Mysterious Messages by Gary Blackwood

Author:Gary Blackwood
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Young Readers Group
Published: 2017-04-11T15:12:07+00:00

The Rebs also rediscovered Alberti’s disk. But thanks to Kasiski, cryptanalysts could now crack a polyaphabetic cipher, so the Alberti disk was no more secure than the Vigenère tableau.

Both sides made frequent use of spies, and some of the most resourceful were women. “Rebel Rose” Greenhow, widow of a prominent Washington doctor, eavesdropped on Union officers, then conveyed the information to the Confederacy by female couriers. They carried the dispatches in secret pockets or concealed in their hair, which was braided and wrapped in a tight bun. Greenhow’s reports helped ensure a Southern victory at the first battle of Bull Run.

Even after she and her young daughter were imprisoned by Union forces, Rebel Rose went on sending secret messages; she hid them inside her daughter’s rubber ball, which she then tossed through a window of the prison to a waiting Rebel agent.

Spies on both sides used invisible ink, substitution ciphers, and route ciphers. One favorite transposition method was called the rail fence cipher because its zigzag pattern looked like a split log fence as seen from above. To encipher Mark Twain’s famous quote “Man is the only animal that blushes. Or needs to,” first stagger the letters like this:

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