Cipher Cracker

Text encryption has been around for a lot longer than the invention of the computer. Civilizations used to apply different ciphers to safely deliver messages across lands, and these methods are now used with computer text. In case you forgot a key used in your own method, then Cipher Cracker might be able to help you out.

Note that the application is good to go from the moment download is done, because there’s no installation required. However, Java Runtime Environment is a mandatory requirement for functionality, but it also means it can be used on other operating systems besides Windows. Registry entries are not modified in the process.

The visual design is minimalistic and pretty intuitive. Split into two sections, one is dedicated to input, while the other reveals the result as soon as you select the cipher type. Input can either come from clipboard, or you can load different text documents such as RTF or TXT.

Apart from text itself, the application also needs to know the cipher used to encrypt the message, but not the key itself. Selected from the tools menu, ciphers can either be Caesar Shift, General Monoalphabetic cipher, Vigenere Cipher, or Playfair Cipher.

Decrypted text is shown in the preview area as soon as you select the proper algorithm. Unfortunately, spaces are ignored, and you might have a difficult time delimiting words by yourself. Result can be saved to file. There’s an extra tool to use in case you want to check character frequency, which is displayed in an organized table with headers for letter, text frequency, text percentage, and language percentage.

All things considered, we can state that Cipher Cracker is an efficient tool with which to decrypt messages using several popular algorithms. It’s advisable not to be used to spy on others. Result is shown right after selecting the algorithm, which you can then save to file.