MATH 139
  SPRING 2003
   
Cryptograms:
  • Cryptograms #1   [HTML]   [PDF]
    Monoalphabetic substitution with random alphabets and word breaks

  • Cryptograms #2   [HTML]   [PDF]
    Monoalphabetic substitution with random alphabets

  • Cryptograms #3   [HTML]   [PDF]
    Shift ciphers

  • Cryptograms #4   [HTML]   [PDF]
    Affine ciphers

  • Cryptograms #5   [HTML]   [PDF]
    Keyword MSC ciphers

  • Cryptograms #6   [HTML]   [PDF]
    MSC ciphers with cribs

  • Cryptograms #7   [HTML]   [PDF]
    Vigenère ciphers with five-letter keywords

  • Cryptograms #8   [HTML]   [PDF]
    Vigenère ciphers with short keywords

  • Practice Cryptograms (last day of class handout)   [PDF]
    A variety of short cryptograms, some with cribs

Other Handouts:

Quiz Solutions:

Exam Information:

Computer and Calculator utilities:

Annotated Bibliography:

(Suggestions are welcome.)

  • Thomas H. Barr. Intvitation to Cryptology. Prentice Hall, 2002.

  • Helen Fouché Gaines. Cryptanalysis: A Study of Ciphers and their Solution. Dover Publications, New York, 1939.

    Gaines describes many of the classic transposition and substitution ciphers, and provides detailed instructions for their cryptanalysis. As you'd guess from the copyright date, this is all pencil-and-paper stuff.

  • Martin Gardner. Codes, Ciphers, and Secret Writing. Dover Publications, New York, 1972.

    This very friendly and relatively short book describes many transposition and substitution ciphers, and includes a fascinating chapter on invisible inks.

  • David Kahn. The Codebreakers. Macmillan, New York, 1967.

    This twelve-hundred-page monster traces the use of codes and ciphers throughout history (Western history, mostly). The historical accounts are often gripping (they often include fascinating character sketches), and they are interspersed with very readable discussions of the nuts and bolts of cryptographic techniques of each historical period. This is the acknowledged master reference work classical cryptography.

  • David Kahn. Seizing the Enigma: The Race to break the German U-boat codes, 1939 - 1943. Souvenir, London, 1992.

    This is a very readable account of the activities that allowed the Allies to read a good deal of the communication between the German command and the U-boat fleet during World War II. The characters include brilliant cryptographers, daring spies, and heroic soldiers; the intertwining of so many disparate people and events makes for fascinating reading. The discussion of the Enigma code itself is sketchy, but at least it's present.

  • Robert Edward Lewand. Cryptological Mathematics. The Mathematical Association of America, 2000.

    This approximately parallels the textbook by Barr, except that it does not discuss modern block ciphers and DES. The mathematical prerequisites are minimal.

  • Leo Marks. Between Silk and Cyanide. The Free Press, New York, 1998.

    Marks worked for British intelligence during World War II, trying to reconstruct messages that had been incorrectly enciphered or incorrectly transmitted by underground agents working on the Continent. This is the story of his years in that job, his interactions with the agents, and his attempts to convince his military superiors to switch to a more secure and more robust encryption scheme. It reads like a novel -- sort of a combination of a good spy thriller and Catch-22.

  • Ivan Niven, Herbert Zuckerman, and Hugh Montgomery. An Introduction to the Theory of Numbers. John Wiley & Sons, New York, fifth edition, 1991.

    This is a standard textbook on Number Theory, aimed at the advanced undergraduate or beginning graduate student level. It's a good reference for the details behind public-key cryptography, and some of the techniques that contemporary mathematicians use to attack the problem of factoring products of large primes.

  • Simon Singh. The Code Book. Anchor Books, New York, 1999.

    This is an excellent and very readable account of the history and practice of cryptography.

  • Abraham Sinkov. Elementary Cryptanalysis: A Mathematical Approach. Random House and the L. W. Singer Company, New York, 1968.

    The mathematics in this book is very clear and accessible. The book covers many of the same cryptanalysis techniques as the Gaines book, but uses mathematical notation, so that the techniques can be generalized and automated more easily.