Discovering Lewis & Clark
Discovering Lewis & Clark: Cryptography
Learn about the origins and history of cryptology and how Thomas Jefferson urged Lewis to use a cipher to keep him informed about the progress of the expedition.
PBS
Pbs Nova: Send a Coded Message Virtual Enigma
Explore the NOVA's Virtual Enigma machine used during WWII. You can send an encrypted message to a friend along with the special key needed to decipher the message. A link is also included to the Virtual Enigma.
PBS
Pbs Nova: Decipher a Coded Message
The basic difference between a code and cipher is explained briefly. You can try to crack a simple cipher at this location.
Google
Google for Education: Ciphering a Sentence
For this lesson, the students have a goal to map each alphabet letter to a number in the range 1-26. They use some simple rules to create this mapping and then use this mapping to encode a sentence.
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Smart Move!
This is a simple activity to visualize a communication system. In order to do this the students encode, decode, transmit, receive, and store messages. They will use a code sheet and flashlight for this process. They will also maintain a...
Texas Instruments
Texas Instruments: Numb3 Rs: Breaking the Code
Based off of the hit television show NUMB3RS, this lesson introduced students to simple coding techniques (namely, the shift cipher). Students learn to translate codes from nonsense to English by quantifying each letter, and then...
Texas Instruments
Texas Instruments: Numb3 Rs: Message of the Bottle
Based off of the hit television show NUMB3RS, this lesson is best used to serve as a preliminary introduction to coding and encryption. Messages are ciphered by single-letter substitution, and the lesson guides students into deciphering...
Texas Instruments
Texas Instruments: Numb3 Rs: Creating Codes
Based off of the hit show NUMB3RS, this lesson focuses on getting students to create ciphering codes. These codes are made in two different ways in this lesson: once with addition and once with multiplication. Students in this lesson are...
Texas Instruments
Texas Instruments: Numb3 Rs: Straddling Checkerboard
Based off of the hit television show NUMB3RS, this lesson introduces students to a ciphering technique called the Straddling Checkerboard. In such an encryption scheme, all messages are turned into a series of numbers for transmission....
Texas Instruments
Texas Instruments: Numb3 Rs: Code Crackers
Based off of the hit television show NUMB3RS, this lesson introduced students to simple methods of cryptography, most notably the Caesar cipher. By sliding the alphabet a certain number of spaces, students code and decode messages, and...
PBS
Pbs Nova: A Simple Cipher
The difference between a code and cipher is explained. See if you can solve a simple cipher challenge at the bottom of the page.
American Rhetoric
American Rhetoric: Abraham Sinkov Interview Excerpt: Move Into Cryptologic Field
This is the text and audio of an excerpt from Abraham Sinkov's interview describing how he came into the Signal Intelligence Service to begin a career in the new cryptologic field. It was recorded on April 20, 1930.
Shodor Education Foundation
Shodor Interactivate: Caesar Cipher
Create your own affine cipher for encoding and decoding messages. Input your own constant and multiplier, then input a message to encode.
Shodor Education Foundation
Shodor Interactivate: Spy Game
Young scholars will learn about modular arithmetic in order to decipher encrypted messages.
Khan Academy
Khan Academy: Xor Bitwise Operation
If you've seen the lesson on the one-time pad, you know that it is the ultimate shift cipher. It involves the application of a random list of shifts equal to the length of the message. It's important to understand exactly how and why the...
Khan Academy
Khan Academy: Xor and the One Time Pad
This article focuses on cipher codes especially XOR and the one-time pad. Let's look at a visual examples to see the different scrambling effects of AND vs. OR vs. XOR by encrypting an image. Here is a digital image of Charles Babbage.
Khan Academy
Khan Academy: Bitwise Operators
These practice questions will assess your knowledge of bitwise operators.
Braingle
Braingle: Cryptography Brain Teasers
Test your critical thinking skills with a variety of cryptography brain teasers, phrases or expressions "encoded in some way." Solve the teasers provided at this site, and submit your own for others to try!