Codes and Ciphers :: Book Cipher

A book cipher uses a large piece of text to encode a secret message. Without the key (the piece of text) it is very difficult to decrypt the secret message.

To implement a book cipher, each word in the secret message would be replaced with a number which represents the same word in the book. For example, if the word "attack" appeared in the book as word number 713, then "attack" would be replaced with this number. The result would be an encoded message that looked something like this.

713 23 245 45 124 1269 586 443 8 234

To decipher the message you simply count the number of words in the book and write down each one.

• Monoalphabetic Cipher
• Caesar Cipher
• Atbash Cipher
• Keyword Cipher
• Pigpen / Masonic Cipher
• Polybius Square
• Polyalphabetic Cipher
• Vigenère Cipher
• Beaufort Cipher
• Autokey Cipher
• Running Key Cipher

• Transposition Ciphers
• Rail Fence
• Route Cipher
• Columnar Transposition
• Polygraphic Substitution
• Playfair Cipher
• Bifid Cipher
• Trifid Cipher
• Four-square cipher

• Other Ciphers and Codes
• Book Cipher
• Beale Cipher
• Morse Code
• Tap Code
• One-time Pad
• Scytale
• Semaphore
• ASCII
• Steganography
• Techniques
• Frequency Analysis