Editing Final Report 2010 (section)

===Project Background===
Probably since the beginning of recognizable human behaviour, coding has been fundamental to all human groups. It was a way to enable communication when ordinary spoken or written language was difficult or impossible. But for as long as communication was needed, concealment, too, seems to be just as common in human societies. Secret languages and gestures are characteristic of many human groups, serving as a means of concealing messages.

[[Image:National Treasure Playfair Cipher.jpg|thumb|left|250px|The Playfair Cipher - A scene from National Treasure 2:Book of Secrets]]
A cipher system is the systematic concealment of a message by substituting words or phrases with a different set of characters. They began to be widely used in the 16th century, but they date back as far as 6th century BC<ref name="Code Book">The Secrets of Codes: Understanding the World of Hidden Messages by Paul Lunde</ref>.

Coding and cipher systems have historically been limited to espionage or warfare, but the recent transformation of communication technology has added new opportunities and challenges for the budding cryptologist. We live in an age, with computerised communication, where the most valuable commodity is code and the second most valuable is the private information that it gives access to. In order to guard this information, we use encryption systems that have to be continually updated as every encryption system is eventually foiled. How to preserve privacy in an electronic age is one of the burning questions of our time<ref name="Code Book"/>.

This project focuses mainly on substitution ciphers (codes in which the letters have been replaced with different letters<ref>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Substitution_cipher</ref>) to determine the secret of the Somerton Man's code. In particular, we focus on the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Playfair_cipher Playfair Cipher], the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vigen%C3%A8re_cipher Vigenere Cipher], and the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-time_pad One-time pad].