It is often said that the Voynich cannot be written in cipher as a 600 years old cipher would have been deciphered by modern cryptography by now.
However it seems to me that in practice it is very easy to create a "simple" cipher which is very hard to crack. For those familiar with Nick Pelling's Cipher Mysteries website it is apparent that there are lots of ciphers from different periods in time, though none as old as the Voynich, that haven't yet been cracked.
If I was creating a hard to crack cipher I would start with a preponderance of filler text, the more filler the harder to crack. However it would be interesting to see how others might go about producing a difficult to crack "simple" cipher.
(When I use the term "simple" cipher I mean one based on simple techniques or ideas. I don't mean modern ciphers based on modern mathematical techniques.)
Actually it is not difficult to create unbreakable cipher: xor with random key where the key is not shorter than the cleartext does the thing.
The problem is usability. First, it’s unaffordable to create the new key every time you send new message. So you need either to use the same key every time or to generate them deterministicly.
Second, the method itself should be extremely simple, fast and reliable. From Wiki:
[Playfair cipher] was initially rejected by the British Foreign Office when it was developed because of its perceived complexity. Wheatstone offered to demonstrate that three out of four boys in a nearby school could learn to use it in 15 minutes, but the Under Secretary of the Foreign Office responded, "That is very possible, but you could never teach it to attachés."
And it appears that in practice it very difficult to create good universal cipher. And that’s why there are plenty of them
(12-07-2020, 10:38 PM)farmerjohn Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Actually it is not difficult to create unbreakable cipher: xor with random key where the key is not shorter than the cleartext does the thing.
The problem is usability. First, it’s unaffordable to create the new key every time you send new message. So you need either to use the same key every time or to generate them deterministicly.
Second, the method itself should be extremely simple, fast and reliable. From Wiki:
[Playfair cipher] was initially rejected by the British Foreign Office when it was developed because of its perceived complexity. Wheatstone offered to demonstrate that three out of four boys in a nearby school could learn to use it in 15 minutes, but the Under Secretary of the Foreign Office responded, "That is very possible, but you could never teach it to attachés."
And it appears that in practice it very difficult to create good universal cipher. And that’s why there are plenty of them
Nick Pelling introduced me to a phrase "Security through obscurity" which sounds applicable here. I have a suspicion that I could without a huge amount of difficulty produce a cipher to encode a manuscript which would be as difficult to crack as the Voynich and practical. I am not saying that it would be the same as the Voynich cipher just as difficult to decode. And I am saying that many other people could also invent such a cipher.
So let's back up just a bit. If the proposed covert communications system involves a lot of filler text, and this means most of the text is meaningless fluff, then what is up with the *meaningful* text? How do we find it? What is to be done with it? What system of interpretation should be applied to gain understanding, assuming that it is possible.
Somewhere in this mass of filler there is a meaningful segment of text, at least that is the theory. How can such text be designated? By the use of markers. But all sorts of things might be used as markers. How can markers be recognized? By the company they keep. By two witnesses. By the direct connection that is drawn into the illustration of White Aries, where Stoflfi's marker is joined to the pattern of blue stripes. This is the hidden, intentionally disguised reason to have faith in these particular markers, because they are connected to tradition - to the red galero and the other examples of white and green hats in ecclesiastical heraldry and also confirmed through the apparent use of armorial designs, line patterns, and the use of heraldic canting.
The traditions that form the background of the VMs are so old and well more than half forgotten from the modern perspective. However they are familiar and immediate to the VMs creator. The familiarity was such that the artist chose to alter the appearance of the cosmos and to disguise heraldic insignia, but in some cases it is more a combined result of mediocre artistic talent on the modern loss of relevant tradition, rather than being something intentional. Modifications that might have seemed trivial to the creator have, over time, become almost unfathomable.
If we discover a segment of text, one that hopefully is not mere filler, now is the time to ask, what should be done to it? - what method of interpretation?
(13-07-2020, 12:00 AM)R. Sale Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.So let's back up just a bit. If the proposed covert communications system involves a lot of filler text, and this means most of the text is meaningless fluff, then what is up with the *meaningful* text? How do we find it?
Excellent point! These systems can only look "simple" until one considers the specifics of actual methods. When I examined the You are not allowed to view links.
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Login to view. (75% of which is filler text) I found that they are extremely brittle: a single typo makes the original message unrecoverable (as happened in early editions). Coming up with something that could work for actual communication requires more sophisticated methods.
Another interesting aspect is that, if the output must be something as highly structured as the VMS, one should also accurately define how to create the "filler" text. I don't believe that any simple method can generate the morphological regularities observed in Voynichese words.
(13-07-2020, 10:04 AM)-JKP- Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (13-07-2020, 08:15 AM)MarcoP Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
I don't believe that any simple method can generate the morphological regularities observed in Voynichese words.
I didn't answer right away because I couldn't think of the best way to say this, but Marco expressed it very well and I completely agree.
I would have thought that there are lots of relatively simple methods by combining the use of filler text with another simple rule to produce Voynich like text where the morphological regularities observed in Voynichese words are much more a function of the filler than the text. That's not to say that corresponds to a specific decipherment of the Voynich, but the general point about designing difficult to decipher codes.
Consider for example a scenario where an individual symbol per Voynich word is not filler and the rest is wrap around to conform to the morphology obviously the symbol would not always be in the same position in the word, but defining that place would not be difficult maybe just the same repeating position in the text with the word length of filler words varied in order to set the right position in the word.
Fluff can still have structure. It just fails to make the leap from structure to meaning.
(13-07-2020, 03:44 PM)R. Sale Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Fluff can still have structure. It just fails to make the leap from structure to meaning.
Exactly and fluff with structure may be more confusing than fluff without structure.
It certainly would be. Also making it more difficult to separate the wheat from the chafe, particularly if differentiation is based on language alone. Hence the importance of illustrations, and the difficulties of using something that is widely known and at the same time rendering it in a way that is not patently obvious.
VMs White Aries proposes the Genoese Gambit. The VMs creator asks the reader a question. Does the reader know the armorial insignia of the pope who initiated the tradition of the cardinal's red galero?