Yesterday my son sent me one of his math challenges. Though I call myself software developer, I have never been deep into mathematics and algebra. However, we were supposed to solve/hack some old cipher methods and decrypt common sentences based on certain clues.
Just like YouTube did, LLMs simply extend my reach and capabilities by a very, very big chunk. I don‘t know, maybe you remember those days where you went to Wikipedia and got stuck digesting one interesting piece of knowledge after another. You get this tickling in the back of your head and your synapses are sparkling with joy.
That was me trying to understand cipher yesterday. I learned about Vigenère (who actually wasn‘t even the inventor) and cipher tech that was introduced in the 16th century. Claude.ai helped a lot.
A simple sentence in English language
KCCPKBGUFDPHQTYAVINRRTMVGRKDNBVFDETDGILTXRGUDDKOTFMBPVGEGLTGCKQRACQC
WDNAWCRXIZAKFTLEWRPTYCQKYVXCHKFTPONCQQRHJVAJUWETMCMSPKQDYHJVDAHCTRLS
VSKCGCZQQDZXGSFRLSWCWSJTBHAFSIASPRJAHKJRJUMVGKMITZHFPDISPZLVLGWTFPLK
KEBDPGCEBSHCT JRWXBAFSPEZQNRWXCVYCGAONWDDKACKAWBBIKFTIOVKCGGHJVLNHIFF
SQESVYCLACNVRWBBIREPBBVFEXOSCDYGZWPFDTKFQIYCWHJVLNHIQIBTKHJVNPISTWatch out for patterns like MVG, KFT and HJV, remember the characteristics of the English language, the digrams and trigrams, calculate the length of the key and then decipher the message. Then dig deeper into the topic with people who really know what they are talking about. Here‘s more by The Detective Society.
Claude.ai wrote its own JavaScript routine that contains some scoring to detect English language patterns and evaluate decryption attempts.
And yes, you can actually hack this manually.