Coincidence Testing a Polyalphabetic Cipher
Gary J. Shannon
Created June 26, 2010
What is Coincidence Testing?
For an explanation of what this program is all about, read this article.
Enter your polyalphabetic ciphertext below and click "GO". The program will return a table of auto correlation coeficients for various possible key lengths. The most likely keys are those with the highest values. If you see high values for multiples of some key length, such as for key lengths 7, 14, 21, 35, and so on, the most likely key length is the smallest one, which in this example is 7.
The ciphertext must contain only letters and spaces, no punctuation marks. If you would like to see a sample of how it works, here's a polyalphabetic cipher with a key length of 4. You may cut and paste it into the ciphertext form below and see how the program detects the correct key length.
UJHTM CLRPH VMMGQ GFKDQ BPRPE ODRJN LZFJH VFKQX
IKVEO ELIOV KSVUH WVTUS VPGIE DBLVI HYOMH QQVJE
SFHRT VKIQG DWBPW VZYKS JPKEC KWXIG ZMMFH VOGVW
CGBSO FVEZV KEUKD QOCGX ICWMT DHGBW VIJYL PMJDZ
FPRXI KQKUQ GSXKW LUJHQ JNLZF JHVFC OSOGZ MUJPC
PNGWJ UWISY KSJUD PTQPC IQXWF MHIQG UAFMH IQPRW
FTYEO VVMIC WIUJH QJJDZ FQQIG TLIOF DHPIB ITKZS
VNGWP QQISJ DZFQO HQGST FTWLB PWLFT HWUQI GSGDX
JQQXP IHXIG ULFCW PFCVX VPGIS UWEOF VQFCQ HICVW
FPVIF PRYHJ WSMGD ZFOHE MQQIX JHRJC PMOOB HBTNQ
PQGWJ JDZFF HGJFH HUQVX BTWEL KQHPH GMBTB MUODC
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