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The secret code of the letters of the Great Captain and Fernando the Catholic that the CNI and the Army Museum announced yesterday to have deciphered, had alrea

The secret code of the letters of the Great Captain and Fernando the Catholic that the CNI and the Army Museum announced yesterday to have deciphered, had already been discovered previously. Gustave Bergenroth, a nineteenth-century German Hispanist based in England, published his studies on the General Archive of Simancas in the 'Calendar of State Papers, Spain, Volume 1, 1485-1509' in the year 1862. In the preface he explains his journey in the archive and an introduction to how he deciphered the Spanish codes. https://www.elconfidencial.com/cultura/2018-02-03/codigo-secreto-gran-capitan-gustave-bergenroth_1516192/ https://www.elconfidencial.com/cultura/2018-02-03/codigo-sec... A known mistery

fovc 9y ago
Link is in Spanish. I found the linked blog post from the physics professor who first noticed that the code had been previously cracked more interesting and informative (also in Spanish): http://elprofedefisica.naukas.com/2018/02/02/el-cni-y-el-no-tan-secreto-codigo-del-gran-capitan/ http://elprofedefisica.naukas.com/2018/02/02/el-cni-y-el-no-...
- dmix 9y ago
  Interesting, here's a good quote beyond the fact that it was already deciphered a century ago (by a 19th century historian, not a cryptanalyst working for a 3 letter agency in 2018): > First, and contrary to what ABC says, this code is not very sophisticated. It is a monoalphabetic substitution system with homophones to which a set of terms of agreed language has been added. I have a handful of Spanish codes of the time and I can assure you that there are more sophisticated codes than this one. For example, the so-called Clave de los Capitulaciones is similar in form and structure, being at least ten years older; and the General Figure of the Catholic Kings, dated similar to that of the Great Captain, had no less than 670 terms in agreed language. > Third, these types of keys were already vulnerable to cryptanalytic attacks at that time. Manias such as encrypting only part of the letter, or repeating the used encrypted terms, made them relatively easy to decipher by unauthorized users. There's also a pictures of what the deciphered key looks like both in the 1800s version on old paper and the CNI's version on graph paper which is interesting.
  - azinman2 9y ago
    Link to the photos?
    - dmix 9y ago
      1852 = http://elprofedefisica.naukas.com/files/2018/02/Clave-Gran-Capitan-1.jpg http://elprofedefisica.naukas.com/files/2018/02/Clave-Gran-C... 2018 = http://elprofedefisica.naukas.com/files/2018/02/Clave-Gran-Capitan-2.jpg http://elprofedefisica.naukas.com/files/2018/02/Clave-Gran-C...
      - azinman2 9y ago
        Neat!

fovc 9y ago

Link is in Spanish. I found the linked blog post from the physics professor who first noticed that the code had been previously cracked more interesting and informative (also in Spanish): http://elprofedefisica.naukas.com/2018/02/02/el-cni-y-el-no-tan-secreto-codigo-del-gran-capitan/ http://elprofedefisica.naukas.com/2018/02/02/el-cni-y-el-no-...

dmix 9y ago
Interesting, here's a good quote beyond the fact that it was already deciphered a century ago (by a 19th century historian, not a cryptanalyst working for a 3 letter agency in 2018): > First, and contrary to what ABC says, this code is not very sophisticated. It is a monoalphabetic substitution system with homophones to which a set of terms of agreed language has been added. I have a handful of Spanish codes of the time and I can assure you that there are more sophisticated codes than this one. For example, the so-called Clave de los Capitulaciones is similar in form and structure, being at least ten years older; and the General Figure of the Catholic Kings, dated similar to that of the Great Captain, had no less than 670 terms in agreed language. > Third, these types of keys were already vulnerable to cryptanalytic attacks at that time. Manias such as encrypting only part of the letter, or repeating the used encrypted terms, made them relatively easy to decipher by unauthorized users. There's also a pictures of what the deciphered key looks like both in the 1800s version on old paper and the CNI's version on graph paper which is interesting.
- azinman2 9y ago
  Link to the photos?
  - dmix 9y ago
    1852 = http://elprofedefisica.naukas.com/files/2018/02/Clave-Gran-Capitan-1.jpg http://elprofedefisica.naukas.com/files/2018/02/Clave-Gran-C... 2018 = http://elprofedefisica.naukas.com/files/2018/02/Clave-Gran-Capitan-2.jpg http://elprofedefisica.naukas.com/files/2018/02/Clave-Gran-C...
    - azinman2 9y ago
      Neat!