If you are the undiscovered James Bond of computer code, this is your time to shine (and possibly be recruited by a super-secret government spy agency and really become James Bond). The mysterious Cicada 3301 puzzle has appeared for the third year in a row. And for the third year in a row, nobody knows who posted it, why it exists, or what the answer is—but thousands of people really, really, really want to know.
As previous puzzles have included the need for knowledge of not just code but cyber-punk literature, Anglo-Saxon runes, and Aleister Crowley, competitors must have been expecting difficulty this year—and the mysterious Cicada creator did not disappoint. 2014’s Cicada 3301 started on Twitter, with an image file attached to the message “Hello. Epiphany is upon you. Your pilgrimage has begun. Enlightenment awaits. Good lucks. 3301,” a cryptic enough message before someone figured out the attached image meant this year’s test was going to involve steganography. Steganography is the practice of hiding data inside images, and has a creepy and nefarious history of being used by individuals who are…well, creepy and nefarious.
Like the previous two years, participants are going to have a month’s time to follow a convoluted trail of clues to figure out the end of the puzzle. While the first contest back in 2012 ended with a message stating the creators had “found the individuals they were looking for,” nobody has openly stated that they’ve actually figured it out (I’m telling you, government spy recruitment ploy). Both previous puzzles ended with now disconnected phone numbers that led to an address on the “dark net,” before the puzzle and its mysterious creators disappeared without a trace until the next year.
Cicada 3301 has its own wiki now, where participants can crowdsource answers or post important clues or leads. According to BBC, the first clue has already been deciphered, revealing this riddle that was posted on the Wiki:
“The work of a private man who wished to transcend. He trusted himself to produce from within.”
Good luck, competitors. Have fun in spy school.
Source BBC
Advertisement
