Geometric substitution cipher using tic-tac-toe and X-shaped grids with dots. Also known as Freemason cipher, used by secret societies for concealing correspondence since early 18th century.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Category | Classical Ciphers |
| Sub-category | Classical Cipher |
| Security status | 🎓 Educational Only |
| Complexity | Not specified |
| Inventor | Freemasons/Rosicrucians |
| Year | 1700 |
| Origin | Multi-national |
| Source | algorithms/classical/pigpen.js |
Status: 🎓 Educational Only
Historical educational cipher easily broken by frequency analysis. Used by secret societies for concealment rather than security against determined cryptanalysts.
| Issue | Description | Mitigation |
|---|---|---|
| Geometric symbols are easily recognizable as pigpen cipher once pattern is known | — | — |
| Maintains letter frequency patterns making cryptanalysis straightforward | — | — |
2 vectors ship with this algorithm and run in the test suite. Byte values are hexadecimal.
Vector 1 — Pigpen Standard Test
Source: Historical Freemason lodge records
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
key |
7374616e64617264 |
input |
48454c4c4f |
expected |
48454c4c4f |
Vector 2 — Pigpen ASCII Variant
Source: ASCII compatibility test
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
key |
6173636969 |
input |
534543524554 |
expected |
534543524554 |