Algorithm Details for: Permute through All Shifts

  1. Split text into rows of the same length as the key.
  2. For each column, determine the frequencies of each letter.
  3. Take the dot product of the column frequencies with every possible shift of the standard English alphabet frequencies.
  4. The largest value is the most likely shift.
  5. Repeat the process on the next column.


Alogorithm taken from Trappe and Washington pg 22 - 23 (see sources page).