Abstract

The purpose of this article is to analyze the characteristics of a range of music-based ciphers (from the fifteenth to twentieth centuries) with respect to their intended goals and actual outcomes. Historically, the practitioners of music-based ciphers generally fall into one of two distinct groups: composers and cryptographers. The primary goal of the composers was to create music that embedded extra-musical content by means of musico-alphabetic correspondences. The cryptographers were generally interested in presenting many varieties of cryptographic methods of which ciphers incorporating musical notes were a very small part. The systems used by the former were usually so superficial they should not really be considered encryption; whereas the systems used by the latter were so mechanical that most would not consider the results to be music. Musical encryption can rarely be both because the attributes needed for convincing musicality and strong encryption are not mutually conducive. However, after examining these music-based cryptosystems in detail, I will consider what criteria might be necessary to create a reasonably secure cipher which produces a normatively-musical output and apply these in the form of an original music-based cipher. For most of the ciphers, interactive web applications have been developed which render plaintext into enciphered melodies.

摘要

本文的目的是分析一系列基于音乐的密码（从十五世纪到二十世纪）的预期目标和实际结果的特征。从历史上看，基于音乐的密码的从业者通常分为两个不同的群体之一：作曲家和密码学家。作曲家的主要目标是通过音乐字母对应的方式创作嵌入音乐外内容的音乐。密码学家普遍对提出多种密码方法感兴趣，其中结合音符的密码只占很小的一部分。前者使用的系统通常非常肤浅，不应该真正被视为加密；而后者使用的系统是如此机械，以至于大多数人不会认为结果是音乐。音乐加密很少能兼得，因为令人信服的音乐性和强加密所需的属性并不相辅相成。然而，在详细研究这些基于音乐的密码系统之后，我将考虑创建一个相当安全的密码可能需要什么标准，该密码产生规范的音乐输出，并以原始的基于音乐的密码的形式应用这些输出。对于大多数密码，已经开发了交互式网络应用程序，将纯文本呈现为加密的旋律。我将考虑创建一个相当安全的密码可能需要什么标准，该密码可以产生规范的音乐输出，并以基于原始音乐的密码的形式应用这些输出。对于大多数密码，已经开发了交互式网络应用程序，将纯文本呈现为加密的旋律。我将考虑创建一个相当安全的密码可能需要什么标准，该密码可以产生规范的音乐输出，并以基于原始音乐的密码的形式应用这些输出。对于大多数密码，已经开发了交互式网络应用程序，将纯文本呈现为加密的旋律。