Cryptography Reference
In-Depth Information
Poland and Prussia, and promoting a marriage between the Prince of Poland
and the Princess of Hanover, which would have been advantageous to Louis.
Wallis continued his cryptanalysis including the breaking of important cryp-
tograms for the king, all of which earned him the title of
Father of Cryptology
for England (as had Rossignol earned such a title in France). Wallis died on
October 28, 1703, in Oxford, England.
The most iron-clad, eQcient, and effective of the black chambers during
eighteenth-century Europe was that of Vienna, called the
Geheime Kabinets-
Kanzlei
. As an illustration, the cryptograms were usually deciphered, resealed,
and sent on to their destinations within three hours of their having been dropped
off at the chamber at their usual arrival time of 7 in the morning. The chamber
was effectively compartmentalized so that one section might contain language
experts, or translators, and another might contain people copying letters or
stenographers, all working in concert. Moreover, to reduce stress among their
cryptanalysts, they were given staggered working times, one week on and one
week off. It is due to the effectiveness of these black chambers that cryptogra-
phers, by the end of the century, began turning to polyalphabetic ciphers. The
monoalphabetic ones were falling like dominos in the face of the concentrated
and talented efforts of these centers of cryptanalysis and intelligence gathering.
In England, certain individuals were appointed as
Decypherers for the En-
glish crown
. In 1703, the
Decyphering Branch
was established, to decrypt doc-
uments as a means of uncovering plots and schemes against the state. They
had no fixed location, but mostly worked at home and submitted their find-
ings. They were indeed more secret than the U.S. Secret Service. They were
funded by the secret-service money issued to the Secretary of the Post OQce
from Parliament. The first to bear the title of Decypherer was Wallis's grand-
son, William Blencowe. He was also the first Englishman to be paid a regular
wage for cryptanalysis. One of his successors was Edward Wiles who was ap-
pointed as Decypherer to the crown in 1719. Wiles decrypted a cipher that
revealed Sweden's plan to create an uprising in England. For this and other
cryptanalytic feats, he ascended to become Canon of Westminister. By 1742,
he had been appointed Bishop of St. David's. He brought his two sons, Edward
Jr. and William, into the cryptanalysis sector of the decyphering branch in the
middle 1750s. Although he died in 1773 (buried in Westminister Abbey), his
sons carried on his work and dominated the cryptanalytic sector after his death.
By 1714, the decyphering branch was collaborating with the black chamber
at Nienburg, Germany, which was supported by George I (1714-1727) of Eng-
land. (George I was Georg Ludwig, elector of Hanover (1698-1727), who was
the first Hanoverian king of Great Britain.) During the eighteenth century the
decyphering branch cryptanalyzed the dispatches of roughly sixteen countries
with an average output reaching as high as one per day.
By the middle of the eighteenth century, the decyphering branch was prepar-
ing England's diplomatic nomenclators. Typically, these nomenclators had four-
figure code groups and various homophones. Despite weaknesses in their system,
their use continued well into the end of the century.
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