Polyalphabetic substitution cipher using rotating wheels with randomly arranged alphabets. Invented by Thomas Jefferson around 1795 as a mechanical encryption device.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Category | Classical Ciphers |
| Sub-category | Classical Cipher |
| Security status | 🎓 Educational Only |
| Complexity | Not specified |
| Inventor | Thomas Jefferson |
| Year | 1795 |
| Origin | 🇺🇸 United States |
| Source | algorithms/classical/jefferson-wheel.js |
Status: 🎓 Educational Only
Historical educational cipher. Vulnerable to frequency analysis with sufficient ciphertext. Demonstrates early mechanical cryptographic engineering.
| Issue | Description | Mitigation |
|---|---|---|
| Vulnerable to frequency analysis attacks when sufficient ciphertext is available | — | — |
| With enough plaintext-ciphertext pairs, wheel alphabets can be recovered | — | — |
2 vectors ship with this algorithm and run in the test suite. Byte values are hexadecimal.
Vector 1 — dCode worked example - JEFFERSON on the 25 standard wheels, read one row below
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
key |
32357c31 |
input |
4a4546464552534f4e |
expected |
464859474d4e59424c |
Vector 2 — Offset zero is the identity row - the plaintext row is the ciphertext row
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
key |
32357c30 |
input |
41545441434b41544441574e |
expected |
41545441434b41544441574e |