Page 124 - The Secret War in the Italian front in WWI (1915-1918)

THE SECRET WAR ON THE ITALIAN FRONT IN WWI (1915 – 1918)

started to deploy several listening stations,
each tuned to one of the frequencies most
often employed by enemy stations.
An efficient method for improving
transmission security became, during the
war, the accurate monitoring of friendly
communications aiming to avoid use of
radio and telephone communications for
purposes other than regular service and to
grant rule compliance on communications
protection.
Having explored the limited effectiveness
of the methods applicable for transmission
security improvement, let us now analyse
the characteristics of the last component
of Communication Security, namely
protection of the transmitted dispatches by
means of codes and ciphers (cryptography) 6.11 Clock used by the Austro-Hungarian navy for the
or secret languages and writing systems periodical change of radio frequencies (ISCAG Archive)
(steganography).

6.4 BASICS CRYPTOLOGY 26

Cryptography is the set of encryption methods for hiding the contents of a message. It is part of
cryptology which also includes the cryptographic analysis or cryptanalysis, aiming to disclose the
meaning of a message without knowing the encryption methods used .
27

cryPTograPhy

Cryptography aims to make a plaintext unintelligible to unauthorised people, transforming the
clear text into a cryptogram or encoded text through an encoding or ciphering procedure, which
requires both a complex set of rules and tools (code books, tables, apparatus, etc.) representing the
cipher, and the key, namely an agreed word, a set of figures or an acronym.
A cryptogram is transmitted to one or more addressees who decode or decipher it, transforming
the encoded into the original plaintext, by the same cipher and the same key used for its encoding.
A message is decrypted when someone who is not the addressee and who is not supposed to know
the cipher and the key, manages to interpret it correctly.
A traditional classification of cryptographic systems distinguishes between ciphers also named
literal systems and codes.
In ciphers, the elements in the plain text - letters, numbers, punctuations marks, groups of letters
- are altered by substitution or transposition methods.

26 For readers already familiar with the basics of cryptography it may be recommendable to skip this paragraph and go directly
to paragraph 6.5.
27 The term “cryptography” is often applied to both aspects.

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