GMC News

ZOVMQLILDV FP CRK! or “Cryptology is fun!”

Submitted by: Maj. Linda Brown

ZOVMQLILDV FP CRK! This funny looking sentence is a cipher that was encoded by local students using the Classical Caesar Shift cipher. It says “Cryptology is fun!”. Students at GMC Prep high school recently completed a first course in cryptology. Cryptology is the study of coded messages. Cryptology has been in use for a long time by the military and has seen tremendous growth in the information technology arena in the past decade to encrypt data sent over networks and the world wide web. In this course, GMC students studied the classical cipher systems, as well as special devices like the Enigma machine. After learning to code and decode messages using numerous different systems, they created and presented codes of their own as a final project. The students all agreed that this course was a fun way to apply the logical reasoning and mathematical skills they had learning throughout high school and we just might see a few who decide to become cryptoanalysts some day.