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ADFGVX cipher
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Diagram explaining the German ADFGVX cipher from World War I, showing a biliteral substitution array, examples of plaintext and intermediate ciphertext in red, and a transposition matrix with final ciphertext in blue.
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ADFGVX cipher

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Diagram explaining the German ADFGVX cipher from World War I, showing a biliteral substitution array, examples of plaintext and intermediate ciphertext in red, and a transposition matrix with final ciphertext in blue.
German ADFGVX cipher.

The ADFGVX cipher is a product cipher that was famously used by the German army during World War I. It combines two types of encryption: substitution and transposition.

First, a 6x6 matrix is used to substitute letters and digits into pairs of symbols: A, D, F, G, V, and X. This creates a biliteral cipher. Second, this encrypted text is written into a rectangular array and then encrypted again using a transposition technique. The columns are read in an order determined by a keyword. This method made the cipher more secure than simpler methods of the time. The French cryptanalyst Georges J. Painvin was instrumental in breaking this cipher in 1918.12

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3 Britannica Sources
  1. product cipher
  2. cryptology - Product ciphers
  3. Vigenère cipher

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