macOS
Homebrewverified · 100%
brew install ciferlocal Homebrew formula metadata
brew / rank 9793
Install cifer with Homebrew
Work on automating classical cipher cracking in C. Version 1.2.0 via Homebrew; verified from local package data.
install
Additional install commands
overview
Package summary
Work on automating classical cipher cracking in C
Project links
Commands and aliases
- cifer
- cifer-dict
history
Project history and usage
cifer is a small C command-line toolkit for classical cryptanalysis: affine, Vigenere, Bacon, rail-fence, columnar transposition, frequency analysis, buffers, dictionaries, and scripting-oriented shell commands.
Project history
The 1.2.0 source tarball identifies cifer as copyright 2008 by Simrun Basuita and Daniel Richman. Its bundled CHANGES file records an initial 1.0.0 release on 2008-11-29, several maintenance releases in late 2008, and 1.2.0 on 2009-03-10.
The project lived on Google Code and is now represented by the Google Code Archive, which makes it a preserved example of pre-GitHub open-source Unix CLI packaging.
Adoption history
Homebrew packages cifer 1.2.0 from the Google Code Archive storage tarball and bottles it for macOS and Linux. The Homebrew formula metadata carries a Linux linker-order patch and a readline dependency adjustment, showing the package has been kept buildable despite the upstream project being archival.
Homebrew analytics are very small, with single-digit recent monthly install-on-request counts, so cifer is best understood as a niche historical/security utility rather than a broadly adopted modern security tool.
How it is used
The cifer manpage describes an interactive shell with script support. Users load ciphertext into buffers, apply filters, run frequency analysis, brute-force or solve supported classical ciphers, and use cifer-dict to build dictionaries for dictionary-assisted attacks.
Why package nerds care
For package maintainers, cifer is interesting because it is an archived Google Code-era C program that Homebrew still builds, bottles, patches on Linux, and tests by invoking the binary. It is the kind of small historical CLI that survives in package managers long after its original hosting platform disappeared.
Timeline
- 2008: cifer copyright year and authorship recorded in the bundled README.
- 2008-11-29: Initial 1.0.0 release recorded in CHANGES.
- 2008-12-17: 1.1.0 added libreadline support.
- 2009-03-10: 1.2.0 released, later used as the Homebrew stable version.
- 2016: Google Code Archive became the long-term home for Google Code projects after Google Code Project Hosting shutdown.
Related projects
- cifer-dict is the companion executable shipped with cifer for creating dictionaries used by cifer's dictionary-assisted cracking commands.
- Homebrew's cifer formula is the active packaging surface that keeps the archived source buildable on current macOS and Linux systems.
Sources
security posture
Risk level: green
narrow executable package without higher-risk signals.
Risk classifier
green risk · low confidence · appliance
Why
- narrow executable package without higher-risk signals
Signals
- metadata:no-higher-risk-signals
Install behavior
- No Homebrew bottle metadata was recorded.
Recommended review
Before unattended agent use, check whether the tool reads plaintext credentials, writes remote state, publishes artifacts, or shells out to plugins.
executables
Installed executables
| Command | Kind | Exposure | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
cifer | executable | indexed executable | Discovered from the local executable index. |
cifer-dict | executable | indexed executable | Discovered from the local executable index. |
freshness
Version and freshness
These signals separate page generation age, package-manager activity, and upstream release comparison. Version lag is warned only when an evidence URL and comparable versions are present.
page generated2026-08-03
manager version1.2.0
manager updated
local dataunknown
upstreamnot available
latest detectednot detected
- okNo freshness warnings were generated.
install metadata
Package metadata
| Package key | brew:cifer |
|---|---|
| Version | 1.2.0 |
| Package manager | Homebrew |
| Homepage | https://code.google.com/p/cifer/ |
| Bottle | not recorded |
| Service | none declared |
source trail
Generated from repository data
This page is generated by av-web from the private package SQLite artifact built by scripts/generate-pkg-sqlite.py.
Combined YAML source
View the package source record on GitHub.
Used sources
- Geiger risk classifier
- cross-ecosystem install command graph
- curated package history
- pkg.so package database
- pkgdb category and tag curation