🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <18919@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU> jmm@miro.Berkeley.EDU (James Moore) writes:
>Is knowing the original language of an encrypted message ever necessary
>for attempting to decipher it?

There are some systems for which one is likely to produce the correct
plaintext without necessarily understanding it, but this is not a
universal property of cryptosystems.

Often one can reduce the message to a simple substitution without
knowing what the language is.  Going from there to plaintext generally
requires some information about general characteristics of a language,
although the analyst need not be highly proficient in it.

I recall decrypting some messages in a simulation (part of a cryppy
training exercise) that were in English but kept mentioning the
"BANDITHUTH".  Took me a while to realize that this was the bandit,
Huth.  (Spaces are often omitted in field systems.)  Nonetheless I
had correctly decrypted it without understanding what it meant.