Free Cryptology spreadsheet!

OVERVIEW: 

I am not a cryptology expert. I took a summer course in it several years ago and became fascinated with the mathematics of cryptology. Our grades were based on a project of our own choosing in cryptology. I decided to generate a spreadsheet that enciphered and deciphered messages of the user's choosing. I chose one of the numerous methods taught in the course. Once I did one, I decided to do another. Before long I had a spreadsheet that could use numerous methods for enciphering and deciphering.

Once the spreadsheet was done, I needed an explanation about how to use the spreadsheet. Before one could use the spreadsheet though, a user needed to understand how each method worked. My several page explanation became a 50 page manual with examples and exercises.

I gave several mini-courses in my school on the subject and had students communicating complicated messages via email. I emailed them messages and they used the cipher spreadsheet to decipher them. This is not as easy as it sounds. The spreadsheet does a lot of number crunching but there is a degree of luck in deciphering as well. It was neat when students were able to answer my ciphered emails and I spent many hours trying to decipher theirs.

A father of one of my graduates stopped in the other day to tell me that his son will be taking a job with the government in deciphering messages all because he was turned on by my mini course.

This is all free to you. You will need to download the spreadsheet which is only 624K. But the manual is large – 3.9 megs. When you open the spreadsheet, be sure to Enable Macros (newer versions of Office do not allow Macros - sorry - blame Microsoft) or some of the sheets will not work. You will need to read the manual to understand each cipher system

Enjoy! 

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