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Caesar Box Cipher

Tool to decrypt/encrypt with Caesar Box, a Roman version of the scytales for ciphering text by transposition.

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Caesar Box Cipher -

Tag(s) : Transposition Cipher

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Caesar Box Cipher

Caesar Box Decoder

 



 


Caesar Box Encoder

 






See also: Caesar Cipher

Answers to Questions (FAQ)

What it the Caesar Box cipher? (Definition)

Caesar Box is a transposition cipher used in the Roman Empire, in which letters of the message are written in rows in a square (or a rectangle) and then, read by column.

How to encrypt using Caesar Box cipher?

Caesar Box Encryption uses a box, a rectangle (or a square), or at least a size W characterizing its width (that corresponds to the number of column of text)

Example: Take W=3 and the message to encrypt DCODE.

The message is written by rows and every W characters, add a new row. This will delimitate a box of characters.

If needed, the last row can be completed with another character, e.g. X or _.

Example: DCO
DE_

The encrypted message is obtained by reading the box by column.

Example: The cipher text is DDCEO_

How to decrypt Caesar Box cipher?

Caesar Box decryption requires to know the dimensions of the box (width W by height H)

Example: Take W=3, and the ciphertext is CSAAER which is 6-character long, then H=2 (as 6/3=2).

Write the text in column in the box. The plain text appears by reading each row.

Example: CAE
SAR

Example: The original plain text is CAESAR.

How to recognize Caesar Box ciphertext?

The Caesar box is a transposition cipher, so the coincidence index is the same as that of the plain text.

If the length of the message is a perfect square, it is a good clue.

This cipher appears in many movies or books, the most known are the scytale (parchment / ribbon from Sparta, Greece), the cipher used in Journey to the center of the Earth from Jules Verne (Arne Saknussemm's cryptogram), etc.

How to decipher Caesar Box without the size?

One can crack Caesar Box by testing all possible size of the rectangle.

Sometimes the message has a square number of characters (16 = 4.4 or 25 = 5 * 5 or 36 = 6 * 6, etc.), which makes it possible to deduce the size of the square, but sometimes it is a totally different number of characters.

What are the variants of the Caesar Box cipher?

When the box is a perfect square, encryption and decryption are identical.

The scytale is the other name of this cipher.

When was Caesar Box invented?

This encryption is similar to that of the scytale cipher, which have appeared in Greece, between the 10th and 7th centuries B.C., a long time before romans and Caesar (Caius Iulius).

Source code

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Caesar Box Cipher on dCode.fr [online website], retrieved on 2023-12-03, https://www.dcode.fr/caesar-box-cipher

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NB: for encrypted messages, test our automatic cipher identifier!

Questions / Comments

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