Native American Encryption?!
Lefty
lefty at apple.com
Wed Oct 13 09:56:42 PDT 1993
> I remember hearing many years ago that one of the branches of the armed
>aervices during WWII used a native American -- Cherokee? Apache? --
>language to communicate. The Japanese (the story goes) went nuts trying to
>crack the code -- unsuccessfully.
It was Navajo.
> Two questions:
> 1) Can anyone give me a reference for this story (assuming it's true)?
There was a recent (i.e. within the past year) article in Smithsonian
magazine on the "code talkers". I believe only one or two of them are
still surviving.
This sort of thing doesn't constitute what would properly be called a
cipher; it's either a code, or perhaps a species of steganography.
--
Lefty (lefty at apple.com)
C:.M:.C:., D:.O:.D:.
More information about the cypherpunks-legacy
mailing list