Back in 1914, the German Army used a cipher that we have later come to know as “übchi”. It was a double columnar transposition that was quickly solved by French cryptanalysts, including Lt. Georges Painvin, in the picture, who later went on to break the more difficult ADFGX and ADFGVX German ciphers. At the time, the US Army was using a very similar method to “übchi”, so it was fortunate that the French shared their discovery, so they could switch to something better (they didn’t). As it turned out, the French were so bad about keeping this secret that the Germans soon got word of it and replaced it with the ABC cipher, which turned out to be weaker. But not necessarily so, and this article is about what might have happened. Read More