I am amazed at how quickly the ciphers we have seen so far can be broken. The Vigenere cipher especially. There seems to be no limit to how creative code crackers have been, and will be. The block ciphers seem like they will be much more secure, with the diffusion and confusion that they have built into them. I have heard of diffusion before this class (in the code sense), but have not heard of confusion before. I will have to re-read that to get it solidified in my head.
So I am thinging that I will have to refresh myself on linear algebra, but it wasn't too hard the first time, so it shouldn't be too hard now. Just go through a few practice problems.
I liked the section on Sherlock Holmes, I thought that it was a nice fun little section, and it showed that new symbols don't really make a substitution cipher any more secure.
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