Cracking Codes with Python

5THE CAESAR CIPHER

“BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU.”—George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four

In Chapter 1, we used a cipher wheel and a chart of letters and numbers to implement the Caesar cipher. In this chapter, we’ll implement the Caesar cipher in a computer program.

The reverse cipher we made in Chapter 4 always encrypts the same way. But the Caesar cipher uses keys, which encrypt the message differently depending on which key is used. The keys for the Caesar cipher are the integers from 0 to 25. Even if a cryptanalyst knows the Caesar cipher was used, that alone doesn’t give them enough information to break the cipher. They must also know the key. ...