A software tool for teaching classical & contemporary cryptology
Richard Jay Spillman · Journal of computing sciences in colleges · 2004
The world of cryptology has a long and rich history. Many different cipher systems have been developed and most ultimately broken. The study of such ciphers and their weaknesses is more important than ever since they are a major tool for providing security in computer systems. Students of security need to learn about the pitfalls of cipher design and develop an intuitive feel for the nature of cipher systems. This paper describes a software tool called CAP (Cryptographic Analysis Program) that can be used in a course on cryptology. The program allows students to explore different implementations of classical and contemporary ciphers and provides the tools necessary to break many of those ciphers. It can be downloaded from the author's web site at www.plu.edu/~spillmrj.