Francis Bacon’s Bilateral Cypher: How to make anything signify anything

One of the contributors to Hacker Highschool has been turning me toward some very interesting examples of early cryptography. Have you ever heard of his bilateral (not binary) cypher?

This is one any student of security should read, particularly when you realize that the accompanying photograph of WWII soldiers is itself an encoded message!

http://www.cabinetmagazine.org/issues/40/sherman.php

Here’s a good explanation of the cypher:

http://cryptogram.org/cdb/aca.info/aca.and.you/chapter_09.pdf#BACONI

And the Wikipedia page:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bacon%27s_cipher

#cryptography #hackerhighschool

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