You could do worse than to confuse the meanings of "code" and "cipher"—even cryptographers sometime use the terms as though they had the same meaning. There is, however, a definite distinction between ...

In the context of cryptography, the un-transformed message is known as plaintext, the transformation is known as encryption and the transformed message is known as ciphertext. The encryption process ...

When Ricky McCormick’s body was discovered in a Missouri cornfield in 1999, police officers discovered something unusual in his pockets: Two curious notes that appeared to be written in code. If ...

In Part I, you broke a simple cipher. Now try creating a more complex cipher. Cut out the NOVA Decoder Ring and NOVA Cipher Code Ring and the window marked INDEX. You are now going to put this simple ...

Declaration of truth in reviewing: I have never wanted to make a code in my entire life. Truth of reading experience: This book made me want to start my own codemaker’s field kit. There’s something ...

Until now, a 250-year-old encoded text titled the Copiale Cipher baffled cryptographers and historians with bizarre symbols and seemingly random letters. Computer scientist Kevin Knight and two ...