Description

The Chaocipher was invented by J.F.Byrne in 1918 and, although simple by modern cryptographic standards, does not appear to have been broken until the algorithm was finally disclosed by his family in 2010.

The algorithm is described in this paper by M.Rubin in 2010 and there is a C# implementation here.



Task

Code the algorithm in your language and to test that it works with the plaintext 'WELLDONEISBETTERTHANWELLSAID' used in the paper itself.




package main
 
import(
    "fmt"
    "strings"
    "unicode/utf8"
)
 
type Mode int
 
const(
    Encrypt Mode = iota
    Decrypt
)
 
const(
    lAlphabet = "HXUCZVAMDSLKPEFJRIGTWOBNYQ"
    rAlphabet = "PTLNBQDEOYSFAVZKGJRIHWXUMC"
)
 
func Chao(text string, mode Mode, showSteps bool) string {
    len := len(text)
    if utf8.RuneCountInString(text) != len {
        fmt.Println("Text contains non-ASCII characters")
        return ""
    }
    left  := lAlphabet
    right := rAlphabet
    eText := make([]byte, len)
    temp  := make([]byte, 26)
 
    for i := 0; i < len; i++ {
        if showSteps {
            fmt.Println(left, " ", right)
        }
        var index int
        if mode == Encrypt {
            index = strings.IndexByte(right, text[i])
            eText[i] = left[index]
        } else {
            index = strings.IndexByte(left, text[i])
            eText[i] = right[index]
        }
        if i == len - 1 {
            break
        }
 
        // permute left
        for j := index; j < 26; j++ {
            temp[j - index] = left[j]
        }
        for j := 0; j < index; j++ {
            temp[26 - index + j] = left[j]
        }
        store := temp[1]
        for j := 2; j < 14; j++ {
            temp[j - 1] = temp[j]
        }
        temp[13] = store
        left = string(temp[:])
 
        // permute right
 
        for j := index; j < 26; j++ {
            temp[j - index] = right[j]
        }
        for j := 0; j < index; j++ {
            temp[26 - index + j] = right[j]
        }
        store = temp[0]
        for j := 1; j < 26; j++ {
            temp[j - 1] = temp[j]
        }
        temp[25] = store
        store = temp[2]
        for j := 3; j < 14; j++ {
            temp[j - 1] = temp[j]
        }
        temp[13] = store
        right = string(temp[:])
    }
 
    return string(eText[:])
}
 
func main() {
    plainText := "WELLDONEISBETTERTHANWELLSAID"
    fmt.Println("The original plaintext is :", plainText)
    fmt.Print("\nThe left and right alphabets after each permutation ")
    fmt.Println("during encryption are :\n")
    cipherText := Chao(plainText, Encrypt, true)
    fmt.Println("\nThe ciphertext is :",  cipherText)
    plainText2 := Chao(cipherText, Decrypt, false)
    fmt.Println("\nThe recovered plaintext is :", plainText2)
}