Codebook

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U.S. State Department code book issued in 1899, an example of a one-part code, at the National Cryptologic Museum State Department code book 1899, open to title page, at NMC.agr.jpg
U.S. State Department code book issued in 1899, an example of a one-part code, at the National Cryptologic Museum
Page 187 of the State Department 1899 code book, a one-part code with a choice of code word or numeric ciphertext. Numeric codes are prefixed by the page number. State Department code book 1899, code page 187.agr.jpg
Page 187 of the State Department 1899 code book, a one-part code with a choice of code word or numeric ciphertext. Numeric codes are prefixed by the page number.

A codebook is a type of document used for gathering and storing cryptography codes. Originally, codebooks were often literally books, but today "codebook" is a byword for the complete record of a series of codes, regardless of physical format.

Contents

Cryptography

In cryptography, a codebook is a document used for implementing a code. A codebook contains a lookup table for coding and decoding; each word or phrase has one or more strings which replace it. To decipher messages written in code, corresponding copies of the codebook must be available at either end. The distribution and physical security of codebooks presents a special difficulty in the use of codes compared to the secret information used in ciphers, the key, which is typically much shorter.

The United States National Security Agency documents sometimes use codebook to refer to block ciphers; compare their use of combiner-type algorithm to refer to stream ciphers.

Codebooks come in two forms, one-part or two-part:

The earliest known use of a codebook system was by Gabriele de Lavinde in 1379 working for the Antipope Clement VII. [1]

Two-part codebooks go back as least as far as Antoine Rossignol in the 1800s. [1]

From the 15th century until the middle of the 19th century, nomenclators (named after nomenclator) were the most used cryptographic method. [2]

Codebooks with superencryption were the most used cryptographic method of World War I. [1]

The JN-25 code used in World War II used a codebook of 30,000 code groups superencrypted with 30,000 random additives.

The book used in a book cipher or the book used in a running key cipher can be any book shared by sender and receiver and is different from a cryptographic codebook.

Social sciences

In social sciences, a codebook is a document containing a list of the codes used in a set of data to refer to variables and their values, for example locations, occupations, or clinical diagnoses.

Data compression

Codebooks were also used in 19th- and 20th-century commercial codes for the non-cryptographic purpose of data compression.

Codebooks are used in relation to precoding and beamforming in mobile networks such as 5G and LTE. The usage is standardized by 3GPP, for example in the document TS 38.331, NR; Radio Resource Control (RRC); Protocol specification.

See also

Related Research Articles

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In cryptography, a cipher is an algorithm for performing encryption or decryption—a series of well-defined steps that can be followed as a procedure. An alternative, less common term is encipherment. To encipher or encode is to convert information into cipher or code. In common parlance, "cipher" is synonymous with "code", as they are both a set of steps that encrypt a message; however, the concepts are distinct in cryptography, especially classical cryptography.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cryptanalysis</span> Study of analyzing information systems in order to discover their hidden aspects

Cryptanalysis refers to the process of analyzing information systems in order to understand hidden aspects of the systems. Cryptanalysis is used to breach cryptographic security systems and gain access to the contents of encrypted messages, even if the cryptographic key is unknown.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">One-time pad</span> Encryption technique

In cryptography, the one-time pad (OTP) is an encryption technique that cannot be cracked, but requires the use of a single-use pre-shared key that is larger than or equal to the size of the message being sent. In this technique, a plaintext is paired with a random secret key. Then, each bit or character of the plaintext is encrypted by combining it with the corresponding bit or character from the pad using modular addition.

In cryptography, a substitution cipher is a method of encrypting in which units of plaintext are replaced with the ciphertext, in a defined manner, with the help of a key; the "units" may be single letters, pairs of letters, triplets of letters, mixtures of the above, and so forth. The receiver deciphers the text by performing the inverse substitution process to extract the original message.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Transposition cipher</span> Method of encryption

In cryptography, a transposition cipher is a method of encryption which scrambles the positions of characters (transposition) without changing the characters themselves. Transposition ciphers reorder units of plaintext according to a regular system to produce a ciphertext which is a permutation of the plaintext. They differ from substitution ciphers, which do not change the position of units of plaintext but instead change the units themselves. Despite the difference between transposition and substitution operations, they are often combined, as in historical ciphers like the ADFGVX cipher or complex high-quality encryption methods like the modern Advanced Encryption Standard (AES).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Caesar cipher</span> Simple and widely known encryption technique

In cryptography, a Caesar cipher, also known as Caesar's cipher, the shift cipher, Caesar's code, or Caesar shift, is one of the simplest and most widely known encryption techniques. It is a type of substitution cipher in which each letter in the plaintext is replaced by a letter some fixed number of positions down the alphabet. For example, with a left shift of 3, D would be replaced by A, E would become B, and so on. The method is named after Julius Caesar, who used it in his private correspondence.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Stream cipher</span> Type of symmetric key cipher

A stream cipher is a symmetric key cipher where plaintext digits are combined with a pseudorandom cipher digit stream (keystream). In a stream cipher, each plaintext digit is encrypted one at a time with the corresponding digit of the keystream, to give a digit of the ciphertext stream. Since encryption of each digit is dependent on the current state of the cipher, it is also known as state cipher. In practice, a digit is typically a bit and the combining operation is an exclusive-or (XOR).

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Vigenère cipher</span> Simple type of polyalphabetic encryption system

The Vigenère cipher is a method of encrypting alphabetic text where each letter of the plaintext is encoded with a different Caesar cipher, whose increment is determined by the corresponding letter of another text, the key.

In cryptography, an initialization vector (IV) or starting variable is an input to a cryptographic primitive being used to provide the initial state. The IV is typically required to be random or pseudorandom, but sometimes an IV only needs to be unpredictable or unique. Randomization is crucial for some encryption schemes to achieve semantic security, a property whereby repeated usage of the scheme under the same key does not allow an attacker to infer relationships between segments of the encrypted message. For block ciphers, the use of an IV is described by the modes of operation.

In cryptography, a block cipher mode of operation is an algorithm that uses a block cipher to provide information security such as confidentiality or authenticity. A block cipher by itself is only suitable for the secure cryptographic transformation of one fixed-length group of bits called a block. A mode of operation describes how to repeatedly apply a cipher's single-block operation to securely transform amounts of data larger than a block.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ciphertext</span> Encrypted information

In cryptography, ciphertext or cyphertext is the result of encryption performed on plaintext using an algorithm, called a cipher. Ciphertext is also known as encrypted or encoded information because it contains a form of the original plaintext that is unreadable by a human or computer without the proper cipher to decrypt it. This process prevents the loss of sensitive information via hacking. Decryption, the inverse of encryption, is the process of turning ciphertext into readable plaintext. Ciphertext is not to be confused with codetext because the latter is a result of a code, not a cipher.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Book cipher</span> Encryption and decryption method

A book cipher is a cipher in which each word or letter in the plaintext of a message is replaced by some code that locates it in another text, the key.

In classical cryptography, the running key cipher is a type of polyalphabetic substitution cipher in which a text, typically from a book, is used to provide a very long keystream. Usually, the book to be used would be agreed ahead of time, while the passage to be used would be chosen randomly for each message and secretly indicated somewhere in the message.

The known-plaintext attack (KPA) is an attack model for cryptanalysis where the attacker has access to both the plaintext and its encrypted version (ciphertext). These can be used to reveal further secret information such as secret keys and code books. The term "crib" originated at Bletchley Park, the British World War II decryption operation, where it was defined as:

A plain language passage of any length, usually obtained by solving one or more cipher or code messages, and occurring or believed likely to occur in a different cipher or code message, which it may provide a means of solving.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Code (cryptography)</span> Method used to encrypt a message

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In cryptanalysis, attack models or attack types are a classification of cryptographic attacks specifying the kind of access a cryptanalyst has to a system under attack when attempting to "break" an encrypted message generated by the system. The greater the access the cryptanalyst has to the system, the more useful information they can get to utilize for breaking the cypher.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alberti cipher</span> Polyalphabetic substitution encryption and decryption system

The Alberti Cipher, created in 1467 by Italian architect Leon Battista Alberti, was one of the first polyalphabetic ciphers. In the opening pages of his treatise De componendis cifris he explained how his conversation with the papal secretary Leonardo Dati about a recently developed movable type printing press led to the development of his cipher wheel.

The cipher system that the Uesugi are said to have used is a simple substitution usually known as a Polybius square or "checkerboard." The i-ro-ha alphabet contains forty-eight letters, so a seven-by-seven square is used, with one of the cells left blank. The rows and columns are labeled with a number or a letter. In the table below, the numbers start in the top left, as does the i-ro-ha alphabet. In practice these could start in any corner.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cryptography</span> Practice and study of secure communication techniques

Cryptography, or cryptology, is the practice and study of techniques for secure communication in the presence of adversarial behavior. More generally, cryptography is about constructing and analyzing protocols that prevent third parties or the public from reading private messages. Modern cryptography exists at the intersection of the disciplines of mathematics, computer science, information security, electrical engineering, digital signal processing, physics, and others. Core concepts related to information security are also central to cryptography. Practical applications of cryptography include electronic commerce, chip-based payment cards, digital currencies, computer passwords, and military communications.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 Klaus Pommerening. "Codebooks".
  2. Chris Christensen. "Codes and Nomenclators". p. 4