Edit-Distance computational attack idea

[Sam G]

Really not more impossible than the assumption that someone in the early 15th century wrote in a language in which no writings have been discovered afterwards.

The thing is that the number of possible languages is basically infinite.  So if a language dies out, there's no reason to think that anyone is going to subsequently reinvent the exact same language.  On the other hand, the number of enciphering mechanisms is inherently limited, so they can and have been independently invented multiple times (even RSA encryption was independently invented twice, if I'm not mistaken).  So proposing that the VMS was created using some encryption method that has never been subsequently rediscovered is a bit problematic, especially when you consider that cryptography was not well-developed in the early 15th century (meaning that this putative cipher mechanism must have been invented before many other types of ciphers that are considered basic by today's standards) and that we have the VMS as an example of what to do, and many cryptographers have studied it, so it should not even be as difficult as reinventing it completely from scratch.