Extremely curious how this turns out.
The Internet mystery that has the world baffled
71–80 of 119 posts
Re: The Internet mystery that has the world baffled
#72I 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"
I don't know about the terrorist networks part (although I would not be surprised) but TOR does have an active black market scene (read: silk road) as well as other illegal websites on there.
Re: The Internet mystery that has the world baffled
#73Fascinating 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…
"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.
Re: The Internet mystery that has the world baffled
#74Color 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 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 Goo…
There are claims of few reddit messages from 2012 on that wikia site. Can anyone confirm that?
Offtopic - do you have an account on abclinuxu.cz or is it just a coincidence of usernames?
Re: The Internet mystery that has the world baffled
#75"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.
Re: The Internet mystery that has the world baffled
#76Complicated puzzles full of red herrings, medieval European literature references, music... this sounds like the work of 1057.
For those confused, he means 1o57 - he created the DEFCON mystery challenge and usually is involved in the badge contest.
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.
Re: The Internet mystery that has the world baffled
#77Re: The Internet mystery that has the world baffled
#78I 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.
Re: The Internet mystery that has the world baffled
#79Fascinating 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…
Excuse me? 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.
> Is a Daily Telegraph writer, don't expect scientific literacy.
This is high-school math.
Re: The Internet mystery that has the world baffled
#80We 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 asso…
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