Introduction
Keyword Cipher is another method of encrypting alphabetic text. It is a type of monoalphabetic substitution cipher. Monoalphabetic means an alphabet in plain text is mapped to one alphabet in the ciphertext. For example, if the plain text contains multiple occurrences of ‘A’ then all occurrences of ‘A’ are substituted by the same alphabet in the ciphertext.
Encryption
Suppose the plain text is
“HELLO WORLD”
Next, we have to choose a keyword. The keyword should not have any repeated alphabets. Let the keyword be
“DRAGON”
Next, we map each alphabet in plain text to the alphabet in the ciphertext. The starting N alphabets of plain text are mapped to the alphabet of the keyword where N is the length of the keyword.
To fill the rest of the alphabets in the ciphertext, we use the remaining alphabets in chronological order. We skip over those alphabets that are already present in the ciphertext. See the figure shown below.
We use the above mapping to encrypt the plain text.
Plain Text: “HELLO WORLD”
Keyword: “DRAGON”
Cipher Text: “COIIL WLQIG”
Decryption
Decryption is very simple. We map plaintext alphabets to ciphertext alphabets using the keyword then use the reverse mapping to convert the ciphertext to plaintext.
Implementation
Note: The code assumes that the plaintext/ciphertext only contains English alphabets from ‘A’ to ‘Z’.
#include <iostream>
#include <string>
#include <map>
using namespace std;
string encrypt(string plainText, string keyword)
{
int i;
char j, t;
map<char, char> mapping; // map to store plaintext and ciphertext alphabet mapping
string cipherText;
j = 'A';
// mapping starting alphabets to alphabet of the keyword
for (i = 0; i < keyword.length(); ++i)
{
mapping[j++] = keyword[i];
}
// mapping the remaining alphabets to the alphabets not present in keyword in
// chronological order
for (t = 'A'; t <= 'Z'; ++t)
{
// checking if the character t is already mapped or not
if (keyword.find(t) >= keyword.length())
{
mapping[j++] = t;
}
}
cipherText = "";
for (i = 0; i < plainText.length(); ++i)
{
cipherText += mapping[plainText[i]];
}
return cipherText;
}
string decrypt(string cipherText, string keyword)
{
int i;
char j, t;
map<char, char> mapping; // map to store plaintext to ciphertext alphabet mapping
map<char, char> r_mapping; // map to store cipherText to plaintext alphabet mapping
string plainText;
j = 'A';
// mapping starting alphabets to alphabet of the keyword
for (i = 0; i < keyword.length(); ++i)
{
mapping[j++] = keyword[i];
}
// mapping the remaining alphabets to the alphabets not present in keyword in
// chronological order
for (t = 'A'; t <= 'Z'; ++t)
{
// checking if the character t is already mapped or not
if (keyword.find(t) >= keyword.length())
{
mapping[j++] = t;
}
}
for (t = 'A'; t <= 'Z'; ++t)
{
r_mapping[mapping[t]] = t;
}
plainText = "";
for (i = 0; i < cipherText.length(); ++i)
{
plainText += r_mapping[cipherText[i]];
}
return plainText;
}
int main()
{
string plainText, cipherText, keyword;
cout << "*******ENCRYPTION********" << endl;
cout << "Enter Plain Text: ";
cin >> plainText;
cout << "Enter Keyword: ";
cin >> keyword;
cipherText = encrypt(plainText, keyword);
cout << "Cipher Text: " << cipherText << endl;;
cout << "*******DECRYPTION********" << endl;
cout << "Enter Cipher Text: ";
cin >> cipherText;
cout << "Enter Keyword: ";
cin >> keyword;
plainText = decrypt(cipherText, keyword);
cout << "Cipher Text: " << plainText;
return 0;
}
Output
*******ENCRYPTION******** Enter Plain Text: HELLOWORLD Enter Keyword: DRAGON Cipher Text: COIILWLQIG *******DECRYPTION******** Enter Cipher Text: COIIWLQIG Enter Keyword: DRAGON Cipher Text: HELLWORLD
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