Reference no: EM132362610

Question: Provide a 150 words response for the discussion below. Include a APA reference on the response provided. Must be able to meet deadline. The sooner the delivery of the paper the better.

Discussion: A Caeser Cipher is one of the easiest ciphers to use. It is used by simply shifting the alphabet a predetermined number of letters. For example, if the shift was one: a would be b, b would be c, and so on. Because the alphabet only has a certain amount of letters, there can only be as many variations of this cipher. With that being said, if someone was determined enough, they could try all variations until they cracked the code. However, there are faster ways to break it than using brute force.

One of the ways that would be used to break this code faster than brute force is by using letter frequency. There have been numerous studies on which letters appear more frequently than others. Some of the results of these studies are that the letter e is the most common letter used. The letters t, a, o, i, n, s, r, h, l, d and c are found in about 80% of the words in the English language. Also the letter h appears more in everyday speech and writing than it does in a list of dictionary words. By using this method, you should be able to look at the letters used and compare them to the most common letters used and be able to find a match.

Another way to possibly break this code is by using short words. If the code has a two or three letter word, the possibilities are few. If you could figure out the word you will be able to break the code for the rest of the message fairly easy.