
GCHQ: Can you find it? - ColinWright
https://canyoufindit.co.uk/
======
harrytuttle
Yes you too can work as a minimum wage government slave chained to a PC for
cracking this...

Any person who cracks this should post it on a blog straight away just to
undermine the whole process.

~~~
jph98
My impression is that they actually pay the tech people pretty well to be
chained to a desk...

~~~
ronaldx
[http://www.prospects.ac.uk/intelligence_analyst_salary.htm](http://www.prospects.ac.uk/intelligence_analyst_salary.htm)

~~~
antocv
£31 000? Meh, that is low. Finance industry gets you above 75k

~~~
timthorn
I think it's more that finance is high rather than GCHQ is low. £31k is about
average for engineering grads.

~~~
ig1
It's 31k after five years experience.

~~~
harrytuttle
And being public sector, that's "if you suck everyone's cock on the way up".

------
alextingle
Despite their best efforts, some good people do manage to slip through GCHQ's
recruitment programme:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katharine_Gun](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katharine_Gun)

------
switch007
Hey, come work at GCHQ! Look at this woman smiling [http://www.gchq-
careers.co.uk/life-at-gchq/overview/](http://www.gchq-careers.co.uk/life-at-
gchq/overview/). She almost looks like she believes she's doing good!

~~~
jgrahamc
What if she is? One danger with Edward Snowden's revelations is throwing the
baby out with the bath water.

Perhaps nations need SIGINT agencies.

~~~
jsmcgd
If we do, we need to make sure there are clear limits to their powers, which
are respected and enforced.

~~~
adamnemecek
But if we do that, we will let the terrorists win!

/s

~~~
crb3
Climate-change deniers are silly. Our governments have created and sustained a
climate of terror for over a decade!

------
devx
You, too, can help spy on everyone, infringe on human rights, and help with
corporate espionage! Be part of something big. Be part of the surveillance
state. The future is here.

[http://www.cs.ucdavis.edu/~rogaway/politics/surveillance.pdf](http://www.cs.ucdavis.edu/~rogaway/politics/surveillance.pdf)

~~~
antocv
What I find scary is that people who would respond to their
advertisement/challenge are perhaps those who think themselves better than
anyone else, who stand above things such as human rights, surveillance and who
can justify for themselves working an unethical job, excuse it away "its just
a job and I am one of the few expert enough to do it".

Perhaps GHCQ has found there is only a certain kind of people that would
accept their challenge and still wish to work for them after all the leaks -
the kind of person they need, the cold calculating moral-less bastards that
will become our overlords because they have no conscience or willingness to
live in a free democratic world.

------
chrisphonk
I thought one of the prizes were 1000 Rasperry Pis and that had some appeal.
Turns out it was only one. Cheap bastards.

------
adamnemecek
"Also check out our site for kids 'Where in the world is Edward Snowden?'"

~~~
noir_lord
...and GCHQ in Association with the NSA and BetFred.

Place you bets now, heart attack or car crash?

------
mrkmcknz
Challenge three is located here:

[http://www.thisisgloucestershire.co.uk/bletchley.html](http://www.thisisgloucestershire.co.uk/bletchley.html)

2910404C21CF8BF4CC93B7D4A518BABF34B42A8AB0047627998D633E653AF63A873C\

8FABBE8D095ED125D4539706932425E78C261E2AB9273D177578F20E38AFEF124E06\

8D230BA64AEB8FF80256EA015AA3BFF102FE652A4CBD33B4036F519E5899316A6250\

840D141B8535AB560BDCBDE8A67A09B7C97CB2FA308DFFBAD9F9

~~~
shrikant
...which is actually [http://www.thisiscreativeservices.co.uk/websites/EXT-
glouces...](http://www.thisiscreativeservices.co.uk/websites/EXT-gloucester/)
served up in an iframe. Wat?

------
tgandrews
What's the process for going about decrypting these things? I've seen some
that are just base64 and the like - but those have obvious patterns. How are
you meant to decrypt something when you don't even know the algorithm? Is it
just a series of brute forces against different algos?

~~~
jgrahamc
Have a go at the first one. It's likely to just be a simple cipher:

    
    
       AWVLI QIQVT QOSQO ELGCV IIQWD LCUQE EOENN WWOAO
       LTDNU QTGAW TSMDO QTLAO QSDCH PQQIQ DQQTQ OOTUD
       BNIQH BHHTD UTEET FDUEA UMORE SQEQE MLTME TIREC
       LICAI QATUN QRALT ENEIN RKG
    

You might notice that there are a lot of Q's, perhaps those are E's... You
might also look at repeated letters, or common letter pairs.

~~~
ExxKA
It doesnt seem like a normal ceasar or ROT algorithm. I am trying it as a
"playfair" algorithm at the moment but that seems like a dead end aswell.

~~~
GaryRowe
Probably not Playfair since there are repeated digraphs.

~~~
gazza126
I've tried caesar shift using Q as E (based on frequency) so M is A but that
failed epicly... also tried a viginere using GCHQ as the key word but again
failed epicly :L Not even bothering with Playfair. simple letter to Ascii
doesn't work either and i really can't be bothered with going stupidly
complicated :/

------
gnerd
Got it:

A COMPUTER WOULD DESERVE TO BE CALLED INTELLIGENT IF IT COULD DECEIVE A HUMAN
INTO BELIEVING THAT IT WAS HUMAN WWWDOTMETRODOTCODOTUKSLASHTURING

Now onto something a little more productive.

~~~
jgarnham
How did you crack it?

~~~
benmmurphy
it's a transposition cipher where the Qs are spaces.

~~~
jgarnham
Which type exactly?

~~~
gnerd
Scytale -
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scytale](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scytale)

------
dotbill
Challenge Five is here:

[http://www.standard.co.uk/advertorials/gchq/](http://www.standard.co.uk/advertorials/gchq/)

~~~
atanasb
What are the answers for 3 and 4? I seem to be stuck.

~~~
dotbill
I found that page through other means.. ok.. now onto 3 and can't solve it!

~~~
benmmurphy
first look at the 3rd one the ciphertext looks consistent with random data at
least for single byte frequencies.

~~~
gazza126
figured out 3rd one yet??

------
StormInaTeaCup
Nice of GCHQ to use google analytics and incremental numbers.

_gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-43702630-1']); _gaq.push(['_setAccount',
'UA-43702630-2']); _gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-43702630-3']);
_gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-43702630-4']); _gaq.push(['_setAccount',
'UA-43702630-5']);

~~~
_nope
Looks like the campaign is being run by a 3rd party -
[http://www.gchq.gov.uk/Press/Pages/solve-cyber-
secret.aspx](http://www.gchq.gov.uk/Press/Pages/solve-cyber-secret.aspx)

------
Hopka
Makes me think of the movie Mercury Rising[1], where a kid "wins" an NSA
crypto challenge and is subsequently hunted by them because he cracked their
code.

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercury_Rising](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercury_Rising)

------
savszymura
How dare you post a recruitment microsite for GCHQ, poor taste, Sir, poor
taste.

~~~
hipsters_unite
I honestly think that while this has every right to be here - and be discussed
here - given the last couple months' worth of revelations it's pretty
offensive nevertheless.

Obviously SIGINT for a nation isn't a bad thing per se, but when they infringe
on the core democratic principles of the state they claim to represent then
that's just a disgusting abuse of power.

~~~
caffeinewriter
While I agree that this is a tender topic at the moment, I have a hard time
stretching it out as far as to being offensive, since it's a cryptography
challenge posted by a mathematician.

I do agree that there have been gross abuses of power committed over the past
years, but this isn't necessarily something that should be the center of a
debate on it. Especially since they aren't forcing you to apply to a job by
participating in this challenge.

------
DanBC
GCHQ does two things.

1) It keeps things secret, even from the people who work there

2) It claims it obeys the law and that it has strict oversight.

Thus, good people work there in the belief that they are working for an
organisation that does not engage in mass surveillance of their fellow
subjects. Those people did not know that oversight failed, or that some of the
work was a mass surveillance programme of uk subjects.

------
Donch
Answer 1: turing

Answer 2: bletchley

Answer 3: ?

Answer 4: colossus

Answer 5: secured

Don't feel like supporting this recruitment drive, to be honest. GCHQ appears
to be the rolling data buffer for the NSA...

~~~
Donch
Answer 3: enigma2013

~~~
atanasb
Any idea, how to decrypt it? I've been dealing with this for two days now. I
really want to find out how this works.. :X

~~~
Donch
[https://gist.github.com/donovanhide/6540272](https://gist.github.com/donovanhide/6540272)

------
laumars
> "We also have some great prizes. You can win 1 of 100 Raspberry Pi"

It would probably cost most of us more (in terms of what our time is worth) to
solve this PR stunt than it would to just buy one of those boards new.

------
vincie
Send emails intimating your aspirations to terrorism and it will find you.

------
Theodores
I grew up in Gloucestershire with neighbours that worked for GCHQ and at least
three of my school friends went on to work for the doughnut shaped building
(which was a collection of huts back then). Over the years we have had our
chats and I tried to work out what they do and why they do it. Were they
really dedicated to catching the terrorists?

The benefits of working there are simple: a job for life with enough money to
pay the mortgage. Perfect if you want to start a family, bring up the kids in
idyllic countryside, work sensible hours with a reasonable commute and retire
with a pension worth having. You don't get this if you work in London! For a
lot of people this is a pretty good deal, what surprises me is that GCHQ don't
try to attract people on this basis.

One of my school friends that went to work for them was actually very bright,
however, he was also the first to get into whatever drugs were available and
he had a drinking problem before being legally allowed to buy the stuff (18 in
the UK). A few years ago I was able to talk with him candidly about
interception capabilities, e.g. the lengths one would need to in order to
place a truly anonymous phone call. I was also able to chat about things in
his domain, e.g. the practicalities of managing untold petabytes of data. He
was not a completely leaking sieve, however, if he did have any secrets worth
sharing then I am sure that an attractive girl with a four pack of lager would
have been able to compromise him in a matter of minutes. He was borderline
suitable for 'handling state secrets' (in my opinion).

Questioning his motivation, a lot of it came down to kiddie porn - of all
things. He saw himself and the agency as the moral guardian that was saving
the world from kiddie fiddlers and their evil ways. So the ethics of
'gentlemen don't read other gentlemen's mail' did not come into it - some of
that mail could be kiddie porn!

As for my other school friends that worked there, they were borderline
'special needs', absent from the top class of maths and maybe 3-5 sets down in
the maths pecking order. They were not super-bright by any stretch of the
imagination. However, they were smart enough to hold the job down as they had
not been given too many stellar opportunities elsewhere. Their lack of
intellectual horsepower was an asset in that they would do their work, not ask
too many questions and not spill the beans when plied with alcohol by some
voluptuous lass.

However, I suspected that they were kept in the dark like mushrooms. They were
not privy to the grand plan. They may have had 'dogsbody data entry' work that
they just did until clocking off time. They did not have exciting work, hence
all the more reason not to talk about it. But they did work on secret stuff,
apparently, and that was ego-boost-worthy to them, or at least that was the
exterior appearance.

Although anecdotal, what I do know is that GCHQ is not stuffed to the gills
with super-smart code crackers that are more giftedly geniuser than you is.
There are flawed characters and intellectual also-rans making up the numbers.
Like any employer (except Google) they have challenges in attracting the best
and brightest, but, for the bulk of their work, they don't actually need the
truly gifted. Do-as-your-told types will suffice.

GCHQ can attract intellectual also rans for the 'data entry roles' by hiring
locally, the deal being cosy job for life. But, to hire the really clever
people needed that they really, really want, what is the hook?

I don't know what happened to the 'war on kiddie porn' but it is now something
that the likes of the FBI and GCHQ aren't making a big song and dance about.
As for the 'war on terror' that has been bogus since day one, like it or not
there are no 'al-qaeda' terrorists out there (although there may be Somali
pirates etc.). There is no 'Soviet threat' either. We can only guess as to
what they really do, however, thanks to Snowden, we can have a good guess
about some of it. I personally don't think that mass surveillance pays the
bills as well as doing the spying necessary to win arms deals, so we are still
guessing about what they do.

I know everyone has their price, but, why would anyone clever enough to work
out these ciphers want to work for GCHQ given the true nature of what they do,
i.e. do the American's spying for them?

~~~
DanBC
> Although anecdotal, what I do know is that GCHQ is not stuffed to the gills
> with super-smart code crackers that are more giftedly geniuser than you is.
> There are flawed characters and intellectual also-rans making up the
> numbers. Like any employer (except Google) they have challenges in
> attracting the best and brightest, but, for the bulk of their work, they
> don't actually need the truly gifted. Do-as-your-told types will suffice.

> GCHQ can attract intellectual also rans for the 'data entry roles' by hiring
> locally, the deal being cosy job for life. But, to hire the really clever
> people needed that they really, really want, what is the hook?

Of course GCHQ don't use geniuses for data entry, and most of the work is
mundane and most people don't know much about what the other people are doing
or where their work fits in.

What's the hook for the actual geniuses?

Imagine you have Asperger's (or similar), and want to work on interesting math
with similar people in a comfortable environment. GCHQ is that place.

Your point about images of child sexual abuse is interesting. GCHQ / CESG
provide information to the Government, so it's surprising to see such stupid
commentary coming from government about images of child sexual abuse. "Google
filters spam, why can't they filter images of child sexual abuse" being one
paraphrased example of pure idiocy. I don't know how much information GCHQ
provides to the Internet Watch Foundation. I hope there is some channel to
push information to them or to law enforcement.

~~~
gazza126
google actually pays people to go through thousands of videos and stop the
really horrific ones from showing up in the searches (or atleast showing high
up in the searches)... the only problem is that apparantly they don't get any
psychological help when they leave and i can imagine some of them videos being
pretty damn disturbing

------
gazza126
ughh can't figure out challenge 3 :/
[http://www.thisiscreativeservices.co.uk/websites/EXT-
glouces...](http://www.thisiscreativeservices.co.uk/websites/EXT-gloucester/)
anyone got ideas??

------
abritishguy
I'm stuck on Challenge 3.

------
brokenparser
It's a trap!

