Using the phonetic alphabet in the mask?
> Ed Scheidt: So substitution was one I had to use, another math problem is transposition, transposition is again the name implies, you're transposing
something. So instead of a direct correlation that you can visualize, transposition is a little harder to visualize. It's sort of like looking at a puzzle and you're defining the parameters of the puzzle in the sense of the square, and then now you have the square and you're going to transpose the characters or the letters that are in the square to something that's a secret. So my secret is push into this square. So that was another step. And then the last step which has been good for 30 years, which I didn't know at the time it would be, but I masked the framework, in other words if you can change the language base then it becomes in my favor and not your favor of trying to break it. It becomes more of a challenge now, when it was used as the mask it was current, 2020 secret.
I've already talked a bit about how the square is the same thing as Sanborn's "original matrix"; and I think "pushing in" is a reading order directive (aka "washing machine"). That's the K4 puzzle: how to extract this running key from K3. I think there are clues.
In the last step, the mask, Scheidt changed the language base. This post is a suggestion for what that could mean.
Give the string BERLIN, an everyday way you could change the language base is by replacing each letter with its phonetic alphabet equivalent:
BRAVO ECHO ROMEO LIMA INDIA NOVEMBER
The problem is, this makes the string much, much longer. And, the frequency of the letters will still match English.
I can also stack it like this:
BERLINCLOCK
RCOINOHISHI
AHMMDVAMCAL
VOEAIERAARO
O O AML RL
BI I
EE E
R
Still the same codes, but now the phonetic alphabet appears in columns. We generated a bunch of extra codewords like RCOINOHISHI AHMMDVAMCAL, VOEAIERAARO and so on. If you note, those are alphabet substitutions of the original plaintext (the nth letter of the phonetic alphabet keyword).
One last step. I'm going to fill all the spaces with K (which is reminiscent of the Morse code) and I'm going to shift each successive row to the right in a staircase pattern.
BERLINCLOCK
KRCOINOHISH
KKAHMMDVAMC
KKKVOEAIERA
KKKKOKOKAML
KKKKKKKKKKB
Now I have used the phonetic alphabet to create 8 keystreams, which I can combine together using the vigenere table (addition in columns modulo 26). The information of each letter is spread across the following 4-8 symbols of ciphertext.
I've changed the language base in a way that has masked the original plaintext. I guarantee you will have 26 distinct letters in your ciphertext, and very random distribution. Even repeated short words will be corrupted.
But, now the problem is: how to reverse this process? For me this is the best part. There is only one way to reverse this: slowly, very desperately slowly. The weakness is that the first letter B is uncorrupted, and if you subtract the keyword BRAVO from the first five letters, then the second letter is revealed to be E, with keyword ECHO starting at the second position. And so on to the end.
Pencil and paper. Changed the letter base. Very hard, minimal effort. Is this what Scheidt has been talking about?
I'm not sure. This doesn't generate kryptossy letters. But it does generate random ciphertext distributions. If you used an alphabet order like ETAOIN as your plaintext alphabet? In that case, you would pad with E not K.