Security

What is ROT13 and How Does it Work?

In this tutorial, we are going to see What is ROT13 and how does it work?

ROT13 (a variant of the Caesar method) is a very simple text encryption algorithm. As its name suggests, it involves shifting each letter of the text to be encrypted by 13 characters. The drawback of this encryption is that if it takes care of letters, it does not take care of numbers, symbols, and punctuation.

This is why any accentuation is removed from the text to be encrypted, and if you want to keep a correctly encrypted text, it is necessary to write the numbers in full.

In The Julius Caesar Encryption where the encryption key is N (13th letter of the alphabet), this encryption is called ROT13 (the number 13, half of 26, was chosen to be able to easily encrypt and decrypt text messages).
 

 

Advantage of ROT13:

The advantage of ROT13 is the fact that the shift is 13! The alphabet has 26 letters, and if we apply the cipher twice in a row, we get the plaintext as a result. For this reason, the alphabet must be considered circular, which means that after the letter Z we have the letter A, which greatly simplifies its use and programming since the same procedure is used for encryption and decryption.

ROT13 goes against the Kerckhoffs principle because if the enemy learns that the message has been encrypted in ROT13, he will be able to decrypt it without any problem.
 

Example of ROT13 Algorithm:

 


 
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