Strengths & Weaknesses: The Rise and Fall of Historical Ciphers

🔹 Strengths

✅ Provided secrecy in military and diplomatic communications.

✅ Introduced fundamental encryption principles like substitution and transposition.

✅ Delayed enemy decryption efforts, sometimes influencing wars and espionage.

🔹 Weaknesses

❌ Susceptible to frequency analysis, which identifies commonly used letters.

❌ Vulnerable to brute-force attacks as computing power increased.

❌ Predictable patterns, like repeating key sequences in the Vigenère Cipher, led to their downfall.

The Enigma machine, once thought unbreakable, was cracked due to weaknesses in its key settings and operator habits. This breakthrough marked the turning point for modern cryptography.