Why a list of bullets is not a report (and military writing could make you enemies)

Why a list of bullets is not a report (and military writing could make you enemies) Why a list of bullets is not a report (and military writing could make you enemies) A few years ago, I was working with a consultant. We used to meet every week, over breakfast. And, as my daughter was going through a phase of waking up every night, I was invariably tired. I remember one session, during which I had been particularly sluggish. Even a second double espresso could not push many coherent thoughts around my sleep-deprived brain. So I asked him to write me a short report, in the hope that I could consider his advice properly once my mental fog had cleared. ‘Sure,’ he said. ‘I’ll send it over later today.’ The document duly arrived in my inbox just after lunchtime, but I decided to save it till the morning, once I’d caught up on my sleep. The next day, refreshed, I opened the document with keen anticipation. It took up about two pages and covered everything we’d agreed. Yet I found the document pretty well impenetrable and I gave up after a couple of attempts at reading it. Shorter ≠  better It wasn’t that its sentences were too long or too dense. Most sentences ran to fewer than 20 words and each was reasonably digestible. Its language, too, was for the most part commendably clear. (I forgave the odd lapse into consultant speak, as I knew his advice and thinking were consistently sound.) No. The reason I struggled was that, while he’d certainly created a document, he hadn’t actually written me a report at all. He’d simply produced a list of bullets –  a very long list of bullets. There’s a common assumption that the best type of report is one that delivers the most facts in the fewest words. The internet is full of articles advising just that approach and such articles are extremely popular. Most of us are both busy and overloaded with information. So this is understandable. We’re often so distracted and desperate for relief from the information deluge that we’re primed to fall gratefully on any piece of advice that promotes the brief-equals-good approach and share it widely. In such a crowded world, efficiency is what we need – whether we’re talking about our schedules or our communications. And what could be more efficient than a list of bullets? Giving the brain room to work The trouble is that this vastly oversimplifies how our brains work. It’s based only on the way most of us think  they do. And while we may want  reports like that, it’s not what we actually need. (In fact, I suspect that such reports are often the ones that don’t get read.) It’s not just in reading and writing documents or email that we fall into this trap. The same is true of how we plan our lives. A productive day is not necessarily one that crams in the most activities in ever-decreasing time-slots – not least because each one will provide more information and you may need to update the best course of action as you go. In other words, you need to allow the brain to do its work. (Despite this, countless time-management gurus make a good living encouraging us to stuff more and more into schedules that are already overloaded.) Similarly, a bald summary consisting of a series of short points, stuffed together and devoid of context, will rarely work in the way we think it will or want it to. In simple terms, such documents are not ‘brain friendly’, even though it seems that they should be. Military backing The short=good advice was taken to a whole new level in a post on the Harvard Business Review  blog a year ago, entitled ‘How to write email with military precision’. The post went viral (I suspect for the reasons I’ve already stated). Some of its advice made sense, such as including keywords like ‘ACTION’ in the subject line to show something needs to be done. ‘INFO’ was another suggested heading, which also seemed logical, even if I can see emails with that title heading straight for the bin. (Tech-savvy staff might even set up an automated rule ensuring such messages bypass their inboxes altogether.) Next up on the list of recommended headings was ‘DECISION’. That was sort of OK, though I was starting to feel uneasy at that point. They were beginning to sound a bit too much like barked orders. (Suggesting I type them in caps didn’t help.) Then it all got a bit surreal. It’s not just that it recommended ‘COORD’ for something that needs co-ordination with a colleague. It’s the way it reduced what could be quite nuanced (ie human) exchanges to the barest of bones. Indeed, the article  took this idea so far that any email that followed the author’s advice would almost certainly backfire (no pun intended) in the modern workplace. Here’s an example from the post: You are not a robot (and neither is your reader) Most cognitive psychologists no longer think the brain is just like a computer, ever ready and waiting to be programmed with instructions. How we think and make decisions is way more complex and subtle than that. Yet that seems to be precisely the brain model that the author of this article was using. The structure appears to me to be based largely on how we wish people processed information. This almost brutally brief message may  be suited to the command-and-control environment of the battlefield. But this sort of military writing has absolutely no place in the modern work environment. It will make more enemies than friends and create more problems than it solves. Can you imagine how you’d feel if you got one of those things? Rolling out that style across an organisation could cause enough damage to relationships to send productivity through the floor. In doing so, it would have precisely the opposite effect to the one intended. The dangers of bullets And – despite leaving the battlefield behind – that brings me back to bullets (sorry). They have their place, but that place is within  a document or message. With very few exceptions (a shopping list springs to mind), they should not be the document itself. Bullets simply do not engage people and get them to focus. They’re like somebody else’s revision notes. They trigger recall of much more detail in the person who wrote them but are largely meaningless to everybody else. Besides, the short=good school of business writing assumes we’re all too busy to focus on anything outside of what’s on our to-do lists already and that we always concentrate on our priorities. If this were really true, distractions like news websites would be out of business, as would Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn. For that matter, so would eBay or even the doughnut shop down the road that you pop out to when you’re avoiding writing your monthly management report. There are so many of these distractions that it’s amazing that we ever get anything done. Logic would seem to suggest that we should only be able to concentrate for a few seconds on any one thing. From flow to focus And yet, somehow, we do manage to focus, at least for some of the time. Sometimes, that focus is the result of a conscious effort to shut out the noise and knuckle down to work. But, more often, our focus is a passive process, driven not by ourselves but by whatever it is we happen to be focusing on. Some writing draws our attention and holds it for minutes or even hours, no matter how long our to-do lists. Such writing almost seems to compress time, and it does so in spite of  how busy we are. If you’ve ever read a web page or email that you didn’t intend to – anything that wasn’t the reason you opened your laptop – then you’ll know what I mean. Such things engage you right from the start and they keep you engaged. Reading them is effortless. Ideas seem to magically glide from the screen to your brain by the shortest possible route. Somehow, they draw you in then just seem to flow. Flow is the right word in this case. It’s a psychological state  in which concentration is total, to the exclusion of everything else. And it’s a state that, despite how busy we are, we find ourselves in surprisingly often (when our heads are in our phones, for example). Exactly how you induce this state in those who read what you write is a big subject and one for another post. Suffice to say for now that it involves writing captivating introductions and using a structure that anticipates how the reader is likely to think. Often, it involves storytelling, which has been shown to be one of the most effective communication techniques, as it reproduces the writer’s thought patterns in those who read or listen to the story. (Even academic papers that follow a narrative structure get cited in journals more often than those that don’t, as this study  of more than 700 papers shows.) Crucially, it involves putting the reader right at the heart  of the document or message. What it’s not is a state that’s likely to be achieved by writing like the military. At least, not like the military portrayed in the HBR article. (My experience of the defence sector suggests that portrayal is not necessarily typical anyway.) And it’s not a state that you will ever achieve by page after page of bullets. If you want to keep up to date with Robs research into the science of communication, keep an eye on his blog at robashton.com. Image credit: Amy Walters / Shutterstock

Books to Increase Self-Confidence

Books to Increase Self-Confidence The shelves of self-help books are bursting. You can find books on finding inner peace, becoming a millionaire in 3 years, conquering your fears, fixing your social life, becoming a great leader, mastering your own fate, and thousands upon thousands of other topics. What very few of these books tell you, however, is that all of this every improvement plan you make to achieve all that you want begins with self-confidence. Nothing works until you have it. And self-confidence really boils down to trust trusting yourself more than others. So, if you are going to that self-help section today, here are 10 books that will begin your journey. 1. BARTON GOLDSMITH - 100 WAYS TO BOOST YOUR SELF-CONFIDENCE This is probably the most practical of all books on building self-confidence, and such an easy read. Goldsmith has it nailed with his descriptions of people who lack confidence. He has prescriptions for getting rid of all of those thoughts, behaviors and habits that tell yourself and others that you are well kind of wimpy, and that you are letting events and others control you. His tips range from intellectual behaviors (educating yourself), to physical style (new clothes and grooming) to embracing your flaws. 2. STEVEN R. COVEY - 7 HABITS OF HIGHLY EFFECTIVE PEOPLE Most people have the impression that this book is written only for the career professional who wants to get ahead. Yes, it is. But the principles apply to anyone and to any aspect of ones life. And, each of the 7 habits that Covey has described begins with self-confidence. Its all a matter of practicing certain behaviors until they become habitual once they do, you have changed your mindset. The overriding principle is really act as if you are highly successful and you will be. 3. GARY VURNUM - INSTANT CONFIDENCE: 92 TIPS This book does not have amazing new insights to give. It is literally 92 tips for everyday action that can project you as a self-confident person. (e.g., change the focus away from you). The basic idea is this use the tips, others will see you as self-confident, and you will respond to that be being even more self-confident. Its a good book to have around to remind yourself of the behaviors you need to be exhibiting. 4. ANTHONY ROBBINS AWAKEN THE GIANT WITHIN This is not a book you will want to read quickly. It addresses how you become the master of your own destiny, step by step from the decisions you make, to the vocabulary you choose. The book is filled with challenges for you to take up even a 7-day master plan to get control and become the self-confident giant you should be. 5. SAM HORN WHATS HOLDING YOU BACK? How about walking into a room full of strangers and being able to walk up to any of them and begin a conversation? This book is a 30-day diet of learning how to be more powerful in all settings (work, social, home), to stop comparing yourself to others (a true killer of self-confidence), and to never worry again about the impression you are making. Each chapter is a day of the 30. The best way to read this? One chapter a night before you go to bed with the commitment to follow through the next day. 6. BRIAN ROET - THE CONFIDENCE TO BE YOURSELF If you have never heard of cognitive-behavioral therapy, you will understand it after you read this book. The basic principle is that once you change your thinking, your behaviors will change to match that thinking. This book will teach you how to change those low self-esteem thoughts into thoughts of confidence, based on who you are, and then you can watch the transformation that occurs on the outside. 7. KEV​IN LEMAN - HAVE A NEW YOU BY FRIDAY An inspirational read but also one that has wonderfully practical advice about becoming self-confident. You begin by accepting the truth about yourself (Monday), and move on from there to identifying the lies you tell yourself (Wednesday), and so on. This is a great read, because Dr. Leman is so funny while he literally shows you how to transform yourself into a confident person in 5 days. 8. MARK GOULSTON - GET OUT OF YOUR OWN WAY We are our own worst enemies this old saying comes to life in Goulstons great book. Even though it is a fun read with lots of examples we can see in ourselves, it is packed with loads of practical advice for overcoming fear, anxiety, and a host of other emotions and thoughts that cause our lack of confidence. Once we slay those dragons, one by one, we emerge triumphant and confident. 9. ADAM KHAN SELF-HELP STUFF THAT WORKS Short chapters, easy to read, spliced with humor and advice for everyday situations. Khan doesnt spend any time on deep philosophical or psychological meanings for our lack of confidence he nails the behaviors and how to change them. 350 pages of golden nuggets! 10.RICHARD MACHOWICZ UNLEASH THE WARRIOR WITHIN Machowicz was a Navy SEAL in his former life and has now translated all of what he learned to very practical steps for everyday people to gain self-confidence and realize their goals. For example, you complete every task on time, no matter what the conditions and your approach is always based on a single thought failure is not an option. And its all about the weapons you choose knowledge, attitude, and commitment. The analogy to being a warrior on the battle field and being a warrior in life is really quite stunning.

Thomas & Ely's Three Paradigm in The State of Diversity Within The Essay

Thomas & Ely's Three Paradigm in The State of Diversity Within The Organization - Essay Example The CEO, Prince (Paine et al., 2008) has been able to turnaround the prospects of the company by ensuring a culture of shared responsibility. He has been not only been able to exploit the tenets of the diverse workforce but it has been aligned to work in tandem with work perspective vis-a-vis its long term and short term goals. The paradigm, connecting diversity to work perspectives broadly refers to the way cultural differences are incorporated within the business strategies to enhance productivity and business outcome. In the current environment of rapid globalization, managing diversity is one of the most critical elements of success. Citigroup has expanded its business across the globe and to maintain a competitive advantage within the industry, managing diversity has become the need of the hour. It, therefore, exploits socio-cultural paradigms of the region to improve its business outcome, both within the US and also in its offshore business. It promotes a better understanding o f cross-cultural understanding to resolve workplace conflicts. At the same time, it takes cognizance of cultural differences and exploits human competency for optimal performance. The other two paradigms: The discrimination and fairness paradigm; and the access and legitimacy paradigm, are not relevant in the case of Citigroup. The first paradigm ensures that diversity is included in the workforce.

Contemporary Brand Management report on (Rolex the luxury watches Essay

Contemporary Brand Management report on (Rolex the luxury watches brand) - Essay Example There have been diverse literatures that validate the success or demise of products and services due to ineffective strategies employed on the sophisticated elements needed for branding. At the same time there are organisations that have attained exemplary leadership and high quality corporate image through an interplay of crucial branding factors that promoted the products into a legendary platform status that survived tests of time. The objective of the management report is to evaluate the significant components and strategies used by Rolex, luxury watches in their Branding. The report will be structured in sections that would initially determine the significant theoretical frameworks for branding and a provision for background information for Rolex. Crucial data that affects to the brand’s target market, major competitors, and strategies will be discussed. Brand position, analysis, advertising, and management recommendations will subsequently follow by providing brief conce ptual backgrounds of each topic prior to investigating into respective applications of the concepts on the brand, Rolex. The brand management recommendation section will suggest an innovative idea that is perceived to increase brand awareness and consumer image with justifiable support from theories on branding. Section 1. The Brand Kotler (1980, p.366), defined a brand as â€Å"a name, term, sign, symbol, design or a combination of these that identifies the makers or seller of the product or services and to differentiate them from those of competitors†. McCarthy (1975) has used the exact same parallel definition with a disparity in the word ‘differentiate’ to ‘distinguish’ (p. 255) as a crucial element for branding. These theories however fail to capture the complexity and depth that branding involves. Brands are considered a significant part of decisions involving product development that organisations exert strategic efforts to creatively and inno vatively design the brand to identify the product and to differentiate them from others (McCarthy, 1975). It is differentiated from the company in terms of the identification it provides to the product, distinct from its manufacturer or producer. A company, as the manufacturer could be a producer of different products that require different brands to separate one from the other. One of the eminent functions of brands is to enable organisations to project a good image of prime quality for their products and therefore encourage clientele to make repeated purposes with convenience. There have been exemplary brands in contemporary markets that have continued to gain respect, loyalty and trust of the clients through time. For example as reported by Business Week the brands that belong to the best global brands is Rolex with a rank of 72 out of 100 and a value of $4,237 million (Business Week, 2006). According to the report, â€Å"Rolex remains the ultimate luxury brand worldwide, and wi th strong sales in China, its appeal continues to spread† (Business Week, 2006, par. 4). 1.1 Historical Background of Rolex The official website of Rolex traced its legendary success from the creative entrepreneurial talent of its founder, Hans Wilsdorf (Rolex: The Origins, n.d, par. 1). With ideas that started from the desire to make watches more precise with self-winding options and more professionalised to be used in diverse activities and

Hate Speech Summary Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Hate Speech Summary - Essay Example However, there are those who say that speech should be restricted if it encourages hatred or prejudice against someone of a different race, sex, religious group, or sexual orientation. One example that the article uses is that of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor from 1987. Racist fliers were distributed that used foul language such as saucer lips, porch monkeys, and jigaboos. Many universities responded to this outrage by banning hate speech through the use of speech codes. The reasoning for this is that hate speech may encourage people to go out and attack certain individuals based on their ethnic or religious background. The article uses statistics to prove that the number of hate groups is on the rise in the U.S. Some of the major groups that it mentions include the Ku Klux Klan, neo-Nazis, and the Nation of Islam. The problem with acting against these hate speech groups is that it would be a violation of their First Amendment rights, which protects them from prosecution fo r any words that they might say about another group of people. In my opinion, banning people from freedom of speech opens up a whole can of worms. This is because once you ban one group from speaking out, it would only seem fair to ban the next one, and the next one, and so on. Also, the matter of who is the authority to decide what type of speech is allowed and what type of speech is not allowed becomes a dividing issue. In fact, cracking down on hate speech could result in an increase of even more hate speech; this is one outcome that those who champion restricting hate speech would not want to see. I agree with the views of David Cole, a law professor at Georgetown University in Washington D.C., who says that the restriction of hate speech would only take away the rights of one particular group only to give even more rights to another. This would be biased because it would be treated

To what extent does the media assist or limit the conduct of military operations Essay Example for Free

To what extent does the media assist or limit the conduct of military operations Essay Some form of controversy has been regularly generated between the press and the military especially the question of media access to the battlefield. Conflict between reporter and the military is not new. As war correspondents became of age in the Civil War, the military began its determination to protect its operations. The media have often called this determination â€Å"censorship. † The military/media relationship is seriously degraded because of mistrust between the two entities. Sources of this mistrust are analyzed, to include: cultural differences; the perception of biased reporting; misunderstanding and ignorance; and speculation. In any operation there are many aspects of military/media relations which include operational security, the press pool system, logistics, public opinion, etc. However, there has been animosity between journalists and the military. The military frequently views press as offering only potential harm not benefit (Carruthers, 2000). The press, on the other hand, has a history of being critical of the military. For instance, U.  S. media and professional associations insist that the military must accommodate the press in wartime situations, for three good reasons which include: the press has always been present when troops have been involved; the public has a fundamental right to know; and restrictions put violate the First Amendment. Yet on some ground between the military operational requirement for information to be made available only on a basis of needing to know, and the right of the citizens of a democracy to know about what their military is doing, lies a middle ground (Dandeker, 1995). Generally, soldiers understand fighting and journalists understand communicating, yet none of them knows that the political impact of combat depends on how the fighting is communicated. Hence both sides need one another. Key civilian and military leaders have now embraced the fact that successful inclusion of the press to ensure adequate coverage is not an optional luxury, but rather is a necessity in todays information age and the expectations of the citizens. The benefits gained from the news media coverage of military operations outweigh the drawbacks, and therefore press coverage should be permitted. There is no set solution appropriate for every situation, since every war is unique. But improvements in military planning, officer training, and press indoctrination will help solve some of the current problems in the military/media relationship. How media assist the conduct of military operations In todays technology-driven world, the media is a fourth dimension added to air, land, and sea and the operational commander must contend with this potent entity to be relevant. Moreover, the media is an accelerator of immense importance in todays world in respect to the operational factors of time, space, and force affecting the operational commander decision-making. The reason why the military should engage the media is probably best stated by General (Ret) Dennis J.  Reimer in a 1997 memorandum to his senior Army leaders. â€Å"Our success, as an institution, depends on the degree to which all senior leaders communicate clearly to the people. It is in fact part of your METL [Mission Essential Task List],† said Reimer. To begin with, the military has the need for improved defense related public relations. The media is an important force multiplier, and it must be harnessed to win the battle of the hearts and minds of the people and keep them fully abreast of developments at home and abroad. This will ensure that they are not misled by rumors, propaganda and dis-information; this could happen if they do not have access to a truthful and speedy account of the facts and the progress of events. Secondly, the media is important in projecting the operations to the remotest parts of the country and arousing nationalism and patriotic fervour in the nation. Thirdly, having a media team at each level of command down to the battalion level is of great help to project the activities of the armed forces through films and other means. The procedure evolved provide for regular operational briefings by the operational/intelligence staff at headquarters or by the concerned corps/divisional commanders. Fourthly, training selected service officers and men in media work by running suitable courses for them on a regular basis and also media personnel need to understand the organisation, role, ethos and fighting capabilities of the armed forces and the characteristics of its various units is most beneficial (that is , media-military interface). Fifthly, limiting journalists access to a war can also work against the military. Galloway pointed to the Persian Gulf War as an example. When the war was over you had no proof of the efficacy of your efforts and your soldiers efforts to take up on [Capitol] Hill at a very difficult time when troop cuts, budget cuts, drawbacks are all under way, he said. Despite the constant tension and sometimes opposing goals of the military and the media, the militarys primary role is to support and defend the Constitution of the nation, the First Amendment of which is freedom of speech and of the press. Finally, having media-military interface there is hope for prompt and timely information in an age when news is increasingly being transmitted and used instantly, with TV news being broadcast on the hour, every hour (Krishna, 2000). How media limit the conduct of military operations The longstanding conflict between the news medias need for access and the militarys need for secrecy has continued during the war on terrorism, journalists agree. If anything, the tension between th e two groups has gotten worse. For instance, during the war in Afghanistan, Pentagon senior spokesman Bryan Whitman said the military understands reporters concerns but that the top priority must be troop safety. Ensuring †¦ that what we do with the news media in the Pentagon or in the field doesnt do anything to jeopardize the success of the operation or endanger the personnel that are participating in the military operation †¦ has to be balanced all the time with †¦ how much reporting can be taking place at any given moment, he said. (Wilcox Jr, 2002) But author and former war correspondent Joe Galloway, whose book We Were Soldiers Once †¦ and Young documents the first major U. S. ground battle of the Vietnam War, said that Vietnam changed the mindset of the military because of the open and unrestricted reporting done by journalists. Most of the times, the military is willing to learn, the journalists are not; pointed out by Galloway as evidenced by the numerous invitations he has received from the military to speak about the subject. He has not received any invitations to speak to news organizations or journalism schools. The media is also believed by them reporting from the battlefield turn the people against the military and against the war. Galloway also adds that, while Vietnam remains a model for him in terms of military/media relations, U. S. led military operations in Grenada and Panama were disastrous in terms of the medias ability to cover those conflicts because of military restrictions. Also, keeping the media at a greater distance from combat operations than security requires would contribute to a bitterly adversarial military-media relationship. This, in turn, would likely hurt the war effort in the long run by inviting relentlessly negative coverage and fanning public distrust. Furthermore, the media are a fact of military operations and here to stay as well as being vital to all democratic governments seeking to discharge their duty to explain. Military control of information during war time is also a major contributing factor to propaganda, especially when the media go along with it without question. The military recognizes the values of media and information control very well. The military often manipulates the mainstream media, by restricting or managing what information is presented and hence what the public are told. For them it is paramount to control the media. This can involve all manner of activities, from organizing media sessions and daily press briefings, or through providing managed access to war zones, to even planting stories. Over time then, the way that the media covers conflicts degrades in quality, critique and objectiveness. As one military puts it,† Information is the currency of victory. † From a military’s perspective, information warfare is another front on which a battle must be fought. However, as well as needing to deceive adversaries, in order to maintain public support, information to their own public must no doubt be managed as well. That makes sense from a military perspective. Sometimes the public can be willing to sacrifice detailed knowledge. But that can also lead to unaccountability and when information that is presented has been managed, propaganda is often the result. Finally, the military have had to adapt since 1982 is the speed of reporting made possible by modern communications. Today, a reporter with a digital camera, a laptop and a satellite phone, all of which can fit in a day sack, can file stories minutes after events and even live if they have a bit more by way of equipment. Control is much more difficult if reporters dont need military’s help to file a story. Because they can act so quickly, and are expected to do so by their editors or newsrooms, military dont have the time to ponder at length our response to events, we must respond quickly whilst still, crucially, maintaining accuracy. For instance, this happened on TELIC 1 (Iraq) but, it was not a great success. Conclusion Throughout history, no matter the time or war, there has always been a conflict between the military and the media. The media’s right to a free press conflicts with the military’s concern for operational security. It serves no constructive purpose, however, to ignore this conflict nor does it serve a purpose by adding to it. Therefore, it is time for the military to accept the media as part of the battlefield of the 21st century, and to understand and prepare for the media as it does for other battlefield elements. Commanders should ensure that their troops receive not only the equipment, but also the training to survive in adverse battlefield environments. The point here is to point out that no matter whether the military likes or dislikes the media, the media will be a part of the battlefield environment just as the weather. As is the case with inclement weather, the better the commander plans and prepares his or her troops, as well as themselves for the media, the better they and their troops will do when faced with a reporter. If we are going to get this right, the military must not resort unnecessarily to secrecy or to lightly tarring independent journalists as disloyal. The media should not frivolously cry censorship. And each should work harder to understand the views and accommodate the needs of the other.

Statistical techniques for cryptanalysis

Statistical techniques for cryptanalysis Introduction: Cryptography is the art of writing messages in code or cipher, to disguise, and thereby secure the content of a particular stream of text. When encrypted, a plain text message can be revealed only through the use of the key used to encode the cipher. Cryptography does not mask the existence of the message, but does disguise its content [1]. In contrary, cryptanalysis is the art of recovering the plaintext of a message without access to the key. Successful cryptanalysis may recover the plaintext or the key for a specific ciphertext [2]. There are five general types of cryptanalytic attacks:- 1. Ciphertext-only attack: In this type of attack, the cryptanalyst has a series of cipher texts encrypted using the same encryption algorithm. Then, the cryptanalyst deduces the plain text of each of the cipher texts or identifies the key used to encrypt the cipher text 2. Known-plaintext attack: In this type of attack, the cryptanalyst has a series of ciphertext and their corresponding plaintext values encrypted using a specific key. The cryptanalyst then tries to deduce the key by forming a relationship between the ciphertext and plaintext entries. 3. Chosen-plaintext attack: In this type of attack, the cryptanalyst not only has access to the ciphertext and associated plaintext for several messages, but he also chooses the plaintext that gets encrypted. His job is to deduce the key used to encrypt the messages or an algorithm to decrypt any new messages encrypted with the same key. 4. Frequency analysis: It is the study of thefrequency of lettersor groups of letters in aciphertext. The method is used as an aid to breakingclassical ciphers. Frequency analysis is based on the fact that, in any given stretch of written language, certain letters and combinations of letters occur with varying frequencies. 5. Rubber-hose cryptanalysis: The cryptanalyst threatens, tortures or blackmails the person who has the key until they give it up. Among the many cryptanalytic techniques, frequency analysis or frequency counting is the most basic technique applied to break substitution cipher based algorithms, among the varied list of attack techniques. The basic use of frequency analysis is to first count the frequency of ciphertext letters and then associate guessed plaintext letters with them. More complex use of statistics can be conceived, such as considering counts of pairs of letters digrams, trigrams, and so on. This is done to provide more information to the cryptanalyst. It exploits the weakness in the substitution cipher algorithm to encrypt similar plaintext letters to similar ciphertext letters. Frequency analysis based cryptanalysis techniques were used to break ciphers based on the traditional cryptographic algorithms, but they do not work well with the modern block cipher based cryptographic algorithms. Statistical properties of English: Frequency analysis based cryptanalysis uses the fact that natural language is not random in nature and single alphabetic based substitution does not hide the statistical properties of the natural language. In the case of encryption using monoalphabetic substitution, to start deciphering the encryption it is useful to get a frequency count of all the letters. The most frequent letter may represent the most common letter in English, E followed by T, A, O and I whereas the least frequent are Q, Z and X [7]. Statistical patterns in a language can be detected by tracing the redundancy of the text in the language. It has been realized that various universal regularities characterize text from different domains and languages. The best-known is Zipfs law on the distribution of word frequencies [5], according to which the frequency of terms in a collection decreases inversely to the rank of the terms. Zipfs law has been found to apply to collections of written documents in virtually all langu ages [5]. English language characters have a very high redundancy rate when used for cryptographic substitutions. If we have a message encrypted using the substitution cipher that needs to be cracked, we can use frequency analysis. In other words, if the sender has used an encryption scheme, that replaces one letter in the English to be another letter in English, we can still recognize the original plain text as, the frequency characteristics of the original plain text will be passed on the new cipher text characters [4]. To apply frequency analysis, we will need to know the frequency of every letter in the English alphabet, or the frequency characteristics of the language used by the sender to encrypt the text. Below is a list of average frequencies for letters in the English language. So, for example, the letter E accounts for 12.7% of all letters in English, whereas Z accounts for 0.1 %. All the frequencies are tabulated and plotted below:- For example, let us consider the following sentence: We study Cryptography as part of our course. Using a simple substitution cipher, let us consider the following: a->c , b-> d, c->e..w->y, x->z, y->a, z->b So, the cipher text becomes: yg uvwfa etarvqitcrja cu rctv qh qwt eqwtug. A simple frequency analysis of the cipher text can be carried out and the results are as given below: The above data can be used by a cryptanalyst to identify the key or the plaintext by using simple substitution to the cipher text till a suitable plaintext value is not identified. Apart from the use of mono alphabetic frequency analysis, cryptanalysts also identify frequency of paired letters better known as digram frequency and that of three letter words, called as Trigram frequencies. These help the cryptanalyst to exploit the redundant features of English language to break the cipher. The most common Digrams (in order): th, he, in, en, nt, re, er, an, ti, es, on, at, se, nd, or, ar, al, te, co, de, to, ra, et, ed, it, sa, em, ro. The most common Trigrams (in order): the, and, tha, ent, ing, ion, tio, for, nde, has, nce, edt, tis, oft, sth, men Table 1: Digram and Trigram Frequencies [6] These help in identifying the most commonly used terms in English to break a cipher. The digram frequencies are used to break two letter words such as an, to, of etc and the trigram frequencies are used to break three letter words such as the, are, for etc. After breaking a significant two letter and three letter words, it is practically east to identify the key from the cracked values of plaintext by matching the corresponding values in the ciphertext. This huge weakness in English language is used to break cipher texts encrypted using simple algorithms that make use of English alphabets. In practice the use of frequency analysis consists of first counting the frequency of ciphertext letters and then assigning guessed plaintext letters to them. Many letters will occur with roughly the same frequency, so a cipher with Xs may indeed map X onto R, but could also map X onto G or M. But some letters in every language using letters will occur more frequently; if there are more Xs in the c iphertext than anything else, its a good guess for English plaintext that X is a substitution for E. But T and A are also very common in English text, so X might be either of them also [4]. Thus the cryptanalyst may need to try several combinations of mappings between ciphertext and plaintext letters. Once the common single letter frequencies have been resolved, then paired patterns and other patterns are solved. Finally, when sufficient characters have been cracked, then the rest of the text can be cracked using simple substitution. Frequency analysis is extremely effective against the simpler substitution ciphers and will break astonishingly short cipher texts with ease. Attacks on Traditional algorithms Encrypting using traditional algorithms have been defenseless against cryptanalytic attacks as they use bit by bit encryption, which can be easily broken using frequency analysis based attacks. 1. Caesar Cipher: Considering the case of one of the oldest ciphers, the Caesar Cipher, this cipher replaces one letter of the plaintext with another to produce the ciphertext, and any particular letter in the plaintext will always, turn into the same letter in the cipher for all instance of the plaintext character. For instance, all Bs will turn into Fs. Frequency analysis is based on the fact that certain letters, and combinations of letters, appear with characteristic frequency in essentially all texts in a particular language [9]. For instance, in the English language, E is very common, while X is not. Likewise, ST, NG, TH, and QU are common combinations, while XT, NZ, and QJ are very uncommon, or even impossible to occur in English. This clearly shows how the Caesar cipher can be broken with ease by just identifying the frequency of each letter in the cipher text. A message encrypted using Caesar cipher is extremely insecure as an exhaustive cryptanalysis on the keys easily breaks the code. 2. Substitution Ciphers: The Caesar cipher forms a subset of the entire set of substitution ciphers. Here, the key of the encryption process is the permutation of all the twenty six characters of the English alphabets. Rather than choosing a particular key for all encryption process, we use a different key for successive encryption processes. This technique increases the number of possible key to 26!, which is about 4 X 1026, which eliminates the exhaustive cryptanalysis attack on the keyspace [7]. To decrypt the cipher the, statistical frequency distribution of single letter occurrence in English language is analyzed. Then, the digram and trigram frequencies of standard English words are compared with the frequencies of the trigrams in the cipher to finally reconstruct the key and in turn decipher the text. This is an efficient method to break the substitution cipher as, each plaintext letter is represented by the same ciphertext letter in the message. So, all properties of plaintext are carried on to the cipher text. 3. Vigenere Cipher: In a Vigenere cipher, there is greater security as, a given plaintext letter is not always represented by the same ciphertext letter. This is achieved by using a sequence of n different substitution ciphers to encrypt a message. This technique increases the possible number of keys from 26! to (26!)n. Although this was considered to be unbreakable, the Kasiskis method of attacking a Vigenere cipher yielded successful results of decrypting the message. According to this method, the first step is to find the key length (n). Find identical segments of plain text that get encrypted to the same ciphertext, when they are b positions apart, where b=0 mod n. According to Kasiski, the next step is to find all the identical segments of length greater than 3, and record the distance between them [7]. This can then be used to predict the length of the key (n). Once this is found the key is found by an exhaustive search of the keyspace for all possible combinations to identify the key. This is done by substituting all possible values for n to generate substrings. Once the substring is formed, the plaintext message can be automatically identified by using the back substitution of the key into the cipher [7]. This can be done for all possible values for n until finally arriving at the actual key, which reveals the plaintext that was encrypted. This method can take a long time to break the key to identify the plaintext incase the key length is very long, as the keyspace value would be large for larger keys. Defeating frequency based attacks: Frequency based attacks have been used for a long time to break traditional encryption algorithms. It uses the fact that, traditional encryption algorithms do not eliminate the statistical properties of the language upon encryption. The first way to defeat frequency based attacks is to encrypt blocks of characters at a time rather than single letters [7]. This would ensure that, the same text in the plaintext is not encrypted to the same text in the ciphertext upon encryption. For e.g., if we use the Caesar cipher encryption scheme, the word ADDITIONAL will be encrypted to CFFKVKQPCN, we can see that the alphabets A, D and I are repeated more than once and at each instance, the encryption scheme used always encrypts A to C, D to F and I to K. This can clearly be used during frequency analysis to analyze the redundancy of the characters and in turn map them back to get the original plaintext character. Using a block encryption scheme, one can be satisfied that, this phenomenon does not occur as, in a block encryption scheme, the whole plaintext is broken into chunks or blocks of data, that is fed in as input to the encryption algorithm. The algorithm then, reads the input block along with the key and encrypts th e complete block of plaintext, rather than individual characters, so there is a smaller chance that two blocks will produce the same chunk of ciphertext. The second way of defeating frequency analysis is to make use of synonyms of words [7], rather than repeating the same word over and over again in a sentence. There are a lot of words in English, which have more than one synonym, thus providing with a set of words to be used as convenient in the particular context. To help in the selection of a synonym, grammar checking would have to be used to ensure that, the meaning expressed in the sentence is not altered by changing the words. Attacks against this technique could include creating a list of the best synonyms, but this would not help the attacker as different word could be used at each instance the same meaning needs to be expressed, defeating the benefit of this technique. This technique of using alternate words to represent common words to defeat cryptanalysis attacks is called Homophones [7] in cryptography. A third technique that can effectively defeat cryptanalysis is Polyalphabetic substitution, that is, the use of several alphabets to encrypt the message [3], rather than using the same substitution technique again and again. The Vigenere Cipher is a form of Polyalphabetic cipher. This ensures that, no two characters are encrypted to the same ciphertext alphabet in the same message. This ensures that, direct frequency analysis of the cipher is not possible to successfully retrieve the original message. However, other techniques need to be used to identify the key length, if this is possible, then frequency analysis attack could be used to identify the original plaintext message successfully. Finally, a possible technique that could be used to defeat frequency analysis is to encrypt a single character of plaintext with two ciphertext characters [3]. Upon encountering the same character twice, then different characters should be used to encrypt the message. This can be achieved by using a key size double that of the plaintext message and then encrypting the same plaintext with two values in the key and save them together for the same plaintext character. This would ensure that no two plaintext characters will have the same ciphertext character, defeating the frequency analysis method of breaking the cipher. Modern encryption algorithms and cryptanalysis: Modern cryptographic algorithms take a better approach in defeating frequency analysis based attacks. The cryptographic algorithms nowadays use block encryption, rather than encrypting characters bit by bit, thus eliminating the redundancy of ciphertext alphabets for similar plaintext alphabets. Block ciphers are the central tool in the design of protocols for shared-key cryptography. A block cipher is a function E: {0, 1}k ÃÆ'- {0, 1}n à ¢Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚   {0, 1}n. This notation means that E takes two inputs, one being a k-bit string and the other an n-bit string, and returns an n-bit string [2]. The first input is the key, which is used to encrypt the secret message. The second string is called the plaintext, and the output is called a ciphertext. The key-length k and the block-length n are parameters associated to a specific block cipher. They vary from block cipher to block cipher, and depend on the design of the algorithm itself. Some of the most trusted symmetric ciphers inclu de AES, Triple-DES, Blowfish, CAST and IDEA. In public-key cryptography, the most commonly used cryptosystems are RSA and the Diffie-Hellman systems, which have not been found to have any vulnerabilities till date. Preferably, the block cipher E is a public specified algorithm. In typical usage, a random key K is chosen and kept secret between a pair of users. The function EK is used by the sender to encrypt the message, for a given key, before sending it to the intended receiver, who decrypts the message using the same key [2]. Security relies on the secrecy of the key. So, at first, one might think of the cryptanalysts goal as recovering the key K given some ciphertext, intercepted during transmission. The block cipher should be designed to make this task computationally difficult. In order to achieve this, the algorithms that are used to encrypt the message must be designed with a high degree of mathematical complexity, which cannot be reversed to obtain the plaintext from a known ciphertext. The length of the key used during encryption of a message plays an important role in deciding the effectiveness of an algorithm. Key length is conventionally measured in bits, and most of the well known strong ciphers have key lengths between 128 and 256 bits. A cipher is considered strong if, after years of attempts to find a weakness in the algorithm, there is no known effective cryptanalytic attack against it. This indicates that, the most efficient way of breaking an encrypted message without knowing the key used to encrypt it is to brute force it, i.e. trying all possible keys. The effort required to break an encrypted message is determined by the number of possible keys, known as thekeyspace. Knowing the speed of the computer to break the key, it is easy to calculate how long it would take to search the keyspace to break a particular cipher [2]. For example, considering a cipher that uses 128-bit keys, each bit can either be 0 or 1, so, there are 2128 or 3ÃÆ'-1038 keys approximately. Suppose we imagine that about ten billion computers are assigned the task of breaking the code, each capable of testing ten billion keys per second, then, the task of running through the entire keyspace would take around 3ÃÆ'-1018seconds, which is about 100 billion years. But, in fact, it would be necessary to run through only half the keyspace to hit upon the correct key, which would take around 50 billion years. This is longer than the estimated age of the universe according to modern cosmology, which is about 15 billion years [2]. This shows that, it is practically infeasible to crack modern cryptographic algorithms using Brute Force attacks. So, one can imagine the effectiveness of the modern cryptographic algorithms and their resistance towards cryptanalytic attacks. Conclusions: Cryptography has progressed in recent years and modern cryptographic algorithms have proved to be successful in defending against most forms of cryptanalytic attacks. Frequency analysis based attacks have proved to exploit the weaknesses in traditional encryption algorithms into revealing the plaintext message that was encrypted using them. The natural language used to encrypt messages is not considered to be random in nature, which is exploited by frequency counting based attacks. Based upon the frequency of letters that occur in the ciphertext, one can guess the plaintext characters due to their redundancy rate and the specific combination of letters in a word. This weakness can be repelled by using stream ciphers, which do not carry the redundancy in the plaintext to the ciphertext. Modern block cipher, encrypt a chunk of plaintext into ciphertext and vice versa, eliminating the redundancy of language used in encryption. Although the algorithm plays an important part, it is the key length used in block ciphers that helps in repelling cryptanalysis. Modern ciphers use a key length starting from 128 bits, eliminating the possibility of a brute force attack to decrypt the message. The higher the key length, the more time it takes to break these ciphers. These advantages have made modern cryptographic algorithms more popular among the security community. No known weaknesses have been found in these algorithms yet, that may allow one to identify the plaintext message. Bibliography: [1] Stallings, W., Cryptography and Network Security, Chapter 1, Third Edition, Prentice Hall, 2003 [2] Schneier, B., Applied Cryptography, Chapter 1, Second Edition, John Wiley Sons, New York City, New York, USA, 1996 [3] Hart, G.W., To Decode Short Cryptograms, Communications of the ACM 37(9), 1994, pp. 102-108 [4] Lee, K.W., Teh, C.E., Tan, Y.L., Decrypting English Text Using Enhanced Frequency Analysis, National Seminar on Science, Technology and Social Sciences (STSS 2006), Kuantan, Pahang, Malaysia [5] Zipf, GK., Human Behaviour and the Principle of Least Effort, 1949, Cambridge: Addison Wesley Publications. [6] Lewand, R.E., Cryptological Mathematics, The Mathematical Association of America, 2000, Pages 345-346 [7] Stamp, M and Low, R.M., Applied Cryptanalysis, 2007, Chapter 1 and 2, John Wiley Sons, New York City, New York, USA [8] http://www.simonsingh.net, Online internet frequency analysis tools [9] http://www.textalyser.net, online text analysis and frequency analysis information