Decrypting a substitution cipher, but with symbols instead of letters

Question

I'm trying to decipher a message encrypted by a substitution cipher (probably a monosubstitution). But the problem is, that we have symbols instead of letters (letters were substituted for random symbols). What would be the best way to decrypt such a message?

Thanks

Why do you suppose symbols instead of letters make a difference? On computers they're stored as strings of bits, not as letters per se. — Squeamish Ossifrage, Oct 01 '19 at 15:07

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Oct 01 '19 at 13:51

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Frequency analysis is the way to go. If your plaintext is in English then the letter "e" would (probably) be the most common letter in the text. A good technique would also be to look for repeated symbols. In the English language (and probably all other languages as well) there are many words with double letters (i.e. "kill", "hello", "symmetry"), so you can narrow it down what the word with the repeated symbol would be.

answered Oct 01 '19 at 13:51

AleksanderCH

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If you want to run the encryption through a program that only analyzes letters, assign letters to the symbols. – Neo1009 Oct 01 '19 at 22:42

Decrypting a substitution cipher, but with symbols instead of letters

1 Answers1