![]() To get the most out of this article, it’s best to have a basic grip on a few terms and concepts. The game of keeping encryption ciphers working against the never ending onslaught of the bad guys to break those same systems has led to a rich and interesting history of ciphers.Ĭryptography is a rich topic with a very interesting history and future. Those two seemingly simple issues have plagued encryption systems forever. The methods to encrypt and decrypt must be known to both parties and they must be rigorous enough that the methods cannot be guessed by the bad guys. ![]() However, the practical applications of any given encryption method are very limited. ![]() The methods of encrypting text are as limitless as our imaginations. The art of concealing the content of a message became known as cryptography which is a portmanteau of the Greek words for hidden and writing. If a message of this type were intercepted, the bad guy would be unable to read it and therefore the information would be useless to them. The next advance in securing communications was to hide the message’s true contents in some way. From there, the bad guy could simply read the message and then know what you planned, or pretend to be the intended recipient and send a false reply thus executing the original Man In The Middle (MITM) attack. Once caught, the message contents would end up in the in the arms of the bad guys. The primary method of keeping those messages from prying eyes was simply not getting caught. The original ploy was to use stealth fast and stealthy messengers carried messages back and forth. Writing secret messages in the pigpen cipher is also a great spy party game! Be sure to check out all our spy activities for kids.We’ve been hiding messages for as long as we’ve been sending messages. Kids who love to engage in pretend play will get a kick out of practicing their spy and detective work using secret codes. Pigpen is easy to learn and fun to decipher so anyone can quickly flex their cryptography skills! Even kids who don't like writing will enjoy composing messages to friends and family, perhaps even sending grandma a coded postcard in the mail. The name "pigpen" refers to this grid pattern. Symbols are created using grids and crosses so that each letter is represented by fragments of a grid or cross with or without a dot. How Pigpen Cipher WorksĮach letter of the alphabet is substituted with a simple geometric picture symbol. The exact origins are unknown, but starting in the 18th century, it was frequently used by the Freemasons, you might sometimes hear it referred to as the Freemasons cipher, or masonic cipher. The cipher is centuries old, and therefore there are several variations of the pigpen cipher. The most common cipher kids start experimenting with is the Caesar cipher, in which one number stands in for one letter, like 1 for A, 2 for B, and so on. For example, "The blue horse has left the zoo," may be code for "I took the blueberries out of the fridge."Ī cipher on the other hand, is the system, or algorithm that is used for making substitutions. I'll let the experts at Khan Academy explain,Ī code is a mapping from some meaningful unit -such as a word, sentence, or phrase- into something else-usually a shorter group of symbols.Ĭodes can be numbers like writing 55 every time you mean "bread," but you can also think of codes as substitutions of one group of words for another. If you think "cipher" and "code" are synonymous, you are not alone.
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