Caesar Cipher Example

Our ciphertext is the following:

YMJHFJXFWHNUMJWNXTSJTKYMJJFWQNJXYPSTBSFSIXNRUQJXYHNUMJWX

To find out what the original was, we try decrypting it with each of the 25 possible keys, calculating the fitness for
each trial decryption:
key

plaintext

fitness

-----------------------------------------------------1 : XLIGEIWEVGMTLIVMWSRISJXLIIEVPM... , -442.22

2 : WKHFDHVDUFLSKHULVRQHRIWKHHDUOL... , -495.20
3 : VJGECGUCTEKRJGTKUQPGQHVJGGCTNK... , -484.13
4 : UIFDBFTBSDJQIFSJTPOFPGUIFFBSMJ... , -490.73
5 : THECAESARCIPHERISONEOFTHEEARLI... , -246.02
6 : SGDBZDRZQBHOGDQHRNMDNESGDDZQKH... , -485.69
7 : RFCAYCQYPAGNFCPGQMLCMDRFCCYPJG... , -481.17
8 : QEBZXBPXOZFMEBOFPLKBLCQEBBXOIF... , -478.19
9 : PDAYWAOWNYELDANEOKJAKBPDAAWNHE... , -415.66
10: OCZXVZNVMXDKCZMDNJIZJAOCZZVMGD... , -488.75
11: NBYWUYMULWCJBYLCMIHYIZNBYYULFC... , -490.46
12: MAXVTXLTKVBIAXKBLHGXHYMAXXTKEB... , -490.82
13: LZWUSWKSJUAHZWJAKGFWGXLZWWSJDA... , -483.63
14: KYVTRVJRITZGYVIZJFEVFWKYVVRICZ... , -475.01
15: JXUSQUIQHSYFXUHYIEDUEVJXUUQHBY... , -466.90
16: IWTRPTHPGRXEWTGXHDCTDUIWTTPGAX... , -458.49
17: HVSQOSGOFQWDVSFWGCBSCTHVSSOFZW... , -474.67
18: GURPNRFNEPVCUREVFBARBSGURRNEYV... , -460.86
19: FTQOMQEMDOUBTQDUEAZQARFTQQMDXU... , -467.13
20: ESPNLPDLCNTASPCTDZYPZQESPPLCWT... , -454.29
21: DROMKOCKBMSZROBSCYXOYPDROOKBVS... , -461.91
22: CQNLJNBJALRYQNARBXWNXOCQNNJAUR... , -479.58
23: BPMKIMAIZKQXPMZQAWVMWNBPMMIZTQ... , -473.52
24: AOLJHLZHYJPWOLYPZVULVMAOLLHYSP... , -474.57
25: ZNKIGKYGXIOVNKXOYUTKULZNKKGXRO... , -494.13

The fitness of each of these pieces of text is shown, with the text corresponding to a key of 5 showing a much
higher fitness than the other possible keys (it may be confusing because the scores are negative, we choose the
least negative score, as it is the highest fitness). We could have also tried reading each sentence to find which one
is readable, but this becomes impractical when there are many possible keys. The table above shows the first few
characters of the decryption are:
THECAESARCIPHERISONEOFTHEEARLI...

For this example quadgram statistics were used, but the small number of Caesar cipher keys means that almost any
scoring technique will work, including e.g. Chi-squared statistic or things like bigram or trigram statistics.

Python Code
Provided here is python code for breaking the Caesar cipher. The code here uses pycipher for the Caesar cipher
itself. It implements the steps described above, using the ngram_score.py file available on thequadgram
statistics page.

break_caesar.py

Contents

An Example

Python Code