• The Beale Ciphers have remained unbroken for over a hundred years. Given that hundreds if not thousands of professional and amateur cryptanalysts have tried to break them without success, why do you think there are still people who attempt to break them? What motivates people like that?

The infamous phrase “there’s always a bigger fish out there” comes to mind, but I believe there’s just a touch more to it than that. The science and mathematics behind encryption, or simply the protection of important information, is a never ending study and will continue to advance further and further. Part of this movement, which I believe is a perfect way to describe what’s happening — a global movement to protect more information — includes the decryption and cryptanalysis of well known (and the not so well known) recipes for security. Though there may be very difficult, seemingly unbreakable encryption methods out there, there will always be an opposing force, one that seeks to prove that they can do better. By “they”, I mean of course the encryptor, but “opposing force” is left up to interpretation. It could be an interested individual, a group of critical thinkers be it scholars or terrorists, or it could even be the encryptor himself! Learning, exploring, advancing, improving, inventing, implementing, rinse and repeat. There will always be reason and motivation to create and break encryption methods.