JBO Zeta Cipher Help

Zeta Cipher is designed to encrypt and decrypt text mesages using a unique implementation of classical methods of encryption.

Overview:

Zeta automatically removes non-alphanumeric characters from the text before encryption, decryption, or analysis (if a ciphertext contains non-alphanumeric characters then it is probably not a Zeta Ciphertext). The stripped text is subjected to polyalphabetic substitution against a table of randomly positioned characters as determined by the user-entered Key Word, and a numeric key which allows the user to select any of one thousand variants of the cipher table. Irregular columnar transposition is performed upon the ciphertext using a key which is calculated within the programme.

Ciphertext which has been encrypted by Zeta yields Frequency Analysis and Sequence Analysis results which are very similar to those for randomly generated text. With one kilobyte or more of text, frequency is generally below 5% for all characters (subject to key words which are not overly repetitious), and unrelated to the distribution of the plain text .

Operation:

The Open, Save, Print, and Clear toolbar buttons perform those actions for the selected editor page; Save will also save the Analysis graph.
A minimum of three alphabetic characters of data is required and you must set the Keys before encryption or decryption is possible.
You must encrypt text, or load some cipher text, in order to perform analysis.
The Analysis button calculates the frequency distribution of the ciphertext and displays the result graphically on the Analysis page. Click Save when the graph is displayed to save the graph image in bitmap (.bmp) format. The Analysis page auto closes when another page is selected.
The Group ciphertext button will format the text into five letter groups if clicked when the Cipher Text page is displayed.
The Help page is accessible from the help menu or by pressing F1. This page auto closes when another page is selected.

Encryption:

Select the Plain Text tab to display the plaintext editor. You may load a text file into the plaintext editor, or type the message you wish to encrypt. Set the alphanumeric and numeric keys - one or more characters up to the length of the plain text, and a number between 1 and 1000. Click the Encrypt button. The ciphertext is now in the Cipher Text editor.

Decryption:

Select the Cipher Text tab to display the ciphertext editor. You may load a text file into the ciphertext editor, or type the message you wish to decrypt. Set the alphanumeric and numeric keys - one or more characters up to the length of the plain text, and a number between 1 and 1000. Click the Decrypt button. The plaintext is now in the Plain Text editor.

Analysis:

You may analyse the frequency distribution of the cipher text by clicking on the Analyse button. If there is sufficient text in the Cipher Text editor, the results of the analysis will appear in bar graph format on the Analysis page.