News
Version 1.0 of JCrypTool was released today, November 30th, 2020. It is intended for beginners and experts in cryptography alike. JCrypTool is available in English and German. Already bundled are over 100 plugins that cover classical and modern cryptography. View a full list of included cryptography features.
You can read the official announcement here. You can download the current version from here.
The CrypTool website has been completely renewed. You can read the official announcement here.
The next edition of the CODEBREAKERS International Cryptology Game is just starting! It mixes short lectures about the secrets of the ENIGMA cipher machine with interesting challenges.
The challenges are presented in 3 levels (Trial, Basic, and Advanced). For the Basic and Advanced levels, teams are invited to participate; for the Trial level also single persons can participate. So this is for beginners as well as for experts.
It runs from October 26th to the end of November 2020:
- Team registration and Trial level are already available at theCODEBREAKERS.org.
- Basic level is available from October 26th (with decisive game on November 13th).
- Advanced level will be available from November 9th (decisive game on November 28th).
The game will be released in six languages: English, French, Spanish, German, Polish, and Russian.
It combines elements of history, mathematics and logic in an accessible way. By learning about encryption and decryption methods, the participants solve virtual puzzles and break increasingly difficult secret messages.
To win, the time that you need for the final task is the most important thing. If needed, notes, time bonuses, and "cryptologic bombs" are available to help to solve the tasks.
More details on: https://thecodebreakers.org/page/info
MysteryTwister C3 will be offline due to maintenance work starting on Friday November 29, 2019 at 9:00 AM UTC. This work is expected to be finished around Monday, December 2. Then, our site will be available again.
Update: Maintenance work has been completed successfully. We don't expect it, but apologize for potential brief outages in the following days.
End of October, many members of the CrypTool team as well as invited guests met in Munich to celebrate the 20th+ anniversary of the CrypTool project.
The event took place at the research institute CODE of the university of the Bundeswehr and was organized by the working group "Datenschutz und Compliance" of Prof. Dr. Arno Wacker.
More than 30 people from Germany, Austria and Israel followed the call of Prof. Bernhard Esslinger, who is the overall project lead and founder of the CrypTool project. Many project members who were unable to attend sent greetings.
Lectures and discussions around CrypTool (CT) and its 5 sub-projects (CrypTool 1, CrypTool 2, JavaCrypTool, CrypTool-Online, and "MysteryTwister C3") occupied the participants for two days. On this occasion, parts of the new and faster MTC3 backend were presented, which is currently in development.
The contest runs from October 21st to end of November 2019.
This game mixes short lectures about the secrets of the ENIGMA cipher machine with interesting challenges.
Registration is open already under "THE CODEBREAKERS".
The challenges are presented in 3 levels (Trial, Basic and Adventure). For the Basic and Adventure levels, teams are invited to participate; for the Trial level also single persons can participate. So this is for beginners as well as for experts.
To win, the time that you need for the final task is the most important thing. If needed, notes, time bonuses, and "cryptologic bombs" are available to help to solve the tasks.
There are four 1-minute promotion videos in
There are two new challenges that use the cipher LC4. In adition, new Python code is provided that contains a lot of new functions. You can find the code in the additional zip archives of all ElsieFour challenges.
The "Advent Challenge — Part 4" can be used as an introduction to ElsieFour.
Subsequently you should continue with the "Weakened ElsieFour" challenges part 1 to 3, which use a weakened version of the LC4 cipher. Finally "ElsieFour — Part 1" is waiting for you.
Enjoy the dissolving!
The Advent season should be a time of pleasant anticipation of Christmas. But for many people it is a frantically busy time — buying presents, planning, cooking, baking...
The protagonists of the Advent challenges also fight with their pre-Christmas problems. Are you able to help them und sweeten their pre-Christmas period?
The Advent challenges for the whole family are constructed easily, so that you can solve them without much previous knowledge.
In the weeks until Christmas there will be four new Advent challenges. Enjoy the dissolving!
On June 1st, 2015 begins a "fantastic game" starting with the 1st of six tasks on the Enigma level.
The material to be studied is published twice a week, but the time in which you work out the final tasks matters the most.
The game on this level lasts till June 19th. Hints, time bonuses and "cryptologic bombs" help you to go ahead.
If you don’t know much about cryptology or cryptography and you are afraid you won’t do fine at the Enigma level, you can get to know some less complicated cryptological issues and practice your skills by playing the basic or advanced levels of our game.
"During the game everyone can find out what methods were used to beat Enigma as well as try to break messages encoded with the famous machine cipher. Enigma, a cipher machine considered unbreakable, was defeated by three brilliant mathematicians. Now, together with other adventurers from around the world, you have a chance to become an Enigma codebreaker."
To participate just register as a 3-person team at www.codebreakers.eu
The according attack against the double-column transposition cipher was just described in the journal Cryptologia and is now implemented in CrypTool 2, based on the method presented in the article "Solving the Double Transposition Challenge with a Divide And Conquer Approach", Cryptologia, Volume 38, Issue 3 by G. Lasry, N. Kopal and A. Wacker.
Three new double-column transposition cipher challenges (level III) have been published, which don't contain the weaknesses of the old challenge:
- Double column transposition reloaded - Part 1
- Double column transposition reloaded - Part 2
- Double column transposition reloaded - Part 3
- Double column transposition - Part 1
- Double column transposition - Part 2
- Double column transposition - Part 3
- Double column transposition - Part 4
- Double column transposition - Part 5
CrypTool 2 (from June 25th, 2014) contains a demonstration of the algorithm how to solve the old double-column transposition from Klaus Schmeh.
You can find the according template in the Startcenter below the structure Cryptanalysis / Classical under the following name: "Dictionary attack on the Double Columnar Transposition Cipher".
MysteryTwister C3 has just moved from Joomla 1.5 to Joomla 1.7. Although 1.7 is out there now for a while, an upgrade is a complex and risky process as Joomla 1.7 is fundamentally different than Joomla 1.5.
Still we have made it and the system is fully up and running. Should you encounter any issues, please let us know under mtc3@cryptool.org.