The Grid Cipher To use this cipher is easy. You pick a key word, Rose, for example.

Then you prepare your message by putting each letter of the word and punctuation as well if you want horizontally across the page. Example Message: This is a tester message, enjoy. R O S E T h I s I s a T e s t e r m e s s a G e , e n j o y . Then read the encrypted message vertically starting with the letter in the key which comes first in the alphabet. Therefor the encrypted message is then written as: STESEJ HSSMAEYTIERS,OHSSMAEY. Notice how the ss in message is encrypted by moving them. It is this which makes grid Ciphers so hard to break. This does not mean that it is not possible to break at all; if you can work out the key it then becomes very easy. This code can be made unbreakable by having a random set of letters as your key word and have the key word as long as the message. This system is called one time pad. Although unbreakable it is very impractical, because the key has to be agreed upon and the key cannot be reused because then it is possible to work out the key. One time pad is not often used. The other type of grid cipher is called the grid cipher. Although it is called a class of cipher it is in fact one cipher not a collection of ciphers, and this is how it works. Message: This is an example of the grid cipher. It is a very good system because it is impervious to frequency analysis. Stage one: You count the number of letters in your message. In this message there are 90 letters. Stage two: you make a square that can include all the letters. The closest square number to 90 is 81, but this is too small so I have to use the next number which is 100. Then you add the letters and wright them out verily.

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The encrypted message is then written as: TAGIOEITYHMRTOCMOAIPIIDAPFNSLDSSUERAIECAYSRELSOIVSEVQYAFPETIIUSNT HRETOEIEHEYMIUNSXERGBSSC. The next phase is cryptography is quite recent. It is called the asymmetric cipher system. If you image that Alice wants to talk to Bob, who is on the other side of the world, but Eve is intercepting all of their communication. Alice needs to have a system where she can tell bob and anyone else the key to her cipher without it mattering. So how is this achieved? Alice sends a message to Bob which nether Alice or Bob can decrypt. Bob then applies his own cipher to the unreadable message and sends the double encoded message back to Alice. Needless to say Eve cannot read this message either. Alice then removes her cipher and sends the cipher back to Bob. Now that Bob has received the message twice he knows that the only method of encryption is his own. He then deciphers the message and reads what Alice wanted to say. There are ciphers that can do this; the main one is called RSA Cipher. So far this is the cutting edge of cipher technology. Signed by Alfred Veevers