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+--- Thread: The Naibbe cipher (/thread-4848.html)
RE: The Naibbe cipher - magnesium - 06-01-2026
(06-01-2026, 09:47 AM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Definitely, well done Michael! I also like that the writers seem to get some of the nuances correct, rather than going full clickbait. There is hope yet.
Thanks, everyone! In my correspondence with (my fellow) journalists, I have tried hard to ensure that the nuance comes across.
RE: The Naibbe cipher - Labyrinthinesecurity - 07-01-2026
I have good news to report!
The Naibbe cipher seems to support the apparent right-to-left "reading" directionality I reported in this paper: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (there is no doubt the manuscript was written left to right, I'm talking about reading right to left).
I run a few tests on the glyphs found in Naibbe's unigram encoding table, here are the first conclusions:
- Left-descender 'l': Appears 4.8× more at word ENDINGS (19 vs 4)
- In RTL reading, endings are on the visual left → RTL bias
- In RTL reading, endings are on the visual left → RTL bias
- Right-descender 'r': Appears 20× more at word ENDINGS (20 vs 1)
- Also suggests RTL visual flow
- Also suggests RTL visual flow
- Gallows 'q': Appears exclusively at word STARTS (35 vs 0)
- In RTL reading, starts are on the visual right where gallows are drawn → Strong RTL bias
- In RTL reading, starts are on the visual right where gallows are drawn → Strong RTL bias
Thanks to Naibbe, we could have the beginning of an explanation: the original clear text (in Latin for instance) could be first written LTR on a wax tablet by the scribe, then encrypted with a Naibbe cipher mimicking the cleartext direction. Finally the cipher would be written LTR on velum, but reading each glyph to be copied... from right to left.
It could make sense to add this level of obfuscation for added confidentiality (in medieval times, not today...).
Thoughts?
The table I used is: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
RE: The Naibbe cipher - magnesium - 07-01-2026
(07-01-2026, 05:34 PM)Labyrinthinesecurity Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I have good news to report!
The Naibbe cipher seems to support the apparent right-to-left "reading" directionality I reported in this paper: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (there is no doubt the manuscript was written left to right, I'm talking about reading right to left).
I run a few tests on the glyphs found in Naibbe's unigram encoding table, here are the first conclusions:
- Left-descender 'l': Appears 4.8× more at word ENDINGS (19 vs 4)
- In RTL reading, endings are on the visual left → RTL bias
- Right-descender 'r': Appears 20× more at word ENDINGS (20 vs 1)
- Also suggests RTL visual flow
- Gallows 'q': Appears exclusively at word STARTS (35 vs 0)
- In RTL reading, starts are on the visual right where gallows are drawn → Strong RTL bias
Thanks to Naibbe, we could have the beginning of an explanation: the original clear text (in Latin for instance) could be first written LTR on a wax tablet by the scribe, then encrypted with a Naibbe cipher mimicking the cleartext direction. Finally the cipher would be written LTR on velum, but reading each glyph to be copied... from right to left.
It could make sense to add this level of obfuscation for added confidentiality (in medieval times, not today...).
Thoughts?
The table I used is: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
Interesting work, thanks!
RE: The Naibbe cipher - ahalay-mahalay - 19-01-2026
I was building statistics for the trigrams to find any correlations, and ended up rendering everything as green pixels for any significant trigrams. Horozontal dimensions are individual pages (f1r through f166v), vertical are the trigrams.
So to support your hypothesys, there would be a strong correlation in behavior between an upper line and a few lines below it. Lines 1 and show strong correlation, those are iin (4341 count) / aii (4311), and another one is line 3 (edy, 4226 count), 12(ched, 1578), 13(eed, 1479). Additionally, 5 (oke) and 6(kee) show some signs of correlation as well, but not as clean.
Here is another pixel visualization of the 'edy', 'ched' and 'eed' occurences word by word, every horizontal line is a single page:
Other than those I wan't able to find any significant correlations
Kinda cool that the first 48 pages lack those three trigrams altogether (that wast reported before btw)
PS: to view the detailed picture, you may want to download those images and open in a standalone viewer to zoom it in