Transposition Cipher

In cryptography, a transposition cipher, also known as columnar transposition cipher, is a simple and easy to implement cipher. This cipher follows a simple rule for mixing up the characters in the plaintext to form the ciphertext. Although this cipher is weak on its own, but it can be combined with other ciphers, such as a substitution cipher, the combination of which can be more difficult to break than either cipher on it's own.

 

Example:

The key for the transposition cipher is a keyword e.g. 'pangram'. To encrypt a piece of text, e.g. 'The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog', we write it out in a special way in a number of rows:

p	a	n	g	r	a	m
T	h	e		q	u	i
c	k		b	r	o	w
n		f	o	x		j
u	m	p	s		o	v
e	r		t	h	e
l	a	z	y		d	o
g	-	-	-	-	-	-

The columns are now reordered such that the letters in the key word are ordered alphabetically.

a	a	g	m	n	p	r
h	u		i	e	T	q
k	o	b	w		c	r
		o	j	f	n	x
m	o	s	v	p	u
r	e	t			e	h
a	d	y	o	z	l
-	-	-	-	-	g	-

The ciphertext is read off along the columns: 'hk mra-uo oed- bosty-iwjv o-e fp z-Tcnuelgqrx h -'

• C#
• VB.Net
• C
• C++
• PHP

									class KeyValuePair
{
	public $Key;
	public $Value;
}

function compare($first, $second) {
	return strcmp($first->Value, $second->Value);
}

function GetShiftIndexes($key)
{
	$keyLength = strlen($key);
	$indexes = array();
	$sortedKey = array();
	$i;

	for ($i = 0; $i < $keyLength; ++$i) {
		$pair = new KeyValuePair();
		$pair->Key = $i;
		$pair->Value = $key[$i];
		$sortedKey[] = $pair;
	}

	usort($sortedKey, 'compare');
	$i = 0;

	for ($i = 0; $i < $keyLength; ++$i)
		$indexes[$sortedKey[$i]->Key] = $i;

	return $indexes;
}

function Encipher($input, $key, $padChar)
{
	$output = "";
	$totalChars = strlen($input);
	$keyLength = strlen($key);
	$input = ($totalChars % $keyLength == 0) ? $input : str_pad($input, $totalChars - ($totalChars % $keyLength) + $keyLength, $padChar, STR_PAD_RIGHT);
	$totalChars = strlen($input);
	$totalColumns = $keyLength;
	$totalRows = ceil($totalChars / $totalColumns);
	$rowChars = array(array());
	$colChars = array(array());
	$sortedColChars = array(array());
	$currentRow = 0; $currentColumn = 0; $i = 0; $j = 0;
	$shiftIndexes = GetShiftIndexes($key);

	for ($i = 0; $i < $totalChars; ++$i)
	{
		$currentRow = $i / $totalColumns;
		$currentColumn = $i % $totalColumns;
		$rowChars[$currentRow][$currentColumn] = $input[$i];
	}

	for ($i = 0; $i < $totalRows; ++$i)
		for ($j = 0; $j < $totalColumns; ++$j)
			$colChars[$j][$i] = $rowChars[$i][$j];

	for ($i = 0; $i < $totalColumns; ++$i)
		for ($j = 0; $j < $totalRows; ++$j)
			$sortedColChars[$shiftIndexes[$i]][$j] = $colChars[$i][$j];

	for ($i = 0; $i < $totalChars; ++$i)
	{
		$currentRow = $i / $totalRows;
		$currentColumn = $i % $totalRows;
		$output .= $sortedColChars[$currentRow][$currentColumn];
	}

	return $output;
}

function Decipher($input, $key)
{
	$output = "";
	$keyLength = strlen($key);
	$totalChars = strlen($input);
	$totalColumns = ceil($totalChars / $keyLength);
	$totalRows = $keyLength;
	$rowChars = array(array());
	$colChars = array(array());
	$unsortedColChars = array(array());
	$currentRow = 0; $currentColumn = 0; $i = 0; $j = 0;
	$shiftIndexes = GetShiftIndexes($key);

	for ($i = 0; $i < $totalChars; ++$i)
	{
		$currentRow = $i / $totalColumns;
		$currentColumn = $i % $totalColumns;
		$rowChars[$currentRow][$currentColumn] = $input[$i];
	}

	for ($i = 0; $i < $totalRows; ++$i)
		for ($j = 0; $j < $totalColumns; ++$j)
			$colChars[$j][$i] = $rowChars[$i][$j];

	for ($i = 0; $i < $totalColumns; ++$i)
		for ($j = 0; $j < $totalRows; ++$j)
			$unsortedColChars[$i][$j] = $colChars[$i][$shiftIndexes[$j]];

	for ($i = 0; $i < $totalChars; ++$i)
	{
		$currentRow = $i / $totalRows;
		$currentColumn = $i % $totalRows;
		$output .= $unsortedColChars[$currentRow][$currentColumn];
	}

	return $output;
}
								

Example

									$text = "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog";
$key = "pangram";
$cipherText = Encipher($text, $key, '-');
$plainText = Decipher($cipherText, $key);
								

Output

									cipherText:	"hk mra-uo oed- bosty-iwjv o-e fp z-Tcnuelgqrx h -"
plainText:	"The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog------"