The Ciphers application is a collection of tools for simplifying and automating the process of encrypting, analyzing, and decrypting many of the common ciphers taught in high school and undergraduate college and university cryptography courses. It was written in C# using the Microsoft .NET Framework and is available both as a web application and as a desktop application. The desktop application is distributed as both a Microsoft Installer (MSI) package for automated installation and removal as well as in a ZIP file for manual installation.

Motivating its design was the Cryptology course at Northern Kentucky University in the Fall semester of 2006. When first created, the program was called "Caesar Ciphers" and its purpose was to speed the analysis of a ciphertext's shift value. However, as the ciphers presented in the class became more sophisticated, so did the program. As a result, the program gained the ability to do affine ciphers and multiplicative ciphers... and the name was changed to "Ciphers." The application has gained additional features and functionality over the intervening time... and new features are still added as needed.

The latest Ciphers release was written in C# against the Microsoft .NET Framework 4.5 using Microsoft Visual Studio 2012. As of web application version 1.5, there were roughly 12,300 lines of code in the applications and the associated class library.