A cryptanalytic attack on Vigenère cipher using genetic algorithm

With the exponential growth of networked system and its applications such as e-commerce, the demand for effective internet security is increasing. Cryptology is the science and study of systems for secret communication. It consists of two complementary fields of study: cryptography and cryptanalysis. In this paper the cryptanalysis of a poly alphabetic substitution cipher (Vigenère cipher) by applying genetic algorithms is presented. The applicability of genetic algorithms for searching the key space of encryption scheme is studied. The frequency analysis is used as an essential factor in the objective function.