TLDR: ETAOIN SHRDLU - Using Letter Frequency to Decipher the Ciphered
Date: 2020-06-21 Source: https://arpitbhayani.me/blogs/decipher-single-xor
Overview
Crack single-byte XOR ciphers! Learn how to decipher encrypted messages without the key using frequency analysis and Python. Encryption is a process of encoding messages such that it can only be read and understood by the intended parties.
Key Points
- Encryption is a process of encoding messages such that it can only be read and understood by the intended parties.
- Encryption: As part of the encryption process, the original message is iterated bytewise and every single byte b is XORed with the encryption key key and the resultant stream of bytes is again translated back as characters and sent to the other party.
- Decryption: Decryption is the process of extracting the original message from the encrypted ciphertext given the encryption key.
- Bruteforce: There are a very limited number of possible encryption keys - 256 to be exact - we can, very conveniently, go for the Bruteforce approach and try to decrypt the ciphered text with every single one of it.