Introduction

This package includes an extension the Tcl language that implements new Tcl commands for manipulating ciphers. In addition, there are a handful of scripts that use these new Tcl commands to do useful things with these new Tcl commands. For example, the command "key generate" is used in conjunction with the "cipher create aristocrat" command to implement a brute force search for solving patristocrat ciphers.

There are also a couple of graphical tools for performing these cipher manipulations.

The English frequency tables were obtained by performing a tally on the text from Mary Shelley's novel Frankenstein. The text was obtained from Project Gutenburg.

Quick Links

New Tcl Packages

• cipher - This package contains the core support for the various cipher types and statistical analysis commands. Almost every program will use this package.
• Crithm - This package contains useful wrapper commands for the crithm command provided by the cipher package. This includes routines for setting up a new cryptarithm solver and generating constraints based on user-provided equations.
• CipherUtil - This package contains miscellaneous useful commands, including commands for reading/writing ciphers and their solutions to files.
• Hillclimb - This package contains commands for running a hillclimber, with some key mutators for some common cipher types.
• Dictionary - This package contains commands for reading words from a dictionary.
• Scoredata - This package contains commands for reading and writing scoring tables to a file.
• K3Board - This experimental package contains commands for displaying a fragmented K3 alphabet so that it can be reconstructed.
• PatWord - This experimental package contains utility commands for implementing a brute-force patristocrat solver.
• PatWordUI - This experimental package contains commands for managing the UI for the brute-force patristocrat solver.

Applications

tcipher

Tcl interpreter with the cipher package already loaded.

ctool

Graphical tool for manipulating ciphers.

tkcrithm

Graphical tool for autosolving cryptarithm ciphers.

csolve

Autosolver for a variety of cipher types. This program iterates through all possible keys and uses a customizable scoring function to determine the best solution.

keysquaresearch

Autosolver for cipher types that use keysquares. A dictionary of possible keywords is used to generate possible keysquares. A customizable scoring function is used to determine the best solution.

nicsolve

Autosolver for nicodemus ciphers.

patsearch

Autosolver for K1, K2, and K3 keyed patristocrats. A dictionary of possible keywords is used to generate the keyed alphabets. A customizable scoring function is used to determine the best solution.

dumproute

Show the plaintext resulting from all possible routes for a given route cipher block width.

genboard

Generate a tableau for solving many ciphers by hand.

key2col

Generate a columnar cipher from a saved aristocrat/patristocrat solution so that the keyword may be sought after.

k3search

Search for K3 keyed alphabets that match a given key. A dictionary of possible keywords is used to find matches.

k4search

Attempt to resolve a K4 alphabet into its component keywords. A dictionary of possible keywords is used for one of the K4 keywords. Likely keyed alphabets for the other keyword are shown.

genscores

Generate scoring tables from samples of plaintext.

lethist

Useful letter frequency analyzer.