All tools › Keys from outside the message
Enigma machine
Rotors, ring settings, reflector and plugboard, wired as they were — double step and all.
It runs entirely in this browser tab: the text you paste is never uploaded, and the tool makes no network request while it works. Open your browser's network panel and try it — nothing leaves the page. There is no sign-up and no limit beyond what your own browser can hold.
Settings
- Left rotor
- Choices: I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII, VIII.
- Middle rotor
- Choices: I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII, VIII.
- Right rotor
- Choices: I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII, VIII.
- Fourth rotor
- The navy’s four-rotor machine. It never turns, and it needs a fourth letter in the ring and position settings. Choices: Nothing, Beta, Gamma.
- Reflector
- Choices: B, C.
- Ring settings
- One letter per rotor. The ring turns the wiring inside the rotor without moving the window.
- Start position
- One letter per rotor, left to right: what stood in the windows before the first key was pressed.
- Plugboard
- Pairs of letters, like AB CD EF
- Keep spaces and punctuation
- Off, the result is letters only — which is how a cipher was actually sent.
- Show the working
- Replaces the result with the cipher's own workings: the grid or key it is using, or what it did to each letter.
How to use it
- Paste your text into the box above, or open a file.
- Adjust the settings beside it until the result is what you wanted.
- Copy the result, or save it as a file. The result updates as you type.
Questions
- Is my text uploaded anywhere?
- No. This page carries the whole tool as WebAssembly and runs it on your own device. Nothing you paste is sent anywhere.
- Is this secure?
- No. Every cipher on this site is a puzzle cipher, and the tool says so on each result. They are for escape rooms, cryptograms, coursework and historical curiosity.
- Can I get this result again later?
- The settings travel in the page's address, after the #, so a link reproduces them exactly — key included — and the fragment of an address is never sent to a server. Your last settings are also remembered on this device, which is worth knowing before you type a key you care about.
- Is there a version that is not a web page?
- Yes. The same ciphers are built as a desktop application from the same code, with a save dialog instead of a download and no network code at all.
Other tools for keys from outside the message
XOR cipher
Exclusive-or bytes against a repeating key, in hex or Base64 — and try all two hundred and fifty-six single-byte keys.
One-time pad
The one cipher that cannot be broken — as long as the key is random, as long as the message, and never used twice.
Book cipher
Write a message as numbers pointing into a text both sides already have, and read it back.
All twenty ciphers