Cryptographon

What is Cryptographon?

Cryptographon is a set of code examples and games to show kids (or adults) the principles behind cryptography.

It's currently a work in progress!

Why?

My two young girls (then nine and ten-years old) were playing a game. They'd created their own simple codebook where their secret messages were encoded into numbers. It was a great idea, but it took them ages to create their messages, they needed a Cipher!

So, I had an idea. They were very excited about their secrets and making it easier to send their messages. I was very keen on them learning to code. I agreed to set something up so they could write their messages by writing .

Why Cryptography and why it is important?

Step One

Turning their codebook into a cipher using code. You can see that here:

• Cipher One

Let's try it out. Follow these instructions:

Or, do it online using trinket.io:

On trinket.io

Step Two

List out the problems. Think like spies:

• How good is our first computer cipher?
• And how would hackers attack it?
• Is it usable?

The answers to these questions will lead us to the next stage:

• Cipher Two