This is for pedagogical purposes. Please do not cypher actually important messages with this.
Anyway I think it can bring with little ones, and adults alike, interesting conversations around :
- secrecy
- privacy
- cryptography as counter-power
- mathematics, starting with modulo
- the duration a message can stay undecipherable and thus the kind of message to share
- computational complexity, how many permutations are available
… and a lot more!
This is meant for simple replacement algorithms like ROT1, ROT13 etc. right?
Actually no I use it for CRYSTALS-Kyber /s
Yes, just joking it’s not even meant for a “replacement” but rather how to give a pragmatic affordable (the 1st one I made was literally just 2 paper strips and scotch tape) fun way to explore ROT… but IMHO it can be just a starting point. You can do that and sequence them, e.g. ROT-X where X is the date so e.g. today is 06 12 2025 so you would ROT0 the first letter, ROT6 the second, etc.
It is only meant to be fun, please don’t use this in actual serious situations.
FWIW changing ROT is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vigenère_cipher as @drspod@lemmy.ml pointed out, I already learned something!
It’s a Caesar cipher
More specifically, the bracelets are lined up for rot13.
It might be more fun to print two randomly ordered bracelets that need to be lined up correctly to en/decipher a message.
It could also be a Vignere cipher
You’re a vinegar cipher
thanks, unlucky Rich
That would make sense, if it’s educational then it’s probably used to teach about the Caesar/shift cipher