title: Working out the encryption algorithm
body: <p>I'm trying to figure something out. I have a legacy system in place and I'm not using all of it. There are business reasons why we use things this way.</p>
  
  <p>Some fields in the system get encrypted by a piece of middleware that I ultimately would like to replace. I can't replace this part of the system because I can't decrypt the values properly. </p>
  
  <p>For example I have a field that contains the word:</p>
  
  <p><strong>ferret</strong></p>
  
  <p>This is encrypted and becomes:</p>
  
  <blockquote>
    <p>^ADFJBLFOHLOJFNHHKFJLHFJNPCJFJCPFBAPEKDKM</p>
  </blockquote>
  
  <p>The words</p>
  
  <p><strong>wellington boot</strong></p>
  
  <p>becomes</p>
  
  <blockquote>
    <p>^KOKFDEJPAAPFJHPOIGOICOAHKFLNFHMIOJNHAAHF</p>
  </blockquote>
  
  <p>I can see the unencrypted data and I can see the resulting encrypted data but I am trying to find what algorithm was used to turn the field value into the encrypted versions. The main reason for this is that I have a requirement to massively increase the number of fields that contain the encrypted data but at the moment I can't because I cannot replace the existing encryption mechanism because I don't know what was used to encrypt the data.</p>
  
  <p>There is simply too much data in the system to go through and load up each record and make a note of the unecrypted data so I can make a new encryption mechanism.</p>
  
  <p>If I knew how the existing data was encrypted I could use the same method to encrypt my new fields. The system encrypts certain fields only and my extension to the system needs to encrypt others using the same method.</p>
  
  <p>How can I do this? Is it even possible to find out how the data was encrypted and what method was used?</p>