Need Letters First!
This Caesar cipher solver helps you decode Caesar cipher messages. Set the cipher to encode (to encrypt using the Caesar cipher) or decode (to decrypt a message). Set the Caesar shift amount (how many alphabet positions you want to shift). The Caesar cipher decoder will encode (or decode) the message by the shift amount and display the result. It will also show the mapping between the plain text and cipher text alphabets.
But wait..there's more. The Caesar cipher decoder also does a "best fit" analysis to assess which shift produces a result closest to English. This can help you crack an encrypted message. The cipher solution is calculated by breaking the message into parts (trigrams - groups of three letters) and encoding them using different values for the Caesar shift. We then compare the distribution of the trigrams to the natural trigram distribution of the English language. The value of the Caesar shift which produces the closest result will be suggested as the solution.
There has been a rebirth in simple substitution cipher codes in recent years with video game puzzles. For example, many an OSRS cipher (Old School RuneScape) is based on a Caesar code. You're provided a secret code (encrypted text, sometimes with symbols vs. letters) which you need to decipher into a game hint or clue. You can crack a monoalphabetic substitution cipher by looking at word patterns and using a process of elimination to guess letters.
The Caesar cipher is one of the oldest substitution ciphers, used by the Roman leader Julius Caesar to encrypt military messages ( wikipedia article). The system shifts every alphabetic character in a message by X positions in the alphabet; to get back to the original position, you reverse the shift. The keyspace for this cipher is very small (26) making it vulnerable to brute force attacks ("brutus force attacks"?). At the time it was considered secure, primarily since most of Caesar's enemies were illiterate and innumerate. Its current use is for um... teaching cryptography. And the occasional video game encryption technique.
The Caesar cipher technique is a good start on cryptography but still within the reach of an unaided human mind. It lacks the complexity of a polyalphabetic cipher (vigenere cipher) or block cipher (shuffles letters around). While you can often solve it with brute force (especially once you figure out the ciphertext is from a Caesar code), it requires some thought. A more robust version of this is called the keyed caesar cipher, where you use a key word to dictate the first letters of the cipher alphabet and then use a Caesar cipher wheel shift value to assign the rest. That forces some randomness into the letter assignments needed for decryption between the secret message and the original message.
You can also attack a Caesar cipher using frequency analysis. However, many cipher puzzles are designed to defeat this attack through short messages and unusual letter frequencies. That's a good cautionary tale about cipher decoding. The shorter the message, the harder it is to identify patterns. The longer the message, the easier it is to spot basic patterns. In the case of using the Caesar cipher to encode plaintext messages, one key weakness is that it will still continue to maintain the basic letter distribution of the English language. This is the fundamental weakness of the Caesar cipher algorithm: The letter distribution remains that of English, making it possible to guess encrypted letter choices within a cryptogram.
We have a more advanced substitution cipher workbench which can help you work with keyed caesar ciphers and mixed alphabet ciphers. We also have a Rot13 Cipher Decoder which addresses a narrow case of the caesar cipher system (where the code shift = 13). The atbash cipher is another narrow case of a shift cipher concept (specifically, a reversed ciphertext alphabet, so alternating direction as well). Check these out if you're trying to crack a video game cipher, like a treasure trails osrs cipher. Works for word scramble puzzles as well.
The A1z26 cipher is actually not a real substitution cipher; each letter is replaced by its numeric equivalent. That is just basic encoding.
We have transposition cipher tools as well. These help you shuffle letters around in patterns and blocks to obfuscate the mapping. The simple form of this is a rotation cipher; more advanced versions combine a transposition cipher with a mixed alphabet cipher to create a cipher that is capable of resisting a brute force attack.