A Simple And Yet Robust Hand Cipher

Keep your secret safe. No computer needed.

Michel Kana, Ph.D
11 min readFeb 10, 2021

This article introduces a secret or disguised way of writing, simple enough to memorize or carry out with pen and paper.

The strongest versions of the over-popular AES encryption used everywhere on the internet may be decipherable by quantum computers a few years from now.

Is there a secure cipher that is simple enough to be performed mentally, without any computer?

Photo By Kristina Flour on Unspash

Recently, by using quantum computers, a Swiss-based company believes it has found a security weakness that could jeopardize the confidentiality of the world’s internet data, banking transactions, and emails.

This is a fundamental reason why technology companies including Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Apple, and IBM have made large investments in quantum computing in recent years.

I believe that until common people are able to afford quantum services, there are situations when we might have to rely on our own brains to keep our secrets safe.

As children, we all had come up with multiple ways of keeping our secrets safe from parents, siblings, schoolmates, or friends. I remember how we excelled at speaking out the syllabus of words in reverse order in order to confuse outsiders.

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Michel Kana, Ph.D

Husband & Dad. Mental health advocate. Top Medium Writer. 20 years in IT. AI Expert @Harvard. Empowering human-centered organizations with high-tech.