ASCII Versions of all Chaocipher Exhibits

Moshe Rubin (mosher@mountainvistasoft.com)

In August 2008 I scanned all Chaocipher exhibits through OCR (optical character recognition) software to get ASCII copies of them.  Meticulous editing was needed to remove all inevitable OCR errors.  To the best of my knowledge, the following ASCII files are faithful copies of the original Chaocipher exhibits.

You can download a ZIP file containing ASCII versions of all Chaocipher plaintexts and ciphertexts (i.e., Exhibits 1, 2, 3, 4, and the Deavours/Kruh messages).

You can download a ZIP file of ASCII versions of  pages 285-307 from "Silent Years", grouped as found in the book.

ExhibitFile Information
Text
Type		File NameLength
(characters)		Comments
1ptchaocipher-exhibit-1.pt.txt13,615There are 279 unknown plaintext characters (denoted in the file by '?'), leaving 13,336 known pt/ct pairs.  If you intend to input this file to a software program, be sure to handle the '?' characters correctly.

Note: Today we know the exact underlying plaintext for Exhibit 1, as deciphered using the published algorithm.  The plaintext as found in Chapter 21 of "Silent Years" contains three (3) errors, probably introduced when the book was transcribed for print.  The version for downloading has been corrected accordingly.

The three errors are:

Line 155 (before): OPHEVENTTHEPOPULATIONOFTHESESTATESUFORTHATPURPOSEOBSTRU
Line 155 (after):  OPREVENTTHEPOPULATIONOFTHESESTATESUFORTHATPURPOSEOBSTRU

Line 164 (before): EIRSUBSTANCEZHEHASKEPTAMONGUSQINTIMESOFFEACEQSTANDINGAR
Line 164 (after):  EIRSUBSTANCEZHEHASKEPTAMONGUSQINTIMESOFPEACEQSTANDINGAR

Line 174 (before): FORDEPRIVINGUSINMANYCASESOFTHERENEFITSOFTRIALBYJURYVFOR
Line 174 (after):  FORDEPRIVINGUSINMANYCASESOFTHEBENEFITSOFTRIALBYJURYVFOR
1ctchaocipher-exhibit-1.ct.txt13,615 Note: Exhibit 1, as printed in "Silent Years", had one incorrect ciphertext character (at offset 10115, the incorrect "XZCGM" should be "ZXCGM").  The uploaded file has been corrected accordingly.

See comment re 279 unknown plaintext characters above.
2ptchaocipher-exhibit-2.pt.txt1,263
2ctchaocipher-exhibit-2.ct.txt1,263
3ptchaocipher-exhibit-3.pt.txt910
3ctchaocipher-exhibit-3.ct.txt910
4ptchaocipher-exhibit-4.pt.txt1,800 or 1,807Departs from the established format, not in 5-letter groups and set in the type font of the body of the book.  This makes it difficult to determine what the exact plaintext is.

The excerpt is either 1,800 ot 1,807 characters long if one uses Byrne's convention for punctuation and paragraphs (the differing lengths depend on whether a period at the end of a paragraph is enciphered as 'Z' or 'WZ'). [Update - August 2010: today we know the plaintext is 1,800 characters long.]

The ASCII file does not contain the text at the top of page 305: "EXACT PLAIN TEXT OF ... MacARTHUR".  The punctuation is also left unchanged.
4ctchaocipher-exhibit-4.ct.txt1908

In Byrne, Deavours, and Kruh's article [1] there are three additional messages to work on.  As they write:

"... three messages of approximately 25 words each as an "in depth" specimen of Chaocipher (as opposed to the original exhibits in Silent Years, each of which was enciphered in a single continuous key).  The plaintext, which is typical English prose, is taken from Stewart C. Easton's book, Rudolf Steiner: Herald of a New Epoch. [2]"

MessageFile Information
TypeFile NameLength
(characters)		Comments
1ctdeavours-kruh-chaocipher-message-1.txt121
2ctdeavours-kruh-chaocipher-message-2.txt140
3ctdeavours-kruh-chaocipher-message-3.txt162Five-letter repetition at distance 31: "BBNKF"

References

[1] John Byrne, Cipher A. Deavours and Louis Kruh.  Chaocipher enters the computer age when its method is disclosed to Cryptologia editors.  Cryptologia, 14(3): 193-197.

[2] Easton, Stewart C.  1980.  Rudolf Steiner: Herald of a New Epoch.  Spring Valley, NY: Anthroposophic Press.

Copyright (c) 2009-2013 Moshe Rubin
Created: 23 February 2009
Updated: 18 January 2013

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