Baconian Ciphers (named after Sir Francis Bacon)
The graphic appearing on the home page contains a Baconian Cipher.
A graphic similar to this one appears as the masthead of each issue of Cryptosystems Journal.
Baconian ciphers can be considered to be partially cryptographic, but mostly steganographic.
Cryptography's primary goal is to keep the contents of a message secret even though someone may happen to obtain its transmission (e.g. through a wiretap).
Steganography's primary goal is to hide the very existence of a message.
The Baconian cipher was invented by Sir Francis Bacon in the 16th Century. It is an ingenious way of hiding a secret message in what appears to be something perfectly normal. The cipher is comprised of two sympols AND IS THEREFORE A BINARY SYSTEM. The two symbols are usually called "a" and "b" which are combined in groups of (historically) five to represent any letter of the alphabet. Hint: The baconian graphic on the home page uses 8-bit ASCII as its character set.
Can you decipher this Baconian Cipher?
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Copyright © 1996 Cryptosystems Journal.
Most recent update on 28-SEP-96.