Basic Cipher Decryption Hack

[kklc24]

I published my first app to the public gallery today! I was curious if I could use alteryx to decrypt messages without needing to know what key was used ahead of time and turns out you totally can.

Say you have an encrypted string that's 26 characters long, like Kv uqwpfu rncwukdng gpqwij. Each character has 26 possibilities of what the letter could be, multiply that by the string length of 26, and you get 676 possible outcomes it could be. This workflow cycles through every letter substitution scenario and shows you 26 results (one for each letter of the alphabet) where all the rows are gibberish except for one, the one combination that produces legible results.

Feel free to test it out yourself! No need to know what key was used to encrypt the message, it's pretty neat.

Try these:

-B atox t ubz lxvkxm

-WKH HDVLHVW PHWKRG RI HQFLSKHULQJ D WHAW PHVVDJH LV

-WR UHSODFH HDFK OHWWHU EB DQRWKHU XVLQJ D ILAHG UXOH

 Gallery Link 

[danilang · Accepted solution]

Hi @kklc24 

This is very cool. Decoder Rings R Us😀   I took the liberty of optimizing it somewhat.  By transposing the decryption grid you can remove the multiple summarize tools and replace them with a single one with grouping.  It now looks like this

It's also dynamic so that if you add more rows in the decryption key, for numbers, etc, they are automatically used in the  process without having to add a summarize tool for each new character. More rows in the decryption grid means more allowable characters in the input string.

For those of you who enjoy the whole cryptography scene, check out these weekly challenges for more Spy-like goodness

 Challenge #155: March Cryptanalytics

Challenge #159: April ENcyptanalytics

Challenge #163: Caesar Cipher (on the way to Kryptos)

Challenge #174: Appyhay Ondaymay!  Don't knock pig latin!

Challenge #177: Ham Hamlet

Cheers

Dan