![]() Only one thing is certain: as it stands, no one is entirely sure what the challenge - known as Cicada 3301 - is all about or who is behind it.ĭ epending on who you listen to, it's either a mysterious secret society, a statement by a new political think tank, or an arcane recruitment drive by some quasi-military body. It has also featured a poem, a tuneless guitar ditty, a femme fatale called "Wind" who may, or may not, exist in real life, and a clue on a lamp post in Hawaii. An interest in both cyberpunk literature and the Victorian occult has also come in handy as has an understanding of Mayan numerology. So far, the hunt has required a knowledge of number theory, philosophy and classical music. I was hooked."Įriksson didn't realise it then, but he was embarking on one of the internet's most enduring puzzles a scavenger hunt that has led thousands of competitors across the web, down telephone lines, out to several physical locations around the globe, and into unchartered areas of the "darknet". ![]() "But it seemed like the challenge was a bit harder than a Caesar cipher after all. "If something is too easy or too routine, I quickly lose interest," says Eriksson. Looks like you can't guess how to get the message out." It was a picture of a duck with the message: "Woops! Just decoys this way. As Claudius was the fourth emperor, it suggested "four" might be important - and lo, within minutes, Eriksson found another web address buried in the image's code. It replaces characters by a letter a certain number of positions down the alphabet. Joel deduced it might be an embedded "Caesar cipher" - an encryption technique named after Julius Caesar, who used it in private correspondence. After only a few minutes work he'd got somewhere: a reference to "Tiberius Claudius Caesar" and a line of meaningless letters. Sleepily - it was late, and he had work in the morning - Eriksson thought he'd try his luck decoding the message from "3301". In 2002 it was suggested that al-Qaeda operatives had planned the September 11 attacks via the auction site eBay, by encrypting messages inside digital photographs. It's a technique more commonly associated with nefarious ends, such as concealing child pornography.
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