mojicrypt

just a fun little thing that me and a friend thought would be fun to write.

aes-256-gcm encryption with unicode-encoded output. turns your secrets into a wall of emojis and symbols.

what it does

takes a plaintext message (or any file) and a passphrase, encrypts it with aes-256-gcm (256-bit key derived via scrypt), and encodes the ciphertext as non-alphanumeric unicode characters: emoji faces, animals, food, arrows, math symbols, and other fun glyphs.

dependencies

• python 3.6+
• pycryptodome

install

pip install pycryptodome
sudo make install

usage

encrypt (auto-generated keyfile)

# no -p or -k given — generates mojicrypt-key<epoch>_<uuid>.ukey automatically
mojicrypt encrypt "your secret message"
# no passphrase given — generated keyfile: mojicrypt-key1709500000_a1b2..ukey
# keep that file safe - you'll need it to decrypt

encrypt (manual passphrase)

mojicrypt encrypt -p "mypassphrase" "hello world"
# 😁🌏🐃😉🐄🌐🌆😎😯🐗🍝🌊😮🐊😞😏☋🍣🐃😰☃🍟🍔😏...

decrypt

# using a keyfile
mojicrypt decrypt -k mojicrypt-key1709500000_a1b2....ukey "😁🌏🐃😉..."

# using a passphrase
mojicrypt decrypt -p "mypassphrase" "😁🌏🐃😉🐄🌐🌆😎😯🐗🍝🌊😮🐊😞😏☋🍣🐃😰☃🍟🍔😏..."
# hello world

encrypt a file

# auto-generates a keyfile, encrypts photo.jpg → photo.jpg.uc
mojicrypt encrypt -f photo.jpg

# with explicit passphrase
mojicrypt encrypt -p "mypassphrase" -f document.pdf -o document.pdf.uc

decrypt a file

# using the auto-generated keyfile (strips .uc from output name automatically)
mojicrypt decrypt -k mojicrypt-key1709500000_a1b2....ukey -f photo.jpg.uc

# with explicit passphrase and output path
mojicrypt decrypt -p "mypassphrase" -f archive.tar.gz.uc -o archive.tar.gz

piping

echo "secret" | mojicrypt encrypt -p "key"
cat encrypted.txt | mojicrypt decrypt -p "key"

version

mojicrypt -v

how it works

1. derives a 256-bit key from your passphrase using scrypt (N=32768, r=8, p=1)
2. encrypts plaintext with aes-256-gcm (12-byte nonce, 128-bit auth tag)
3. encodes the salt + nonce + tag + ciphertext as unicode glyphs (1 byte → 1 glyph)
4. decryption reverses the process — glyphs → bytes → aes-gcm decrypt

the glyph table uses 256 unique symbols from these unicode blocks:

block	range	count
emoji faces	U+1F600–U+1F63F	64
weather/nature	U+1F300–U+1F31F	32
animals	U+1F400–U+1F41F	32
food	U+1F345–U+1F364	32
misc symbols	U+2600–U+261F	32
arrows	U+2190–U+219F	16
geometric shapes	U+25A0–U+25AF	16
math operators	U+2200–U+221F	32

no alphanumeric characters, spaces, or joiners. each byte maps 1:1 to a glyph.

security

component	algorithm / parameter
encryption	aes-256-gcm (authenticated encryption)
key derivation	scrypt (N=2¹⁵, r=8, p=1)
auth tag	128-bit gcm tag
salt	128-bit random
nonce	96-bit random
rng	cryptographically secure (os.urandom)

equivalent to or exceeding the security of aes-256, sha-256, and rsa-2048.

wire format

[ salt: 16 bytes ][ nonce: 12 bytes ][ tag: 16 bytes ][ ciphertext: N bytes ]

total overhead: 44 unicode glyphs prepended to the ciphertext.

license

0BSD