The message is called the plaintext because it is the unchanged source information. Example: The cat ran away. The secret message generated is called a cipher or ciphertext and it is the encrypted ...

NOVA scienceNOW's "Can Science Stop Crime" introduced you to Tadayoshi Kohno, a University of Washington computer scientist who's made it his mission to take over networked machines, identifying ...

Ars’ own Julian Sanchez has deciphered a code embedded into the TV show Fringe. Bad Robot, the production company that created the Fox TV show, has been integrating puzzles and easter eggs into shows ...

Hannah handed me a piece of paper with the following string of letters. “Each letter stands for another one,” said Hannah. “Ooh, a substitution cipher!” I thought. But I was stumped. “Is this just one ...

Researchers have used state-of-the-art machine translation software — and some old-fashioned hunches — to crack the code used by a secret society in Germany three centuries ago. The results shed light ...

A few months ago, GeekDad's Challenge of the Week was a lovely cipher about famous novels beginnings. I enjoyed solving it and that reminded me of a time where I was teaching younger students (12 to ...