DECRYPT Publications

2024

• Beáta Megyesi, Alicia Fornés, Nils Kopal, Benedek Láng, Michelle Waldispühl, Vasily Mikhalev and Bernhard Esslinger. Historical Cryptology. In Bernhard Esslinger (ed), Learning and Experiencing Cryptography with CrypTool and SageMath , Artech, 2024. [fulltext]

2023

• Láng, B. (2023) Transfer of knowledge in the field of universal language schemes 18th-19th centuries. In Krász, Lilla (ed.): Sciences between Tradition and Innovation – Historical Perspectives/Wissenschaften zwischen Tradition und Innovation – historische Perspektiven. Wien: Praesens Verlag, 2023, 37-55

• Láng, B. (2023) Valódi és ál-kódfejtések a titkosírások történetében (Real and fake codebreaking in the history of cryptology) In: Bárdos, Dániel; Tuboly, Ádám Tamás (eds.) Emberarcú tudomány : Áltudományok ésösszeesküvés-elméletek szorításában. Budapest, Magyarország : Typotex Kiadó.

• Lasry, G. (2023) Armand de Bourbon Poly-Homophonic Cipher - 1649. Histocrypt 2023. Published by Linköping Electronic Press. https://doi.org/10.3384/ecp195699

• Lasry, G., Biermann, N. & Tomokiyo, S. (2023) Deciphering Mary Stuart’s lost letters from 1578-1584, Cryptologia, DOI: 10.1080/01611194.2022.2160677

• Megyesi, B., Fornés, A., Kopal, N., Láng, B., Waldispühl, M., Mikhalev, V., and Esslinger, B. (2023) Historical Cryptology. Chapter 3 from the book "Learning and Experiencing Cryptography with CrypTool and SageMath", Artech House, December 2023
• Megyesi, B., Sikora, J., Fornmark, F., Waldispühl, M., Kopal, N., and Mikhalev, V. (2023) Historical Language Models in Cryptanalysis: Case Studies on English and German. In the Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Historical Cryptology. HistoCrypt 2023. pp. 120-129.

• Mikhalev, V., Kopal, N., Esslinger, B., Waldispühl, M. Láng,B., and Megyesi B. (2023) What is the Code for the Code? – Historical Cryptology Terminology. In the Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Historical Cryptology. HistoCrypt 2023. pp. 130-138. 

• Souibgui, M. A., Biswas, S., Mafla, A., Biten, A. F., Fornés, A., Kessentini, Y., Lladós, J., Gomez, L., & Karatzas, D. (2023). Text-DIAE: A Self-Supervised Degradation Invariant Autoencoder for Text Recognition and Document Enhancement. Proceedings of the AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence, 37(2), 2330-2338. https://doi.org/10.1609/aaai.v37i2.25328

• Souibgui, M. A., Torras, P., Chen, J.,  and Fornes. A. (2023) An Evaluation of Handwritten Text Recognition Methods for Historical Ciphered Manuscripts. Proceedings of 7th International Workshop on Historical Document Imaging and Processing (HIP).

• Torras, P.,  Souibgui, M. A., Chen, J., Biswas, S., and Fornes. A. (2023) Segmentation-Free Alignment of Arbitrary Symbol Transcripts to Images. Proceedings of 15th IAPR International Workshop on Graphics Recognition (GREC).

• Waldispühl, M. Variation and Change. (2023) In Condorelli, M. & Rutkowska, H., The Cambridge Handbook of Historical Orthography. Cambridge: University Press.

2022

• Dahlke, C. and Megyesi, B. (eds) (2022) Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Historical Cryptology. NEALT Proceedings Series 49. HistoCrypt 2022. Published by Linköping Electronic Press. 
• Fürthauer, N., Mikhalev, V., Kopal, N., Esslinger, B., Lampesberger, H., and Hermann, E. (2022) Evaluating Deep Learning Techniques for Known-Plaintext Attacks on the Complete Columnar Transposition Cipher. In the Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Historical Cryptology. HistoCrypt 2022. [https://ecp.ep.liu.se/index.php/histocrypt/article/view/399] 
• Gambardella, M.E., Megyesi, B., and Pettersson, E. (2022) Identifying Cleartext in Historical Ciphers. In Proceedings of the Workshop on Language Technologies for Historical and Ancient Languages. LT4HALA 2022. 
• Héder, M. and Megyesi, B. (2022) The DECODE Database of Historical Ciphers and Keys: Version 2. In Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Historical Cryptology. HistoCrypt 2022. 
• Jemni, S. K., Souibgui, M. A., Kessentini, Y., & Fornés, A. (2022). Enhance to Read Better: A Multi-Task Adversarial Network for Handwritten Document Image Enhancement. Pattern Recognition, vol. 123. [https://doi.org/10.1016/j.patcog.2021.108370] 
• Kopal, N. and Megyesi, B. (2022) Die Kryptografen des Papstes: Entschlüsselt: Geheime Nachrichten aus dem Vatikan. Published in c't 3/22 auf Seite 134. 
• Kopal N. and Waldispühl M. (2022) Deciphering Three Diplomatic Letters Sent by Maximilian II in 1575. Cryptologia 46 (2), 103-127. https://doi.org/10.1080/01611194.2020.1858370.
• Lasry, G. (2022) Cracking SIGABA in Less than 24 Hours on a Consumer PC. Cryptologia. [https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01611194.2021.1989522] 
• Lasry, G. (2022) Analysis of a 19th Century French Cipher Created by Major Josse. Cryptologia. [https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01611194.2021.1996484] 
• Láng, B. (2022) Colonnele Frank's Indecipherable Chiffre. In the Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Historical Cryptology. HistoCrypt 2022.
• Lehofer, A. (2022) Applying Hierarchical Clustering to Homophonic Substitution Ciphers using Historical Corpora, Cryptologia, 46:5, 422-438. [https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01611194.2021.1918801]
• Magnifico, G., Megyesi, B., Souibgui, M.A., Chen, J., and Fornés, A. (2022) Lost in Transcription of Graphic Signs in Ciphers. In Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Historical Cryptology. HistoCrypt 2022. 
• Megyesi, B., Tudor, C., Kopal, N., Láng, B., Lehofer, A., and Waldispühl, M. (2022) What Was Encoded in Historical Cipher Keys in the Early Modern Era?. In Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Historical Cryptology. HistoCrypt 2022. 
• Megyesi, B., Tudor, C., Láng, B., Lehofer, A., Kopal, N., de Leeuw, K., and Waldispühl, M. (2022) Keys with Nomenclatures in the Early Modern Europe. Journal of Cryptologia UCRY 2113185. Taylor and Francis.
• Souibgui, M. A., Bensalah, A., Chen, J., Fornés, A. & Waldispühl, M. 2022. A User Perspective on HTR Methods for the Automatic Transcription of Rare Scripts. The case of Codex Runicus. ACM Journal on Computing and Cultural Heritage. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3519306
• Souibgui, M. A., Biswas, S., Jemni, S. K., Kessentini, Y., Fornés, A., Lladós, J., & Pal, U. (2022). Docentr : An End-to-End Document Image Enhancement Transformer. In the Proceedings of the 26th International Conference on Pattern Recognition (ICPR2022).
• Souibgui, M. A., Biten, A. F., Dey, S., Fornés, A., Kessentini, Y., Gomez, L., ... & Lladós, J. (2022). One-shot Compositional Data Generation for Low Resource Handwritten Text Recognition. In Winter Conference on Applications of Computer Vision (WACV). [https://openaccess.thecvf.com/content/WACV2022/html/Souibgui_One-Shot_Compositional_Data_Generation_for_Low_Resource_Handwritten_Text_Recognition_WACV_2022_paper.html] 
• Souibgui, M.A., Fornés, A., Kessentini, Y., and Megyesi, B. (2022) Few Shots Are All You Need: A Progressive Learning Approach for Low Resource Handwritten Text Recognition. Journal of Pattern Recognition Letters, vol. 160, pp. 43-49. Elsevier. 
• Waldispühl, M. Variation and Change. In Condorelli, M. & Rutkowska, H. (2022) The Cambridge Handbook of Historical Orthography. Cambridge: University Press. 

2021

• Chen, J., Souibgui, M.A., Fornés, A., and Megyesi, B. (2021). Unsupervised Alphabet Matching in Historical Encrypted Manuscript Images. In Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Historical Cryptology. HistoCrypt 2021.
• Dinnissen J. and Kopal N. (2021). Island Ramanacoil a Bridge too Far. A Dutch Ciphertext from 1674. In Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Historical Cryptology. HistoCrypt 2021.
• Kopal, N. and Waldispühl, M. (2021). Two Encrypted Diplomatic Letters Sent by Jan Chodkiewicz to Emperor Maximilian II in 1574-1575. In Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Historical Cryptology. HistoCrypt 2021.
• Láng, B. (2021).The Rohonc code: tracing a historical riddle. 161 pages, accepted for publication by Penn State University Press: April, 2021.
• Láng, B. (2021). Transfer of knowledge in the field of universal language schemes 18th-19th centuries. In Lilla Krász, ed. Science between tradition and innovation, 2021.
• Láng, B. (2021). The Rohonc code: tracing a historical riddle. University Park: Penn State University Press, 2021. [https://www.psupress.org/books/titles/978-0-271-09020-7.html]
• Lasry, G. (2021). Modern Cryptanalysis of Schlüsselgerät 41. In Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Historical Cryptology. HistoCrypt 2021.
• Lasry, G. (2021). Deciphering a Letter from the French Ambassador in Holland to Louis XIV. In Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Historical Cryptology. HistoCrypt 2021.
• Leierzopf, E., Kopal, N., Esslinger, B., Lampesberger, H. and Hermann, E. A Massive Machine-Learning Approach For Classical Cipher Type Detection Using Feature Engineering. (2021). In Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Historical Cryptology. HistoCrypt 2021.
• Megyesi, B. and Láng, B. (2021) Revealing Secrets from the Past: Studying Historical Ciphers. Abstract to Digitial History in Sweden, Dec. 9-10, 2021, Umeå University, Sweden
• Megyesi, B. and Tudor, C. (2021). Transcription of Historical Ciphers and Keys. Guidelines, version 2.0. Dept. of Linguistics and Philology, Uppsala University, Sweden. [https://cl.lingfil.uu.se/~bea/publ/transcription-guidelines-v2.pdf]
• Megyesi, B., Tudor, C., Láng, B, and Lehofer, A. (2021). Key Design in the Early Modern Era in Europe. In Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Historical Cryptology. HistoCrypt 2021.
• Pau Torras, Mohamed Ali Souibgui, Jialuo Chen, Alicia Fornés. (2021). A Transcription Is All You Need: Learning to Align through Attention. In Proceedings of the 14th IAPR International Workshop on Graphics Recognition (GREC), 2021. [https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-86198-8_11]

2020

• Bean, R., Lasry, G., and Weierud, F. (2020) Eavesdropping on the Biafra-Lisbon link – breaking historical ciphers from the Biafran war. Cryptologia [https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01611194.2020.1762261]
• Bean, R., Lasry, G., and Weierud, F. (2020) We decrypted messages from the Biafran war that have remained secret for 50 years, The Conversation, July 2020 [https://theconversation.com/we-decrypted-messages-from-the-biafran-war-that-have-remained-secret-for-50-years-142417]
• Chen, J., Souibgui, M. A., Fornés, A., and Megyesi, B. (2020) A Web-based Interactive Transcription Tool for Encrypted Manuscripts. In Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Historical Cryptology. HistoCrypt 2020. pp. 52-59. Linköping Electronic Press. 
• Kopal N. (2020) Of Ciphers and Neurons – Detecting the Type of Ciphers Using Artificial Neural Networks. In Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Historical Cryptology. HistoCrypt 2020. pp. 77-86. Linköping Electronic Press. 
• Láng, B. (2020) “Was it a Sudden Shift in Professionalization? Austrian Cryptology and a Description of the Staatskanzlei Key Collection in the Haus-, Hof- und Staatsarchiv of Vienna" In: Beata, Megyesi (ed.) In Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Historical Cryptology HistoCrypt 2020. Linköping University Electronic Press, Linköpings universitet, (2020) p. 87.
• Lasry, G. (2020) Solving a Tunny Challenge with Computerized Testery Methods. In Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Historical Cryptology. HistoCrypt 2020. 
• Lasry, G., Megyesi, B., and Kopal, N. (2020) Deciphering Papal Ciphers from the 16th to the 18th Century. Cryptologia [https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01611194.2020.1755915].
• Lasry, G., Niebel, I., and Andersson, T. (2020) Deciphering German Diplomatic and Naval Attaché Messages from 1900-1915. Cryptologia. [https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/01611194.2020.1755914?needAccess=true]
• Lehofer, A. (2020) Decrypting Historical Ciphers - A Way of Mathematical Competence Development. Opus et Educatio. [http://opuseteducatio.hu/index.php/opusHU/article/view/381/665]
• Megyesi, B. (2020a) Transcription of Ciphers and Keys. In Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Historical Cryptology. HistoCrypt 2020. pp. 106-115. Linköping Electronic Press. [https://doi.org/10.3384/ecp2020171014]
• Megyesi, B. (2020b) Transcription of Ciphers and Keys: Guidelines. Uppsala University. Sweden. [https://cl.lingfil.uu.se/~bea/publ/transcription-guidelines200221.pdf]
• Megyesi, B., Esslinger, B., Fornés, A., Kopal, N., Láng, B., Lasry, G., de Leeuw, K., Pettersson, E., Wacker, A., and Waldispühl, M. (2020) Decryption of historical manuscripts: the DECRYPT project. Cryptologia. DOI: 10.1080/01611194.2020.1716410 [https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01611194.2020.1716410?scroll=top&needAccess=true]
• Souibgui, M. A. and Kessentini Y. (2020) DE-GAN: A Conditional Generative Adversarial Network for Document Enhancement. IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence (TPAMI) DOI: 10.1109/TPAMI.2020.3022406 [https://arxiv.org/pdf/2010.08764.pdf].
• Souibgui, M. A., Kessentini, Y., and Fornés, A. (2020) A conditional GAN based approach for distorted camera captured documents recovery. In Proceedings of the 4th Mediterranean Conference on Pattern Recognition and Artificial Intelligence (MedPRAI2020) (accepted) [http://www.cvc.uab.es/people/afornes/publi/conferences/2020_MedPRAI_MSouibgui.pdf].
• Souibgui, M. A., Fornés, A., Kessentini, Y., and Tudor, C. (2020) A Few-shot Learning Approach for Historical Ciphered Manuscript Recognition. In Proceedings of the 25th International Conference on Pattern Recognition (ICPR2020) (accepted) [http://www.cvc.uab.es/people/afornes/publi/conferences/2020_ICPR_MSouibgui.pdf].
• Tudor, C, Megyesi, B, and Láng, B. (2020) Automatic Key Structure Extraction. In Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Historical Cryptology. HistoCrypt 2020. pp. 146-152. Linköping Electronic Press. 

2019

• Baró A., Chen, J., Fornés, A., and Megyesi, B. (2019) Towards a Generic Unsupervised Method for Transcription of Encoded Manuscripts. In Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Digital Access to Textual Cultural Heritage (DATeCH2019), May 2019 Brussels, Belgium. https://cl.lingfil.uu.se/~bea/publ/datech19.pdf
• Kopal, N. (2019) Cryptanalysis of Homophonic Substitution Ciphers Using Simulated Annealing with Fixed Temperature. In Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Historical Cryptology, HistoCrypt 2019, June 23-25, 2019, Mons, Belgium. NEALT Proceedings Series 37, Linköping Electronic Press. [http://www.ep.liu.se/ecp/158/012/ecp19158012.pdf]
• Láng, B. (2019) Dead ends in breaking an unknown cipher: experiences in the historiography of the Rohonc Codex Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Historical Cryptology, HistoCrypt 2019, June 23-26, 2019, Mons, Belgium, Belgium. NEALT Proceedings Series 37, Linköping Electronic Press. [https://ep.liu.se/ecp/158/006/ecp19158006.pdf]
• Lasry, G. (2019) A Practical Meet-in-the-Middle Attack on SIGABA, Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Historical Cryptology, HistoCrypt 2019, June 23-26, 2019, Mons, Belgium, Belgium. NEALT Proceedings Series 37, Linköping Electronic Press. [https://ep.liu.se/ecp/158/005/ecp19158005.pdf]
• Lasry, G. (2019) Solving a 40-Letter Playfair Challenge with CrypTool 2, Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Historical Cryptology, HistoCrypt 2019, June 23-26, 2019, Mons, Belgium. NEALT Proceedings Series 37, Linköping Electronic Press. [https://ep.liu.se/ecp/158/010/ecp19158010.pdf]
• Lasry, G., Nils Kopal, and Arno Wacker. (2019) "Cryptanalysis of Enigma double indicators with hill climbing." Cryptologia 43.4: 267-292. [https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01611194.2018.1551253]
• Megyesi, B., Blomqvist, N., and Pettersson, E. (2019) The DECODE Database: Collection of Historical Ciphers and Keys. In Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Historical Cryptology. HistoCrypt 2019, June 23-25, 2019, Mons, Belgium. NEALT Proceedings Series 37, Linköping Electronic Press. [https://cl.lingfil.uu.se/~bea/publ/decode-histocrypt-2019.pdf]
• Pettersson, E. and Megyesi, B. (2019) Matching Keys and Encrypted Manuscripts. In Proceedings of 22nd Nordic Conference on Computational Linguistics, Nodalida 2019. [https://cl.lingfil.uu.se/~bea/publ/keys-nodalida19.pdf]

Theses

• Anna Lehofer (2024) The Applicability of Hierarchical Clustering to Historical Ciphers. PhD Thesis. Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, Hungary. DOI: 10.15476/ELTE.2023.248
• Ingrid Eliasson (2023) Evaluating and Fine-Tuning a Few-Shot Model for Transcription of Historical Ciphers. Master’s thesis in Language Technology, Uppsala University. https://uu.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:1769071/FULLTEXT01.pdf
• Mohamed Ali Souibgui (2022) Document Image Enhancement and Recognition in Low Resource Scenarios: Application to Ciphers and Handwritten Text. PhD Thesis. December 1, 2022. Computer Vision Center. Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Spain.

• Filip Fornmark (2022) Models, Keys and Cryptanalysis - Evaluating historical statistical language models in cryptanalysis of homophonic substitution ciphers. Bachelor's thesis in Linguistics, Gothenburg University, Sweden.

• Justyna Sikora (2022) The Influence of Language Models on Decryption of German Historical Ciphers. Master’s thesis in Language Technology, Uppsala University.  http://www.diva-portal.org/smash/record.jsf?pid=diva2%3A1699078&dswid=1999
• Nikolina Milioni (2022) Evaluating Transcription of Ciphers with Few-Shot Learning. Master’s thesis in Language Technology, Uppsala University. Sweden.
• Giacomo Magnifico (2021) Lost in Transcription: Evaluating Clustering and Few-Shot Learning for Transcription of Historical Ciphers. Master’s thesis in Language Technology, Uppsala University. Sweden. http://www.diva-portal.org/smash/record.jsf?pid=diva2%3A1616686&dswid=-107
• Gambardella, Maria-Elena (2021) Cleartext Detection and Language Identification in Ciphers. Master’s thesis in Language Technology, Uppsala University. Sweden. https://www.diva-portal.org/smash/record.jsf?pid=diva2%3A1569329&dswid=4925 
• Weimann, Niklas (2021) Implementierung und Visualisierung verschiedener kryptografischer Handverfahren und Codes in CrypTool 2 (Engl Title: Implementation and Visualization of different cryptographic hand ciphers and codes in CrypTool 2". Bachelor's thesis in computer science. University of Siegen, Germany, [https://www.cryptool.org/assets/ctp/documents/BA_Weimann.pdf]
• Addad, Sally (2020) Implementation and Visualization of Steganography Procedures in CrypTool 2. Bachelor's thesis in business informatics. University of Mannheim, [https://www.cryptool.org/assets/ctp/documents/BA_Addad.pdf]
• Han, Renfei (2020) Using Attention-based Sequence-to-Sequence Neural Networks for Transcription of Historical Cipher Documents. Master’s thesis in Language Technology, Uppsala University, Sweden. [http://www.diva-portal.org/smash/record.jsf?pid=diva2%3A1470446&dswid=4822]
• Johansson, Kajsa (2019) Transcription of Historical Encrypted Manuscripts: Evaluation of an Automatic Interactive Transcription Tool. Bachelor thesis in Language Technology, Uppsala University, Sweden. [http://uu.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:1323635/FULLTEXT01.pdf]
• Tudor, Crina (2019) Studies of Cipher Keys from the 16th Century: Transcription, Systematisation and Analysis. Master thesis in Language Technology, Uppsala University, Sweden. [http://uu.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:1369404/FULLTEXT01.pdf]