What is cryptography and how does it work? Interested in the history of the Zodiac killings, but have never really understood cryptography. Thanks
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Basically, it’s a way to hide a message by somehow changing it into something you can change back.
For the Zodiac messages, the different symbols replaced letters and words. Complicating things, the same symbol wasn’t always used for the same letter.
An easy to implement, on a sheet of paper, rearrange the alphabet, next to the alphabet. Then look at your message. Where the message has a letter, replace it with the rearranged one. This works best when the message is short, especially if the message is also coded. So your “chicken left the roost” message becomes “xptxyu wyzm mpy gbbem” or whatever. Better is to rotate the letters after each use, so that you can’t look and try “m looks like it replaced t.” Then share the rearranged letters and encrypted message separately.
Or use numbers or glyphs or whatever.
More advanced techniques exist, but that’s where it starts.
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