VMs: Re: Re: Re: Re: Lining up letters

["Jeff" <jeff@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

From: "Robert Teague" <rteague@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: 25 January 2004 04:27


> > EVA e would not always line up with c when indicated by a gallows
> indicator.
> > Any other time it could line up with any other plaintext letter or even
c
> > again due to the built in shift mechanism. This leaves us with the
problem
> > of eee.
>
> I remember reading that <eee> was parsed as <e><ee>, and <eeee>
> only appears once.
>
> Robert
>

The whole idea of classifying individual glyphs as either vowel or consonant
is a bad idea. This immediately suggests either a simple substitution cipher
or a list of letters for each glyph. Fixed lists would be easy to attack
with the right analysis and I do not believe that the right method would not
have been found by now.

The person that wrote the VMS was thinking outside the box so to speak.
Either a clever hoaxer or adept at cipher construction. Read the page here
http://fly.hiwaay.net/~paul/cryptology/history.html for an insight into all
the work being done. This time in history was alive with experts in cipher.
I do not believe we will ever know how much was really done as most of it
would have been dropped as the 'enemy' cracked it. The tools such as table
were like word documents are now. 'Deleted' when they had served their
purpose. After all who keeps every word document? Also the vellum or other
material would have been reused. The scribe didn't merely wander down the
stationers for a ream of A4.

This site also suggests that statistical analysis of text was already
underway as vowel disguise was a common practice.

jeff


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