Research

Finding Probable Frequency Sums to Reduce the Key Space of Homophonic Substitution Ciphers

Finding Probable Frequency Sums to Reduce the Key Space of Homophonic Substitution Ciphers

Homophonic substitution ciphers have long pervaded brute-force decryption attempts due to the astronomical number of possible keys. The aim of this study is to identify only those combinations of homophones most likely to represent a given plaintext character, in order to reduce the key space of the cipher and increase the efficiency of brute-force decryption attempts.