Coded Messages

It always have been clear to any king, emperor or government that keeping important messages and information from falling into hostile hands, is essential for the nation,empire or reign sake in both peace and war periods. That's why each one of them has created cryptography departement since ancient times.

Following I present two tecniques for coding messages mentioned in Pynchon's book. Actually these two example refer more to Steganography rather then Criptography, which is a less efficient way to keeping a message secret, because the message is just hidden...once it's discovered it can be easily read by anyone. A solution to this problem could be combining the two techniques, creating multiple issue to deal with in forcing the message as in the Kryptosam example (last quote).

Code messages in a dozen Slavic tongues were being tattooed on bare upper lips over which the
operatives then grew mustaches, to be shaved off only by authorized crypto officers and
skin then grafted over the messages by the Firm's plastic surgeons .. . their lips were
palimpsests of secret flesh, scarred and unnaturally white, by which they all knew each
other.

Teddy Bloat's [...] packing inside his stylish kangaroohide musette bag and threaded
around the odd necessities— midget spy-camera, jar of mustache wax



"Kryptosam" is a proprietary form of stabilized tyrosine, developed by IG Farben as
part of a research contract with OKW. An activating agent is included which, in the
presence of some component of the seminal fluid to date [1934] unidentified, promotes
conversion of the tyrosine into melanin, or skin pigment. In the absence of seminal fluid,
the "Kryptosam" remains invisible. No other known reagent, among those available to
operatives in the field, will alter "Kryp-tosam" to visible melanin. It is suggested, in
cryptographic applications, that a proper stimulus be included with the message which
will reliably produce tumescence and ejaculation. A thorough knowledge of the
addressee's psychosexual profile would seem of invaluable aid.
—prof. dr. laszlo jamf, "Kryptosam" (advertising brochure), Agfa, Berlin, 1934

Enough sperm saved, though, to rub over the blank scrap  enclosed with the picture. Slowly then, a revelation through the nacreous film of his seed,  in Negro-brown, comes his message: put in a simple Nihilist transposition whose keywords he can almost guess.

[Gravity's Rainbow, Thomas Pynchon]

The Nihilist Transposition is a real cripthography sample, where letters are turned into other using a row column transposition, following the pattern dictated by a Polybius square built on the base of a wordkey. Initially created by Russian spies it has been adopted also by the heads of the KGB

If you want to get into the Nihilist Transposition to know more or even learn how to use it for sending your secret messages go on and check these link below:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nihilist_cipher
http://www.cryptogram.org/cdb/aca.info/aca.and.you/chap08.html#NIHITR

Further explanations about the difference between Cryptography and Steganography are given in the book  The Code Book, by Simon Singh, a book that I've already mentioned in the post Secrecy...Pro & Con