pattern. If the letter would go beyond Z, simply loop back to A. So, a Y shifted ahead 5 would produce a D.

The following example uses a rolling pattern which beings with a shift of 10 and increments until the shit reaches 20, and then drops back to 10.

 plaintext: TESTING THE ROLLING CIPHER.
       key: 10-20
ciphertext: DPEGWCW KZX LYWXVBV SZHAYB.

Decryption

To decrypt ciphertext that has been encrypted with the Caesar cipher, you need only to rotate the letters the same number of places in the opposite direction in which they were shifted in the encryption process, while maintaining the same rolling pattern. Letters that would be shifted before A simply loop around to Z.

ciphertext: FHGWASXNPJ XMG USQNLRL ELTMGU.
       key: 2-5
 plaintext: DECRYPTING THE ROLLING CIPHER.

Benefits

  • The rolling cipher is easy to use. Short messages can be encrypted and decrypted in you head, and you don't need any impressive mathematical skills to use it.
  • The rolling cipher is harder to crack than the Caesar cipher. In addition to eliminating the ability to perform simple substitutions across the entire message, the rolling cipher is better at obfuscating repeating letters than the Caesar cipher. For example, the word BALLOON, when encrypted with a Caesar cipher shifted three places becomes EDOORRQ. Even if you can't identify the word, you can tell immediately that it contains two double letters which dramatically narrows down the number of possible words it could be. However, in a rolling cipher of 2-4, BALLOON becomes DDPNRSP, which not only hides both double letters, but creates a false double letter which will confused anyone assuming a Caesar cipher was used.

Deficiencies

  • Because it follows such a simple pattern, the rolling cipher can be cracked fairly simply as well. By brute forcing various starting values, and reviewing their results, it quickly becomes apparant what number the rolling starts at, and, by seeing when the text becomes garbled again, you can quickly infer when the incrementing resets.
  • The nature of the cipher gives clues that it has been used. Double letters are better hidden than in a Caesar cipher, but they're still problematic. For example, RACCOON using a rolling cipher of 1-10 becomes SCFGTUU. The CC becomes FG and the OO becomes TU. Notice that both double letters become pairs where the second letter is the next one in the alphabet. When you see this a lot in the ciphertext, it's a good indicator that a rolling cipher was used, which speeds up the cracking process dramatically.
  • Because it is private key encryption, the key must be known by the recipient of the ciphertext, so it could be intercepted, or the recipient could be persuaded to reveal it. Such a deficiency is solved with public key encryption.

Variations

To help confound a cracker, you can change up various factors in the rolling. For example, instead of incrementing by one each time, increment by three. Or, increment using a per-defined set, like the Fibonacci sequence. However, the more complicated you make your rolling rule, the more must be included in the key, and the harder it is to decrypt.

Program

This FreeBASIC program will encode and decode text with a basic rolling cipher.

' This program will encode or decode text by using a rolling cipher.
' Copyright 2019-07-11 - Dean Tersigni

Dim As String Choice
Dim As String PlainText
Dim As String CipherText
Dim As Integer StartRoll
Dim As Integer EndRoll
Dim As Integer CurrentRoll
Dim As Integer Place
Dim As Integer Code
Dim As String Letter

Do
    Input "(E)ncode or (D)ecode? ", Choice
    Print
    
    Choice = UCase(Choice)
    
    Select Case Choice
    Case "E", "D"
        Exit Do
    Case Else
        Print "Please enter E or D."
        Print
    End Select
Loop

If Choice = "E" Then
    Input "Type the plaintext to encode: ", PlainText
    PlainText = UCase(PlainText)
    
    Do
        Input "Starting roll number? ", StartRoll
        Input "Ending roll number? ", EndRoll
        Print
    
        If StartRoll < EndRoll And StartRoll > 0 And EndRoll > 0 Then
            Exit Do
        Else
            Print "Start must be less than end, and both must be greater than zero."
        End If
    Loop
    
    CurrentRoll = StartRoll
    For Place = 1 To Len(PlainText)
        Letter = Mid(PlainText, Place, 1)
        Code = ASC(Letter)
        If Code > 64 And Code < 91 Then
            Code = Code + CurrentRoll
            If Code > 90 Then
                Code = Code - 26
            End If
            
            CurrentRoll = CurrentRoll + 1
            If CurrentRoll > EndRoll Then
                CurrentRoll = StartRoll
            End If
        End If
        CipherText = CipherText + Chr(Code)
    Next Place
    
    Print "Your ciphertext is: " + CipherText
Else
    Input "Enter the ciphertext to decode: ", CipherText
    CipherText = UCase(CipherText)
    
    Do
        Input "Starting roll number? ", StartRoll
        Input "Ending roll number? ", EndRoll
        Print
    
        If StartRoll < EndRoll And StartRoll > 0 And EndRoll > 0 Then
            Exit Do
        Else
            Print "Start must be less than end, and both must be greater than zero."
        End If
    Loop
    
    CurrentRoll = StartRoll
    For Place = 1 To Len(CipherText)
        Letter = Mid(CipherText, Place, 1)
        Code = ASC(Letter)
        If Code > 64 And Code < 91 Then
            Code = Code - CurrentRoll
            If Code < 65 Then
                Code = Code + 26
            End If

            CurrentRoll = CurrentRoll + 1
            If CurrentRoll > EndRoll Then
                CurrentRoll = StartRoll
            End If
        End If
        PlainText = PlainText + Chr(Code)
    Next Place
    
    Print "Your plaintext is: " + PlainText
End If

Sleep

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