Description
In the affine cipher the letters of an alphabet of size are first mapped to the integers in the range . It then uses modular arithmetic to transform the integer that each plaintext letter corresponds to into another integer that correspond to a ciphertext letter. The encryption function for a single letter is
where modulus is the size of the alphabet and and are the key of the cipher. The value must be chosen such that and are coprime. The decryption function is
where is the modular multiplicative inverse of modulo . I.e., it satisfies the equation
The multiplicative inverse of only exists if and are coprime. Hence without the restriction on decryption might not be possible. It can be shown as follows that decryption function is the inverse of the encryption function,
Read more about this topic: Affine Cipher
Famous quotes containing the word description:
“He hath achieved a maid
That paragons description and wild fame;
One that excels the quirks of blazoning pens.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“As they are not seen on their way down the streams, it is thought by fishermen that they never return, but waste away and die, clinging to rocks and stumps of trees for an indefinite period; a tragic feature in the scenery of the river bottoms worthy to be remembered with Shakespeare’s description of the sea-floor.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Why does philosophy use concepts and why does faith use symbols if both try to express the same ultimate? The answer, of course, is that the relation to the ultimate is not the same in each case. The philosophical relation is in principle a detached description of the basic structure in which the ultimate manifests itself. The relation of faith is in principle an involved expression of concern about the meaning of the ultimate for the faithful.”
—Paul Tillich (1886–1965)