Poly Cipher

“Cryptography is the science of writing messages that no one except the intended receiver can read. Cryptanalysis is the science of reading them anyway.” (Missler, Cosmic Codes pg. 5) 

Vigenère’s poly alphabetic substitution cipher, attributed to him around 1553, was considered unbreakable for centuries. It’s based on work devised by Giovan Battista & Leon Battista Alberti. Alberti is the understated father of modern cryptology. Polyalphabetic Ciphers can now be easily cracked by the NSA or FBI. But the amazing thing is that they were cracked in 1863 by Friedrich Kasiski. Check out his book “Secret writing and the Art of Deciphering”. It’s not surprising the Germans came up with the Enigma machine.