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In cryptography, a transposition cipher (also known as a permutation cipher) is a method of encryption which scrambles the positions of characters (transposition) without changing the characters themselves. Transposition ciphers reorder units of plaintext (typically characters or groups of characters) according to a regular system to produce a ...
The cipher's key is , the number of rails. If N {\displaystyle N} is known, the ciphertext can be decrypted by using the above algorithm. Values of N {\displaystyle N} equal to or greater than L {\displaystyle L} , the length of the ciphertext, are not usable, since then the ciphertext is the same as the plaintext.
The main classical cipher types are transposition ciphers, which rearrange the order of letters in a message (e.g., 'hello world' becomes 'ehlol owrdl' in a trivially simple rearrangement scheme), and substitution ciphers, which systematically replace letters or groups of letters with other letters or groups of letters (e.g., 'fly at once ...
Historical pen and paper ciphers used in the past are sometimes known as classical ciphers. They include simple substitution ciphers (such as ROT13) and transposition ciphers (such as a Rail Fence Cipher). For example, "GOOD DOG" can be encrypted as "PLLX XLP" where "L" substitutes for "O", "P" for "G", and "X" for "D" in the message.
Although ciphers can be confusion-only (substitution cipher, one-time pad) or diffusion-only (transposition cipher), any "reasonable" block cipher uses both confusion and diffusion. [2] These concepts are also important in the design of cryptographic hash functions , and pseudorandom number generators , where decorrelation of the generated ...
Substitution ciphers can be compared with transposition ciphers. In a transposition cipher, the units of the plaintext are rearranged in a different and usually quite complex order, but the units themselves are left unchanged. By contrast, in a substitution cipher, the units of the plaintext are retained in the same sequence in the ciphertext ...
A scytale. In cryptography, a scytale (/ ˈ s k ɪ t əl iː /; also transliterated skytale, Ancient Greek: σκυτάλη skutálē "baton, cylinder", also σκύταλον skútalon) is a tool used to perform a transposition cipher, consisting of a cylinder with a strip of parchment wound around it on which is written a message.
Other examples include the Vertical Parallel and the Double Transposition Cipher. More complex algorithms can be formed by mixing substitution and transposition in a product cipher; modern block ciphers such as DES iterate through several stages of substitution and transposition.