Cryptography and Espionage (Kyle.Y)

Cryptography (also referred to by some as cryptology) is a variety of espionage which is thought to have been in use since dates as far back as 1900BC and was found in Egypt. Some of the simplest varieties of encryption through cryptography are the methods of substitution and transposition. In the picture to the right is a key for a substitution crypto as you can see the letters in the inner ring have all been shifted clockwise by one letter. with this method and the same key shown in the image text like "The Moon" would read as "Sgd Lnno".



It may look simple at first but keep in mind that cryptography gets much more advanced than this. With the rise of the computer new ways of encrypting information was also developed. Traditionally changes were made to the order in which characters appeared and of course to the characters themselves. Before the computer it was not uncommon for cryptos of the hand-written variety to include unique symbols as well as letters. Now with computers changes could also be made to the binary values that a computer would use to interpret the letters/symbols. This is most likely the variety of encryption they would have been dealing with in the book "Little Brother" as we know Marcus was very influenced by technology.

"„VÆÆö VgV'—öæV" is how "hello everyone" appears after minor binary encryption. Anyone think they can tell me what I did to the binary values to get such a result? Clue: "&#" is used to prefix an ASCII value.

OH! and in case you didn't know there are some famous killers who used cryptography to hide their identity. The most recognized of them is the "Zodiac Killer" because his/her identity is still unknown!