The Center for Education and Research in Information Assurance and Security (CERIAS)

The Center for Education and Research in
Information Assurance and Security (CERIAS)
Center for Education and Research in Information Assurance and Security

Sam Wagstaff - CERIAS

Students: Spring 2026, unless noted otherwise, sessions will be virtual on Zoom.

Simple Encryption Algorithms And How To Break Them

Aug 29, 2001

Abstract

We will discuss ciphers such as the Caesar cipher, transposition cipher, simple substitution cipher, homophonic substitution cipher, polyalphabetic substitution cipher, and polygram substitution cipher. We will tell what methods may be used to break each of these ciphers.

About the Speaker

Sam Wagstaff
Before coming to Purdue, Professor Wagstaff taught at the Universities of Rochester, Illinois, and Georgia. He spent a year at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. His research interests are in the areas of cryptography, parallel computation, and analysis of algorithms, especially number theoretic algorithms. He and J. W. Smith of the University of Georgia have built a special processor with parallel capability for factoring large integers.



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