Are You a Rotor Machine Expert?

The basic principle of the rotor machine is to use a set of independently rotating cylinders with internal wiring to create a polyalphabetic substitution algorithm with a period of 26.

A single-cylinder system in a rotor machine does not present a formidable cryptanalytic task, whereas a multi-cylinder system uses multiple cylinders with output pins connected to the input pins of the next to create 17,576 different substitution alphabets before the system repeats.

The purpose of the multiple cylinders in a rotor machine is to create a polyalphabetic substitution algorithm with a much larger number of possible substitution alphabets, making cryptanalysis more difficult.