Talk:Cryptography/Classical Cryptography

substitution cypher section inadequate
This section is rather too informally written, makes some inaccurate statements (eg, about THE classical sub cypher being something and that that the same something was state of the art or thought unbreakable for a time). It requires revision accordingly. See the article on Wikipedia regarding polyalphabetic cyphers, and on substitution cyphers for more information.

As for Navaho code talking, it was in the tradition from WWi of using Native American languages for battlefield communication. Navaho was, linguistically, obscure and Hitler's attempt to send linguists to the US to anticipate such as use in a prospective War didn't work very well, as apparently few studied Navaho. It is also not a langauge easy for an IndoEuropean (ie, German or English) speaker to learn, or for that matter for a Uralic-Altaic language speaker to learn (ie, Japanese). In any case, the code-talkers superencrypted their communications with a voice code (including an alphabetic spelling code for words without an entry in the codebook) which made captured Navaho servicemen useless when set to interpreting the code-talker transmissions. Navaho has had a written representation for some time, but I don't know quite how far back it goes. In any case, the navaho population is large and widely distributed across a largely infertile region and illiteracy in any langauge has been a difficult problem. In the decades before WWII, the problem was worse. 67.86.175.54 17:43, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

Removing warning about "basic expertise"
Original: (This article assumes some basic expertise in cryptography terminology)

I do not have any cryptographic background, but understand this article fairly well. I also plan on improving it to be more professionally written. Hethrir (discuss • contribs) 02:09, 16 December 2011 (UTC)