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  5. Symbol Ciphers
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Symbol Ciphers

Introduction

Symbol ciphers use shapes, pictograms, or visual alphabets instead of traditional letters or numbers. They appear in cryptography CTF challenges that use fictional, historical, or stylized writing systems.

These ciphers rely on substitution, each symbol or drawing corresponds to a letter, digit, or word. Once you identify the alphabet or symbol set, decoding becomes a simple matter of substitution.

Examples of symbol systems include:

  • Historical scripts like Pigpen, Theban, Ogham, or Cistercian numerals
  • Modern fantasy languages such as Aurebesh, Hylian, or Daedric
  • Puzzle and pop‑culture alphabets (e.g., Gravity Falls, Zodiac Killer, Ancients from Stargate)

Some challenges may even combine multiple systems, for instance, symbols within a grid (Dancing Men style) or color combinations like Hexahue.

The goal in this section is to identify the symbol set and then translate it into readable text using lookup charts or visual decoders such as dCode.fr.

Bill’s symbol substitution

Bill's symbol substitution
Bill's symbol substitution

Hexahue Alphabet

Hexahue Alphabet
Hexahue Alphabet (Boxentriq)

The Ciphers of the Monks

The Ciphers of the Monks
The Ciphers of the Monks

dCode

dCode has a large list of symbol ciphers.