If you use substitution alone, what weakness is present in the resulting cipher text?

Study for the EC-Council Certified Encryption Specialist Test. Prepare with flashcards and multiple-choice questions, each question includes hints and detailed explanations. Excel in your exam!

The identification of letter and word frequency as a weakness in a substitution cipher is accurate because substitution ciphers replace each letter in the plaintext with another letter to create ciphertext. However, this process does not alter the frequency of individual letters or common words in the text. For example, in English, the letter 'E' is the most frequently used letter. When using substitution alone, 'E' will continue to appear the same number of times in the ciphertext as it did in the plaintext, hence allowing a skilled cryptanalyst to analyze the frequency of letters and begin to crack the cipher through frequency analysis.

The other options, while discussing aspects of substitution ciphers, do not capture the fundamental weakness as precisely. The statement about length refers to structural properties rather than weaknesses in security. Despite the relative ease of breaking substitution ciphers with the aid of modern computing power, the essential vulnerability lies within the predictable patterns of letter frequency that a cryptanalyst can exploit. Lastly, while the technique could be considered overly simple, this doesn't specifically denote a distinct weakness in the resulting ciphertext beyond what takes place with its frequency characteristics.

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