NationMaster - Encyclopedia: Pigpen cipher

The pigpen cipher (sometimes called the masonic cipher or Freemason's cipher) is a simple substitution cipher exchanging letters for symbols based on a grid. The use of symbols is no impediment to cryptanalysis however, and cryptanalysis is identical to that of other simple substitution schemes. The example key shows one way the letters can be assigned to the grid. Download high resolution version (640x609, 49 KB)Key for a Pigpen cipher. ... Download high resolution version (640x609, 49 KB)Key for a Pigpen cipher. ... In cryptography, a substitution cipher is a method of encryption by which units of plaintext are substituted with ciphertext according to a regular system; the units may be single letters (the most common), pairs of letters, triplets of letters, mixtures of the above, and so forth. ... Cryptanalysis (from the Greek kryptÃ³s, hidden, and analÃ½ein, to loosen or to untie) is the study of methods for obtaining the meaning of encrypted information, without access to the secret information which is normally required to do so. ...

The scheme was developed and used by the Freemasons in the early 1700s for record-keeping and correspondence (Newton, 1998, p. 113). American Square & Compasses Freemasonry is a worldwide fraternal organization. ... Events January 1 - Russia accepts Julian calendar. ...

Example

Using the example key, the message "X marks the spot" is rendered in ciphertext as:

Image File history File links Download high resolution version (1024x158, 25 KB)A sample pigpen cipher message. ...

References

External links

Categories: Cryptography stubs | Freemasonry stubs | Classical ciphers | Freemasonry In cryptography, a rotor machine is a electro-mechanical device used for encrypting and decrypting secret messages. ... CSP 1600, the replacement stepping unit to adapt the ECM Mark II to CCM The Combined Cipher Machine (CCM) (or Combined Cypher Machine) was a common cipher machine system for securing Allied communications during World War II and for a few years after amongst NATO. The British Typex machine and... The plugboard, keyboard, lamps and finger-wheels of the rotors emerging from the inner lid of a three-rotor German military Enigma machine (version with labels) For other uses, see Enigma. ... The advanced Russian cipher machine Fialka (M-125) has only recently been made known to the public. ... A single-rotor Hebern machine. ... A diagram of a loopback-rotor construction; in this simplified example, two rotors with nine contacts each are used. ... KL-7 on display at USAF Communications Agency museum. ... The Lacida (or LCD) was a rotor cipher machine designed before World War II by the Polish Cipher Bureau for wartime use by Polish higher commands. ... Friedman patented the design of the M-325 in US patent #2,877,565. ... Mercury was a British cipher machine used by the Air Ministry from 1950 until at least the early 1960s. ... The NEMA (NEue MAschine) (new machine), also designated the T-D (Tasten-Druecker-Maschine) (key-stroke machine), was a 10-wheel rotor machine designed by the Swiss Army during World War II. Categories: Rotor machines ... The OMI cryptograph was a seven-rotor machine produced by Italian firm Ottico Meccanica Italiana. ... Portex on display at Bletchley Park Museum, UK. Portex (or BID/50/1) was a British cipher machine. ... SIGABA In the history of cryptography, the ECM Mark II was a rotor machine used by the United States from World War II (WWII) until the 1950s. ... SIGCUM on display at the National Cryptologic Museum. ... A Singlet machine on display at Bletchley Park BID/60 (Singlet) was a British encryption machine used mainly by the British intelligence services from around 1949 or 1950 onwards. ... Typex was based on the commercial Enigma machine, but incorporated a number of additional features to improve the security. ... In cryptography, the ADFGVX cipher was a field cipher used by the German Army during World War I. ADFGVX was in fact an extension of an earlier cipher called ADFGX. Invented by Colonel Fritz Nebel and introduced in March 1918, the cipher was a fractionating transposition cipher which combined a... The Affine cipher is a special case of the more general substitution cipher. ... Atbash is a simple substitution cipher for the Hebrew alphabet. ... An autokey cipher, or self-synchronizing stream cipher, is a cipher which incorporates the message (the plaintext) into the key. ... In classical cryptography, the bifid cipher is a cipher which combines the Polybius square with transposition, and uses fractionation to achieve diffusion. ... A book cipher is a cipher in which the key is the identity of a book. ... The action of a Caesar cipher is to move each letter a number of places down the alphabet. ... The Four-square cipher is a manual symmetric encryption technique. ... Hills cipher machine, from figure 4 of the patent In classical cryptography, the Hill cipher is a polygraphic substitution cipher based on linear algebra. ... -1... In classical cryptography, a permutation cipher is a transposition cipher in which the key is a permutation. ... The Playfair system was invented by Charles Wheatstone, who first described it in 1854. ... A polyalphabetic cipher is any cipher based on substitution, using multiple substitution alphabets. ... The Rail Fence Cipher is a form of transposition cipher that gets its name from the way in which it is encoded. ... The Reihenschieber was a hand cipher system used by Germany. ... Reservehandverfahren (RHV) (German: Reserve Hand Procedure) was a German Naval World War II hand-cipher system used as a backup method when no working Enigma machine was available[1]. The cipher had two stages: a transposition followed by bigram substitution. ... In classical cryptography, the runnning key cipher is a type of polyalphabetic substitution cipher in which a text, typically from a book, is used to provide a very long key stream. ... This article is about the encryption device; for the Dune character, see Scytale (Dune). ... The Solitaire cryptographic algorithm was designed by Bruce Schneier for use in Neal Stephensons Cryptonomicon (where it was initially called Pontifex). ... In cryptography, a substitution cipher is a method of encryption by which units of plaintext are substituted with ciphertext according to a regular system; the units may be single letters (the most common), pairs of letters, triplets of letters, mixtures of the above, and so forth. ... It has been suggested that the section The code from the article Smitty Harris be merged into this article or section. ... In classical cryptography, a transposition cipher changes one character from the plaintext to another (to decrypt the reverse is done). ... In classical cryptography, the trifid cipher is a cipher invented around 1901 by Felix Delastelle, which extends the concept of the bifid cipher to a third dimension, allowing each symbol to be fractionated into 3 elements instead of two. ... The Two-square cipher is a manual symmetric encryption technique. ... The VIC cipher was a pencil and paper cipher used by the Soviet spy Reino Hayhanen, codenamed VICTOR. It was arguably the most complex hand-operated cipher ever seen. ... The VigenÃ¨re cipher is named for Blaise de VigenÃ¨re (pictured), although Giovan Batista Belaso had invented the cipher earlier. ... In mathematics, physics and signal processing, frequency analysis is a method to decompose a function, wave, or signal into its frequency components so that it is possible to have the frequency spectrum. ... In cryptography, coincidence counting is the technique (invented by William F. Friedman) of putting two texts side-by-side and counting the number of times that a letter appears next to itself in both copies. ... A cryptogram is a short piece of text encrypted with a simple substitution cipher in which each letter is replaced by a different letter. ... In cryptography, the Polybius square is a device invented by the Ancient Greek historian and scholar Polybius, described in Hist. ... This article is about the encryption device; for the Dune character, see Scytale (Dune). ... In cryptography, a straddling checkerboard is a device for converting an alphabetic plaintext into digits whilst simultaneously achieving fractionation (a simple form of information diffusion) and homophony (a simple method for suppressing peaks of the frequency distribution). ... Tabula recta In cryptography, the tabula recta is a square table of alphabets, each one made by shifting the previous one to the left. ... The German Lorenz cipher machine, used in World War II for encryption of very high-level general staff messages Cryptography (or cryptology; derived from Greek ÎºÏÏ…Ï€Ï„ÏŒÏ‚ kryptÃ³s hidden, and Î³ÏÎ¬Ï†ÎµÎ¹Î½ grÃ¡fein to write) is the study of message secrecy. ... The history of cryptography dates back thousands of years. ... Cryptanalysis (from the Greek kryptÃ³s, hidden, and analÃ½ein, to loosen or to untie) is the study of methods for obtaining the meaning of encrypted information, without access to the secret information which is normally required to do so. ... This article is intended to be an analytic glossary, or alternatively, an organized collection of annotated pointers. ... Symmetric-key algorithms are a class of algorithms for cryptography that use trivially related cryptographic keys for both decryption and encryption. ... Encryption Decryption In cryptography, a block cipher is a symmetric key cipher which operates on fixed-length groups of bits, termed blocks, with an unvarying transformation. ... The operation of A5/1, a LFSR-based stream cipher used to encrypt mobile phone conversations. ... Public key cryptography is a form of cryptography which generally allows users to communicate securely without having prior access to a shared secret key. ... In cryptography, a cryptographic hash function is a hash function with certain additional security properties to make it suitable for use as a primitive in various information security applications, such as authentication and message integrity. ... A cryptographic message authentication code (MAC) is a short piece of information used to authenticate a message. ... A cryptographically secure pseudo-random number generator (CSPRNG) is a pseudo-random number generator (PRNG) with properties that make it suitable for use in cryptography. ...