Yes I should have had written "but each key belongs to a group of 26! keys that will produce the same plaintext" (and that is what I had in my mind) but instead I wrote "but each key belongs to a group of 26! keys that will produce the same ciphertext".
Or equivalently well I could wrote that "each key belongs to a group of 26! keys that COULD produce the same ciphertext". - because of random nature of the cipher
(note that I wrote "The Cloaked Substitution Cipher is essentially similar to the cipher considered in the MONOALPHABETIC SUBSTITUTION WITH CAMOUFLAGE —Part 2 challenge)
I would rather say the challenges are essentially similar but the ciphers are same. Would you consider simple substitution followed by transposition and transposition followed by simple substitution essentially similar or exactly the same ciphers. I consider them exactly the same ciphers.
If we use the same alphabets and same keys (although written in different formats) in MSWC and in CSC to encrypt the same plaintext then not only the attacker could not tell whether the ciphertext was created using MSWC or CSC but also a person who knows the correct key could not tell which ciphertext belongs to which method.
I agree with almost everything here … yet I stand by the correctness of every part of the challenge description.
How can you agree both with yours "The last difference suggests a possible vulnerability of the Camouflage cipher: In a hill climbing attack" (should be understood that CSC is not vulnerable to it) and with mine " If MSWC is vulnerable to something then so is CSC, because they are the same ciphers"?