During the 1460's, a man named Leon Battista Alberti discovered a new, better way of encrypting messages. Older ciphers only used one cipher alphabet, which made it extremely easy to break the code. All one would have to do is use simple frequency analysis. Having more than one cipher alphabet makes it much more difficult to decrypt the code. The Alberti cipher disk is an instrument that can be used to encrypt and decrypt polyalphabetic ciphers. It consists of two rings of letters that can be rotated and matched up to make different cipher alphabets. The sender and receiver must agree upon an index letter. This letter is basically the starting point of the entire cipher. Let's say the index is 'A' and the first letter in the cipher text is a 'g'. The person who is trying to decrypt the message must line up the g of the inside ring to the A on the outside. This sets up the disk for the encryption of the remainder of the message. If the cipher text letter ever ends up matching to a number on the ring, the person decrypting the message must rotate the disks so that the letter that matched up with the number now matches to the original index letter. Try to solve this message. It is a quote from HBO's, The Wire.
Index: T
Ciphertext: hkxkyvshcch_textnocmq
(the underscore is a letter that is not on the cipher disk)
I think that the cipher is "A man got to have a code."
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