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.
"There, a robotic voice told them to find the prime numbers in the original image. By multiplying them together, the solvers found a new prime"
That made my eyes bleed, but OA has given me a superb Maths revision lesson for some bored teenagers. I'd already planned to get them decoding a ROT13 text by reference to letter frequencies, and now this 'quest' as well. Nice.
> > "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.
They seem to have confused some concepts. But the deep web isn't something mythical made up by 4chan trolls or science fiction writers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_Web
But how do you feel about the story itself? Lots of journalism has inaccuracies, but I'd rather know what you think about such a weird and intriguing phenomenon.
Most people here understand quite well that primes are not closed under multiplication, by definition, and it wasn't really central to the story. Neither was their weird understanding of Tor.
The primes in question = 509, 503 and 3301. 509 and 503 was the width and height of the image. Obviously, you don't get a new prime after multiplying these numbers together though. ;) For those who don't find this immediately obvious, keep in mind the definition of a prime ...
Well, he obviously has misunderstood both TOR and the definition of a darknet. The surface web _is_ just the tip of the iceberg though, but that's because it's defined as the part of the web being indexed by public search engines.
Your private Facebook posts, your Gmail inbox, private Dropbox files, and so on, are all parts of the so called deep web according to this definition. Due to this, it's not a very meaningful concept, and says absolutely nothing about the size of any "human-trafficking rings, black market drug markets and terrorist networks".
PS. I'm the Joel Eriksson that Chris interviewed for the article in question, and for anyone who would like more detailed and less sensationalist information about the Cicada 3301 stuff, feel free to read my writeup at http://www.clevcode.org/cicada-3301/. :)
Is a Daily Telegraph writer, don't expect scientific literacy.
I remember reading an article about Fred Hoyle, in a copy of the Telegraph that I found on a train, where they described him as a 'famous astrologer', so them not understanding what a prime number is doesn't really surprise me.
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.
Interesting. I think you're on to something here. The wikia stuff seems to have been created in August 2013. The subreddit /r/cicada appears to be 11 month old, but the article implies that Eriksson discovered it in the beginning of 2012. And it's virtually empty. Hmmm...
Edit: oh well, nevermind. A google search between 1/1/2010 and 1/1/2012 returns plenty of stuff, for example a discussion [1] on the xkcd forums from January 2012.
It doesn't take much digging to find sources older than that, really. ;) For instance, you can check out my own post about it at http://www.clevcode.org/cicada-3301/, originally written mid-January 2012. The oldest comment on the post is from 2012-01-14. There were articles written about this back in 2012 as well btw.
PS. I'm the Joel Eriksson that was interviewed for the article in question.
>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.
"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...
>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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I only just stumbled upon a different article [1] recently, but I'm not surprised why it's not a well-known phenomenon. This puzzle seems to be deliberately exclusive, and most people don't have the time to 'play' whatever game is going on. There hasn't been any kind of fulfilling conclusion that would make for a compelling story.
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.
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.
Or, maybe, it amuses and targets people who love an intellectual challenge? Or who love discovery and mystery?
Think about it - you have an anonymous entity posting on an internet forum, leaving an elaborate string of clues involving multiple technologies and real world locations, solved collaboratively by a bunch of people all around the world. How is that not in the slightest bit intriguing? Evidently there are a lot of people "who give a shit about this crap".
Hacker News is known for its intelligent reader-base, but also for its critical tone. Whilst comments can often appear cycnical or pessimistic, they are usually also insightful and truthful. But I think people assume that its overall negative tone is the norm, and make negative comments without much thought or rationale behind them, and feel like they're "contributing". Your comment is a completely baseless claim, and contributes nothing but vitriol.
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).
"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.
> "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"
[+] [-] fchollet|12 years ago|reply
> "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|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] keithpeter|12 years ago|reply
That made my eyes bleed, but OA has given me a superb Maths revision lesson for some bored teenagers. I'd already planned to get them decoding a ROT13 text by reference to letter frequencies, and now this 'quest' as well. Nice.
[+] [-] clarry|12 years ago|reply
> Sure... the "surface" web is just the tip of the iceberg, right? Journalism at its best.
They seem to have confused some concepts. But the deep web isn't something mythical made up by 4chan trolls or science fiction writers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_Web
[+] [-] egocodedinsol|12 years ago|reply
Most people here understand quite well that primes are not closed under multiplication, by definition, and it wasn't really central to the story. Neither was their weird understanding of Tor.
[+] [-] owarida|12 years ago|reply
Well, he obviously has misunderstood both TOR and the definition of a darknet. The surface web _is_ just the tip of the iceberg though, but that's because it's defined as the part of the web being indexed by public search engines.
Your private Facebook posts, your Gmail inbox, private Dropbox files, and so on, are all parts of the so called deep web according to this definition. Due to this, it's not a very meaningful concept, and says absolutely nothing about the size of any "human-trafficking rings, black market drug markets and terrorist networks".
PS. I'm the Joel Eriksson that Chris interviewed for the article in question, and for anyone who would like more detailed and less sensationalist information about the Cicada 3301 stuff, feel free to read my writeup at http://www.clevcode.org/cicada-3301/. :)
[+] [-] moocowduckquack|12 years ago|reply
Is a Daily Telegraph writer, don't expect scientific literacy.
I remember reading an article about Fred Hoyle, in a copy of the Telegraph that I found on a train, where they described him as a 'famous astrologer', so them not understanding what a prime number is doesn't really surprise me.
[+] [-] amirmc|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] JackFr|12 years ago|reply
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 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.
[+] [-] hkolek|12 years ago|reply
Edit: oh well, nevermind. A google search between 1/1/2010 and 1/1/2012 returns plenty of stuff, for example a discussion [1] on the xkcd forums from January 2012.
[1] http://forums.xkcd.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=79579
[+] [-] owarida|12 years ago|reply
PS. I'm the Joel Eriksson that was interviewed for the article in question.
[+] [-] JoblessWonder|12 years ago|reply
[0] https://github.com/bibanon/bibanon/wiki/Cicada-3301-wiki
[+] [-] krazydad|12 years ago|reply
http://mentalfloss.com/article/31932/chasing-cicada-explorin...
[+] [-] TrainedMonkey|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|12 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] Zimahl|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jere|12 years ago|reply
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|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bsamuels|12 years ago|reply
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|12 years ago|reply
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|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] d23|12 years ago|reply
Am I missing something? That obviously isn't correct.
[+] [-] callesgg|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] salgernon|12 years ago|reply
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codename_Icarus
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|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tootie|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pyrocat|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gavanwoolery|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mhb|12 years ago|reply
Huh?
[+] [-] gwu78|12 years ago|reply
Why even use a clever dommainname? An IP address would work just as well.
[+] [-] ableal|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] willvarfar|12 years ago|reply
Apparently he now this ks about it every time he uses public rest rooms.
His xkcd talk at Google is we worth googling :)
[+] [-] pdx|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dublinben|12 years ago|reply
1: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/internet/10468112/The-...
[+] [-] JackFr|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Kapura|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] moya|12 years ago|reply
I think I made is to minus 15 with a friend. I might start again...
[+] [-] gesman|12 years ago|reply
Someone has to say loudly "who gives a shit about this crap" and just move on.
[+] [-] barbs|12 years ago|reply
Think about it - you have an anonymous entity posting on an internet forum, leaving an elaborate string of clues involving multiple technologies and real world locations, solved collaboratively by a bunch of people all around the world. How is that not in the slightest bit intriguing? Evidently there are a lot of people "who give a shit about this crap".
Hacker News is known for its intelligent reader-base, but also for its critical tone. Whilst comments can often appear cycnical or pessimistic, they are usually also insightful and truthful. But I think people assume that its overall negative tone is the norm, and make negative comments without much thought or rationale behind them, and feel like they're "contributing". Your comment is a completely baseless claim, and contributes nothing but vitriol.
[+] [-] zoom|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] badman_ting|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] moxic|12 years ago|reply
http://1o57.wikispaces.com/DC20+Badge+Contest
[+] [-] hnha|12 years ago|reply
subtitle is "Cicada 3301 online mystery enthralls codebreakers around the world"
[+] [-] exarch|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cantfindmypass|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] moxic|12 years ago|reply
http://1o57.wikispaces.com/DC20+Badge+Contest
[+] [-] keithpeter|12 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] toddsiegel|12 years ago|reply
> "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"
[+] [-] jcannon98188|12 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] TrainedMonkey|12 years ago|reply