6/23/2023 0 Comments Cicada outguess duckIt also posed a new riddle based on Mayan numerals.īy this stage, Eriksson was hooked. Like peeling an onion, this led to more messages and clues that mutated hourly, making the challenge even tougher. He ran the duck’s teasing message through OutGuess, an encryption program, and discovered another hidden message linked to a message board on the popular Reddit news forum. Surmising that a clue lay in the rejection message itself, he wondered why it contained the words ‘guess’ and ‘out’ - a combination that made the sentence clumsy. He encountered the duck after deducing that the puzzle might be a ‘Caeser cipher’, a code named after the Roman emperor Julius Caeser who used it to protect military correspondence. That may have been a decoy as Joel Eriksson, a 34-year-old computer analyst from Uppsala in Sweden, discovered. Looks like you can’t guess how to get the message out.” Those puzzle solvers who succeeded in breaking the code to alter the image were initially disappointed, being rewarded with nothing more than a picture of a rubber duck, and a message that read: “Woops, just decoys this way. The hidden message in this case turned out to be a JPEG image file. Al-Qaeda activists are suspected of using the device to plan the 9/11 attacks through the auction site eBay by hiding messages inside digital images. It is sometimes used to concealing child pornography, drug dealing or other criminal activity. A skilled cryptographer can work out the code to produce a different image from the original. Many quickly identified the first hurdle as an example of steganography, the art of encoding hidden messages in such a way that no one - other than the sender and recipient - suspects its existence.įirst employed by the ancient Greeks to warn of enemy advances, it has now taken digital form and is mostly used with image files. Perhaps it was dreamed up by GCHQ, Britain’s intelligence agency that has already created an online codebreaking game in an attempt to find candidates with the right digital skills and mindset for 21st century espionage.Īlmost immediately, encryption and IT security experts around the world went into overdrive. Was it an elaborate prank, a bit of fun, an ingenious PR stunt, a treasure hunt with booty supplied by a bored philanthropist or some recruitment test by the CIA or MI6? The most elaborate and mysterious puzzle of the internet age has attracted as many questions as answers. The ancient Chinese regarded them as powerful symbols of rebirth. Cicadas disappear entirely for long periods, to reappear in vast numbers - amazingly - only in years containing prime numbers.Ĭicadas are best known for their ear-piercing songs, which males use to attract females for mating. The latter is a prime number while cicadas are moth-like insects that gather in multitudes like locusts. Perhaps there is a clue in the name Cicada 3301.
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