Posted by SoRa | Posted in Cryptography | Posted on 2:33 PM
This story is about Mary Queen of Scot, whom uses a weak cipher during the 16th century long after code breakers had long mastered frequency analysis. Mary wanted to assassinate Queen Elizabeth I and began exchanging messages with her co-conspirators, in particular Anthony Babington, dubbed as Babington Plot. Their messages were so dangerous that they were enciphered so that they couldn't be read if they fall into the wrong hands.
Below is a mock up of the a letter sent between Mary Queen of Scots and Anthony Babington :
Below is a mock up of the a letter sent between Mary Queen of Scots and Anthony Babington :
It has a cipher alphabet with substitution for each letter from A to Z, code symbols for the most common words and sophisticated symbols. This mixture of codes and ciphers is known as a nomenclator.
Mary was then captured by Elizabeth's spies as the ciphertext were cracked by her chief codebreaker. Mary was immediately arrested, put on trial and the deciphered message were used as evidence of her treachery.
