describe each of the following in a couple of sentences:

• Caesar’s Shift Cipher
• Codes vs. Ciphers
• Kerchoff’s Principle
• Keyword (Keyphrase) cipher
• Railfence cipher
• Scytale
• Steganography
• Substitution cipher vs. Transposition cipher

6 answers

How would you like us to help you with this assignment?
I will like to know what does my professor want me to do? How to use them in a couple of sentences i guess.
He probably wants you to describe each of these.

Check the second sentence in this site.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caesar_cipher
Thank you!
You're welcome.
I do not know if you are doing a cryptography course, or the question is part of a project in math.

In any case, the requested ciphering methods are mostly traditional methods dating back to Julius Caesar, most of which are no longer in use (except Steganography).

If your teacher wants you to write a few sentences about them, it is because he/she wants you to know what they are through research. The best way to achieve this is to look them up and read what you find.

Most, if not all, of the keywords can be googled and returns a Wiki article among others. These articles are very detailed, and enable you to understand how ciphers work. One of the articles stresses the difference between cipher and code, which I think you should also read about.

In case you think this research is a monumental task, be at ease. Wiki articles are written so that the first paragraph tells you what you expect to find out, after a brief one or two sentence definition of the term.

Give it a try and post again if you still have difficulties.