Cipher Scape

Inspiration

Cryptography is often regarded as a highly complex field in computer science, and rightfully so; paired with the ambiguous topic of Space and its obscure complexity's in nearly all aspects! We than came up with the thought it would be fun to create a cryptography based puzzle game to introduce the user to the basic fundamentals of cryptography as well as showcasing some of the history behind it. This idea was initially brought up by Evan Pardon and his interest in cryptography and specifically lattice based cryptosystems; and the potential future implications of Post-Quantum Computing and the power they possess to render modern cryptographic functions useless through the use of Shor's Algorithm. Although it is a tough topic, cryptanalysts and fields alike are becoming more and more in demand as technology reaches new heights. This application is just to dip your tows in the water and have some fun!

What it does

When the URL is accessed, the user is presented with a space-themed background with various buttons in varying levels difficulty varying by cipher type. The user is presented with a start screen, you choose which level you'd like to start from and a random sentence is presented from a predefined list of (mainly) cheesy one-lines. You must decrypt the sentence in less then 10 guesses!

Currently we unfortunately do not have any functionality as far as the educational portion as we were limited on time and resources. The plan was to add varying levels of hints depending on the users current score and attempted guesses. One of our biggest pet peeve's in puzzle games is the spoilers, it completely defeats the purpose of solving the puzzle in the first place!!! This is no good! Instead, we wanted to gradually introduce the user to the different kinds of ciphers used through-out history and how they are used, and implemented in a fun way.

How we built it

The game loops and functions were initially made in python, however due to inconsistencies in experience/skill level in our particular skillset knowledge we decided to host the application using Node.Js, and React.

Challenges we ran into

Lots of communication problems. It was difficult to coordinate a time we could all meet and talk over voice chat for easier communication, so it made it difficult to narrow down the scope of our individual objectives. We also ran into a few quickly fixed version control issues through GitHub however, this did have a significant affect in the end. We decided to switch to a Node.Js/React web stack shortly after and a the first initial Repository was created; It would've been significantly more helpful to have a more clearly defined plan.

Accomplishments that we're proud of:

We successfully narrowed down our goal to the main objective, and although we weren't able to implement any of the educational features we would've liked to. We still were able to overcome the communication problems and limited time/resources available to us and come together to make something pretty unique and cool with a huge potential for scalability!

What we learned

Rigorous planning, organization, and communication is absolutely crucial in the deployment of many web apps. There are many ways we could've optimized this as a group however that is easily the first and foremost as many of us often found ourselves unsure of what exactly to work on.

What's next for Cipher Space!

We plan to complete the project, as not only is cryptography hugely important to cybersecurity and general software development; It can also be pretty fun when presented in a user friendly format!!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vSPwpZEyCz0

3/9 - [Functions - 2/5 Project completion, post hackathon!] https://github.com/yaditydo/WayneState-Hackathon-2023 Repo can be found here for the Cipher functions, as well as the (soon) to be completed full project!

:)

(Original Plan mock-up) https://docs.google.com/document/d/1rYXGVUEjj1u9FGFLf-vxeVjvFLPKDeQp9Wa4MmZc73k/edit?usp=sharing

Built With

• javascript
• react