Software Design and Implementation

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A14: CaesarCipher

Ciphers and Cryptography

You may work alone or with a pair partner for this. If you work with a partner, be sure to follow good "pair-programming" practices. For this assignment you will be adding to a class.

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Ciphers and a little history

Encryption has been in the news a great deal recently:

• July 11, 2013: Microsoft handed the NSA access to encrypted messages
• December 21, 2013: Report: NSA Paid RSA $10M to Create 'Back Door' in Encryption Software
• March 12, 2014: Google is encrypting search globally. That’s bad for the NSA and China’s censors
• February 17, 2016: Apple, The FBI And iPhone Encryption: A Look At What's At Stake

The Google article proclaims the following:

"Google has begun routinely encrypting Web searches conducted in China, posing a bold new challenge to that nation’s powerful system for censoring the Internet and tracking what individual users are viewing online.

The company says the move is part of a global expansion of privacy technology designed to thwart surveillance by government intelligence agencies, police and hackers who, with widely available tools, can view e-mails, search queries and video chats when that content is unprotected."

Encryption and privacy are clearly big news.  But, how do encryption and decryption work?

Suppose you intercepted an email between two people that was using some kind of encryption, thereby creating a cryptogram:

Looks like gibberish, right? Actually, what was used was a simple cipher-substitution in which each letter ("a" through "z") in the original text was replaced by a different, random one. The cryptogram above, for example, has had every occurrence of the letter 'e' replaced with an 'r', every occurrence of 'w' by a 't', and so forth. The word "tr", which is the sixth word in the last paragraph, was therefore originally "we". The trick is to find which letter substitution was used and you can then reverse the process to get the original message.

Though not the first cipher, one of the simplest and most notable ciphers is the Caesar cipher, used by Julius Caesar to send messages to his generals during war. The cipher was simple; each letter is simply shifted in the alphabet by a number, which Caesar and the general would agree upon ahead of time. So a shift of +3 would equate to 'a' becoming 'd', 'b' would become 'e', and so on. The following Class demonstrates a Caesar cipher (be sure to download all files and place them in the same directory):

• yourusername-cipher.py
• message_input.txt

CRC Card for the CaesarCipher

Class name: CaesarCipher Class Methods: Class Collaborations (other classes): __init__() constructor for the CaesarCipher class import_file() imports a file stored in the variable self.input_file and imports a string representing the contents of the file export_file() exports a file encrypt() converts an original message into a ciphered message which is returned with each letter shifted to the right by the key decrypt() converts a ciphertext and returns the original message which is found by shifting each letter to the left by the key testit() prints the result of a unittest. CaesarCipher_test_suite() provides tests for the CaesarCipher class None Class Data: Class Collaborations (other classes): self.alphabet is "ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ" which is the alphabet used to do our shifts self.input_file is the file to be encrypted or decrypted self.key is the integer amount each message/cipher will be shifted self.message holds the message self.cipher holds the cipher self.crypt_type holds either "encrypt" or "decrypt" None

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The instructions

Modify the yourusername-cipher.py file to complete the following tasks:

Caesar has two letters to send (be sure to download these files into the same directory as your code!):

• letter_to_friend_1.txt
• letter_to_friend_2.txt

Complete the code in main() to encrypt the above messages and generate two new encrypted files:

• cipher_to_friend_1.txt
• cipher_to_friend_2.txt

Caesar also has multiple letters from a friend which he needs to decrypt (again, be sure to download this file into the same directory as your code!). Here is one of these letters. Note that your code should be able to work with any letter which was encrypted using the Caesar cypher:

• letter_from_friend_3.txt

The CaesarCipher Class is incomplete; while the program can encrypt a message, the program should also be able to decrypt the message. Complete the following tasks related to decryption:

• Complete the decrypt() function for decrypting the message inside the CaesarCipher Class.
• Once you've completed the decrypt function, make the correct calls in the main() function to construct a new CaesarCipher object and decrypt the message.
• Use the export_file() function to write your decrypted message to a file named "message_from_friend_3.txt"

Suggestions and Requirements:

• Be sure to modify the standard header at the top of your program with name, username, assignment number, purpose and acknowledgements.
• Use only meaningful Class, variable and function names.
• Use comments to clarify sections of code
• The highest level of the program (i.e., no indenting) must only contain the following:
• the header
• any import statements
• Class definitions
• a call to the main() function

When you are finished writing and testing your program, create a ZIP file named yourusersnames-A14.zip and submit the following to the A14 link on Moodle:

• yourusernames-A14-cipher.py 
• cipher_to_friend_1.txt
• cipher_to_friend_2.txt
• message_from_friend_3.txt

Submitted files with incorrect filenames may not receive full credit because it makes grading more difficult for us and the TAs, so please check filenames carefully!