
The Internet mystery that has the world baffled - chriswoodford
http://www.montrealgazette.com/technology/internet/Cicada+3301+online+mystery+enthralls+codebreakers/9211024/story.html
======
fchollet
Fascinating story, but that article reads like the journalist took troll
stories from 4c as sources. Seriously, whoever wrote this appears to be
clueless.

> "a robotic voice told them to find the prime numbers in the original image.
> By multiplying them together, the solvers found a new prime"

 _Excuse_ me?

> "TOR is an obscure routing network that allows anonymous access to the
> “darknet” — the vast, murky portion of the Internet that cannot be indexed
> by standard search engines. Estimated to be 5,000 times larger that the
> “surface” web, it’s in these recesses that you’ll find human-trafficking
> rings, black market drug markets and terrorist networks"

Sure... the "surface" web is just the tip of the iceberg, right? Journalism at
its best.

~~~
archgoon
>> "a robotic voice told them to find the prime numbers in the original image.
By multiplying them together, the solvers found a new prime"

    
    
       #include <stdio.h>
       int main() {
           printf("%d\n",2147483629*2147483647);
       }
       $ gcc test.c -o test 2> /dev/null
       $ ./test
       19

~~~
cynwoody

        $ python -c "print '0x%x' % (2147483629*2147483647)"
        0x3ffffff600000013

~~~
vijucat
R terminal:

> 2147483629*2147483647

[1] 4.611686e+18

~~~
ramintran
Please. The only proper answer is to gather as many friends as you can and all
implement the peasant's algorithm together.

------
JackFr
Color me skeptical, but it seems like bullshit to me.

The newspaper article has basically one source. The Wikipedia article dates
from the day the newspaper article was published, and only has the article
(and a reprint) as its sources.

[http://uncovering-cicada.wikia.com](http://uncovering-cicada.wikia.com)
doesn't seem to have any activity from more than 6 days ago.

I'm really not a cyber-sleuth like the guy in the story, but the first two
pages of Google didn't show anything from before 11/26/2013.

I'm sure the puzzles are engaging, but this looks like fake buzz.

~~~
JoblessWonder
Here[0] is a reference from 2 years ago. I found a few more from the past.

[0]
[https://github.com/bibanon/bibanon/wiki/Cicada-3301-wiki](https://github.com/bibanon/bibanon/wiki/Cicada-3301-wiki)

~~~
krazydad
The "original image" linked to on this site also does not contain the plain-
text "TIBERIVS CLAVDIVS CAESAR" etc. described, according to my hex editor.

------
jere
>For the growing Cicada community, it was explosive — proof this wasn’t merely
some clever neckbeard in a basement winding people up, but actually a global
organization of talented people. But who? Speculation had been rife since the
image first appeared. Some thought Cicada might merely be a PR stunt; a
particularly labyrinthine Alternate Reality Game (ARG) built by a corporation
to ultimately, and disappointingly, promote a new movie or car...Microsoft,
for example, had enjoyed huge success with their critically acclaimed I Love
Bees ARG campaign.

Sounds an awful lot like an ARG to me. While coordinating an ARG, a marketing
firm never struggles to look like "a global organization."

I didn't do much detective work on _I Love Bees_ , but somehow one of my
friends was paying attention when dozens of GPS coordinates were released. One
of them was clearly pointing to the student center at NCSU. We were freshman
living on campus (2004-2005) and we simply walked there at the prescribed
time. There were two other guys standing there next to the payphones:

"Watcha doing?"

"Oh, just waiting on a phone call."

We all laughed. My friend answered one of the phones and had to answer some
trivia question about the ILB backstory. It was quite surreal. Again, my
pattern matching indicates a PR stunt more than a recruiting tool (there seems
way too much fluff for that), but who knows.

------
smartician
[http://uncovering-
cicada.wikia.com/wiki/What_Happened_Part_2...](http://uncovering-
cicada.wikia.com/wiki/What_Happened_Part_2_\(2013\))

    
    
        "After completing the test each solver was sent the following email 
        to the address they had inputted. [...]
    
        'In the programming language of your choice build a TCP server 
        that implements the protocol below.  
        The server code must be written by you and you alone, 
        although you are free to use any modules or libraries publicly available 
        for the selected programming language.'"
    

Sounds like a very elaborate hiring process for a global organization. After
solving all those sophisticated puzzles, being told to implement a TCP server
is rather anticlimactic...

~~~
bsamuels
>Sounds like a very elaborate hiring process for a global organization.

I agree. In addition, the amount of chance involved in actually solving one of
the puzzles in the OP article reminds me of those stupid brain teasers big
companies used to ask in interviews years ago.

------
memracom
We think of cryptography as the best way of information hiding. But it is not
the only way. This sounds like some group is testing the limits of non-
cryptographic information hiding. In particular, multiple possible messages
encoded. How do you craft a message so that everyone is led to the decoy
except those who know the secret key? And the size of the plaintext is
completely hidden. Most likely this is a group associated with an intelligence
agency, although they are likely not running an official project. They have an
idea and are exploring it for now.

Interestingly, the NSA has access to enough Internet traffic to be able to
identify people who are playing this game, even if they don't get to the final
round.

~~~
downer91
WHEELS WITHIN WHEELS!

------
d23
> Tor [... is] estimated to be 5,000 times larger that the “surface” web

Am I missing something? That obviously isn't correct.

~~~
callesgg
You are not missing something the author has obviously mixed up the "dark web"
and tor.

~~~
jere
I think the author got it right and d23 hid that in the ellipsis.

>TOR, short for The Onion Router, is an obscure routing network that allows
anonymous access to _the “darknet” — the vast, murky portion of the Internet
that cannot be indexed by standard search engines.

>Estimated to be 5,000 times larger that the “surface” web_, it’s in these
recesses that you’ll find human-trafficking rings, black market drug markets
and terrorist networks.

[edit: To be perfectly clear, I was only highlighting what was actually said.
I don't know anything about the dark webs.]

~~~
gngeal
It's quite obvious from your very own quote that it's the author of the
article who's confused about the three (!) different notions of unindexable
contents larger that the indexable one (deep web) vs. anonymous p2p file
sharing networks (darknets) vs. Tor hidden services. I'm tempted to call this
"a confusion hat-trick". ;-)

------
salgernon
Whenever this comes up, I'm reminded of this series:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codename_Icarus](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codename_Icarus)

[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0301116/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0301116/)

Very popular with the teens in my family with fantasies of being whisked away
'cause they're just so damn smart.

~~~
presidentender
I used to harbor similar fantasies (witness my username and the television
series 'Pretender'). But you can't just put some supergenius 8-year-old in a
special school and have 'em pop out with the diligence required to achieve
great things early in adolescence.

~~~
textminer
That's sort of the basis of Plato's Republic, no?

------
gavanwoolery
Drink your Ovaltine?
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zdA__2tKoIU](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zdA__2tKoIU)

------
mhb
_By multiplying them together, the solvers found a new prime..._

Huh?

~~~
leephillips
"To create encryption keys, RSA uses two huge prime numbers and multiplies
them together to produce an even bigger prime."

\-- Sandeep Junnarkar, CNET News.com August 9, 2002

~~~
ddebernardy
This must be some kind of journalist meme... :-)

------
gwu78
I would think someone would have been able to figure out who is behind this by
ascertaining who registered the domainname mentioned in the article. It is,
practically speaking, impossible to have an anonymously registered .com
domainnname. Identities of .com registrar customers, as well as those who are
authorized to process .com registrations, can be "hidden" from the public, but
they do exist in at least one database, or several. And even the mere threat
of litigation is usually enough to get the requested information released.

Why even use a clever dommainname? An IP address would work just as well.

------
ableal
"Nerd sniping", [http://xkcd.com/356/](http://xkcd.com/356/)

~~~
willvarfar
Aha I remember him talking about that problem in a talk at Google! He got that
question in a screening interview for Google itself, and be got nerd-sniped :)

Apparently he now this ks about it every time he uses public rest rooms.

His xkcd talk at Google is we worth googling :)

------
pdx
I've visited HN every day for years. How the hell is this the 1st time I've
ever heard of this?

~~~
JackFr
Cause it's fake. AFAICT Google doesn't show anything earlier than 11/26/2013.

~~~
cortesoft
[http://mentalfloss.com/article/31932/chasing-cicada-
explorin...](http://mentalfloss.com/article/31932/chasing-cicada-exploring-
darkest-corridors-internet)

From a year ago.

------
Kapura
I remember back, maybe ten or 12 years ago, there was another difficult online
game/puzzle called, if memory serves, notpr0n.com. It was pretty difficult,
requiring lateral thinking, some amount of technical skill, and some strange
trivia knowledge. I feel like this is just another version of that: hard
internet puzzle. I'm also not discounting that this is some sort of ARG for
something or another.

~~~
moya
Yes!

I think I made is to minus 15 with a friend. I might start again...

------
gesman
Mostly it amuzes [and targets] people who feel a never ending desire to prove
their own worth by taking tests, and going through ladders, games and rules
imposed by others, presumably "smarter and more powerful".

Someone has to say loudly "who gives a shit about this crap" and just move on.

~~~
zoom
It's mysterious. Rarely does one say this about js, or ruby.

~~~
saraid216
[https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/talks/wat](https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/talks/wat)

You did say "rarely".

~~~
zoom
now that's interesting.

and didn't have to fly anywhere to scan a qr code.

------
moxic
This bares a striking resemblance to the DefCon Mystery Box and badge puzzles
that Ryan Clarke (aka LosT/1o57) designed. Lots of crypto, hidden messages,
esoteric references, ancient languages and symbols, quasi-mystical, etc. I
don't know if he's behind it, but I wouldn't be surprised if he designed the
puzzle(s).

[http://1o57.wikispaces.com/DC20+Badge+Contest](http://1o57.wikispaces.com/DC20+Badge+Contest)

------
hnha
click bait headline, this should have been edited.

subtitle is "Cicada 3301 online mystery enthralls codebreakers around the
world"

------
exarch
Complicated puzzles full of red herrings, medieval European literature
references, music... this sounds like the work of 1057.

~~~
cantfindmypass
For those confused, he means 1o57 - he created the DEFCON mystery challenge
and usually is involved in the badge contest.

~~~
at-fates-hands
This is actually what I was thinking since a lot of the same motifs are used.
Obscure literature quotes, cryptography, mythology and red herrings.

wouldn't be surprised if it was revealed he was working on cahoots with
whatever person or organization is running this. With stuff happening all
around the world, you'd expect some intern or low level employee would spill
the beans sooner or later. I'm surprised nothing has really be released yet on
who or what is running this.

------
keithpeter
_" Speculation had been rife since the image first appeared. Some thought
Cicada might merely be a PR stunt; a particularly labyrinthine Alternate
Reality Game (ARG) built by a corporation to ultimately, and disappointingly,
promote a new movie or car."_

How about a shadow-crowdsourced game? You know, just a forum of people hacking
stuff up and suggesting new twists. Like the submarine captains and destroyers
in the 2nd world war. They almost felt they 'knew' each other.

~~~
derleth
> How about a shadow-crowdsourced game? You know, just a forum of people
> hacking stuff up and suggesting new twists.

There are probably multiple extant communities where such a thing could be
started. SCP comes to mind for already having a mostly-coherent fictional
universe in which such a game could take place:

[http://www.scp-wiki.net/](http://www.scp-wiki.net/)

~~~
girvo
I only came across SCP last year. So awesome, though it's more fun if you
don't read the comments.

------
toddsiegel
I am apparently using TOR wrong.

> "TOR is an obscure routing network that allows anonymous access to the
> “darknet” — the vast, murky portion of the Internet that cannot be indexed
> by standard search engines. Estimated to be 5,000 times larger that the
> “surface” web, it’s in these recesses that you’ll find human-trafficking
> rings, black market drug markets and terrorist networks"

------
TrainedMonkey
Here is full story of 2013 hunt and all the puzzles: [http://uncovering-
cicada.wikia.com/wiki/What_Happened_Part_1...](http://uncovering-
cicada.wikia.com/wiki/What_Happened_Part_1_%282013%29)

------
mindcrime
For some reason I keep thinking "Google" when I read about this. It seems very
Google like somehow... didn't they do something similar to this before (albeit
at a smaller scale)?

That said, this does seem like it's a bit, erm, _big_ , to be a simple
recruiting initiative, even if it is recruiting for the NSA or something. I'm
leaning towards some movie / game promotion angle. There was at least one TRON
reference in there, so maybe all of this is leading up to a TR3N announcement?

------
TrainedMonkey
So, what are chances that TOR website was made from the start to announce that
"talented" individuals had been found? And rumors about emails were just
circulated by organizers.

~~~
mburns
Non-zero.

------
sp332
Parts of this sound like Valve's crazy Potato Fools Day.
[http://valvearg.com/wiki/Valve_PotatoFoolsDay_ARG_Wiki?title...](http://valvearg.com/wiki/Valve_PotatoFoolsDay_ARG_Wiki?title=Valve_ARG_Wiki)
It involved slow-scan TV images encoded in sound files, and Mayan calendar
decoding etc.

~~~
Apocryphon
Perhaps they're related. Gabe Newell is really taking great lengths to obscure
the coming of Half-Life (2: Episode) 3.

------
runn1ng
I saw this years ago on 4chan.

I stopped at about 2nd riddle. (Basically because I googled the solution and
found all the results posted on some pastebin, deducing that somebody surely
found the results first, plus, I am not THAT smart and good with riddles.)

Who cares, basically.

------
ameister14
Is that going again?

I did most of it a couple of years ago, got to the personalized e-mail stage
before I decided to work on other things.

It was strange how the pictures got put up all around the world at the same
time, though.

~~~
canvia
Easy to organize with craigslist.

~~~
ameister14
true; some of the stuff wasn't though.

------
Tycho
There was an episode of Numbers i saw recently about an augmented reality game
where people were tracking down QR codes and such. Reminds me of this.

------
mariusz79
Well, they may find the smartest 4chan users this way, but in reality how many
really smart people have time to visit that website?

~~~
nickthemagicman
You would be surprised. The amount of creative and intelligent expression that
anonymity allows makes it a magnet for smart people trying to get a break from
the culture of 'satisfiers'.

[http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/201...](http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2013/12/creativity_is_rejected_teachers_and_bosses_don_t_value_out_of_the_box_thinking.html)

------
featherdev
ITS: 4chan goes mainstream...again

------
Siecje
Seems silly that is was a first come first serve basis for recruiting.

~~~
arjie
It wasn't. Seems to me that it's a way to keep things going. No one was
recruited.

------
parktheredcar
Did anybody ever figure out what the twitter user googuns_prod was?

------
jd_free
The hilarious part is that all of these "geniuses" are being tricked into
spending tons of time on a puzzle that has no solution or end.

~~~
stormcrowsx
Its not wasted time if you enjoy doing it.

~~~
leephillips
"The time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time."

\-- Bertrand Russell

~~~
tedunangst
"Time isn't wasted, when you're getting wasted."

\-- Asher Roth

------
mathnetic
Frank Shoemaker would call this noise.

------
nickthemagicman
Extremely curious how this turns out.

------
rohall
This looks really fun.

------
zoom
Alright. Game on.

