Cicada 3301 : The Most Mysterious Internet Puzzle

Cicada 3301

Hello. We are looking for highly intelligent Individuals. To find them, we have devised a test.

There is a message hidden in this image.

Find it, and it will lead you on the road to finding us.

We look forward to meeting the few that will make it all the way through.

Good luck

3301

This text was posted on 4chan back in 5th Jan 2012. This puzzle caught the eye of the bloggers, experts and cryptologists. It was called "The Cicada 3301".

Clearly this image was trying to tell us something.

 

Phase 1:

This image was tested by various methods. Some tried to open it through a WinRAR , some altered the brightness levels in Photoshop and observed the noise patterns…until someone found that opening this image through the Notepad, you'll find this text at the Bottom-most line:-

   CLAVDIVS CAESAR says "lxxt>33m2mqkyv2gsq3q=w]O2ntk"

This seems to be the famous encryption technique - "Caesar's Cipher"

Caesar's Cipher:-

In this Cipher, the sequential alphabets are shifted by a certain number (In this case by 4).

These are the alphabets written in normal sequence:-

And Caesar's Cipher arranges the alphabets as:-

Shifted by 4 letters.

This ways lxxt>33m2mqkyv2gsq3q=w]O2ntk becomes http://i.imgur.com/m9sYK.jpg .

Phase 2:

Visit the URL!!! DUH!!!

By visiting the URL you'll find this image:-

Phase 3:

Cryptographers often use a Software known as out guess to decode certain messages. Let's give it a try. Here's a link to outguess .

Execute the original image using out guess and we get another URL.

"The Screenshot not shown for Security Issues"

Phase 4:

This time we use the Command Prompt. Another URL. Going to the following URL will lead you to a Book Code.

Phase 5:

We now get a Book Code. There are 83 book codes. This book code is divided into 

" page number : word number. "

Phase 6:

Visiting the reddit link we see a page with 188 links. But on the top we see a figure of Morse Code (Lines and Dots). Translating it we get 10 2 14 7 19 6 18 12 7 8 17 0 19 7 14 18 14 19 13 0 1 2 0

Other important field to consider is the Verify note which is basically a PGP key ID. As weird it sounds, it stands for Pretty Good Privacy .

Using a software known as GNU- pg, we can scan anything in Cicada 3301, ruling out the fake ones. On links 121 and 186, we find 2 figures. Again running it through the Out Guess program, we find this particular message:-

Remember the previous key? Convert it to alphabets and we get 2 keys. Using these keys we Go through all the corresponding words, we get this following message:

" Call us at us tele phone numBer two on four three nine oh nine six o "

Calling on this number ,we get this message:

"Very good. You have done well. There are three prime numbers associated with the original final.jpeg image . 3301 is one of them. You will have to find the other two. Multiply all three of these numbers together and add a .com on the end to find the next step. Good Luck . Good Bye!"

The two prime numbers in the original image is basically the dimensions of the image. Multiplying both results together and adding a dot com, we get a count down timer. When this count down was over, there were coordinates of particular locations across the globe. Paris, France, Washington, South Korea and other (in all 14 locations). In all these locations, we find  the barcode. Only two of the messages are true. One of them is a poem by William Gibson named Agrippa. When you follow the above book code on this poem, you get "sq6wmgv2zcsrix6t.onion". A Tor URL. Visit the URL and we get message. The other poem is still unsolved.

The last update was a Python Code that on executing will take trillions of years.

Anyways, Cicada 3301 is not yet fully solved. People who are behind this Brilliant Puzzle are assumed to be from another Timeline. Some of the people also claim this puzzle generated by an AI. Remember in our previous article we had a look at the Mariana's Web,the deepest place in an internet... We also talked about the existence of a female Artificial Intelligence. This AI is assumed to control the whole internet. It is also claimed to have generated this Amusing Puzzle. 

Another Theory states this puzzle to be an entrance test for MI-7. Anyways, this was the story of the Most Mysterious Puzzle of the Internet. I hope you liked it. If you have any queries or comments you wish to share with me, please feel free. Your comments is the only inspiration that helps me bring such articles to you guys.

Thanks for Reading!

Step-by-Step Guide for using Tor Browser

Tor Browsing

As Promised earlier, I bring to you the one stop to install and use Tor Browser full MI-7 mode. In our previous article, we already saw that Tor browser helps us navigate through the Deep Web. This means that this browser is capable of surfing the websites that even Google Search engine cannot find. It can also surf the regular Surface websites.

Google , Edge , Safari etc. do have a secured incognito mode that makes the connection secured but it is nowhere close to the security provided by Tor. This is because Tor works on the 'Onion Routing Protocol'. This was a brief introduction to Tor Browsing. For explore the wonders of Tor/Deep Web please check out our previous article on "The Deep Web".

Without boring you with the theory, let's play with the Tor.

Step 1:Installing the Tor

Please click on your operating system to download the setup file:-

• Windows 
• Mac OS 
• Linux :- 64-bit , 32-bit

Step 2:Setup

• Run the Setup:-
  

• Choose your Language:-

• Allocate the location:-

• Finish and Run:-

• Initialize the Browser:-

Initialization;-

• Welcome to the portal to Deep Web.

Step 3: The MI-7 Mode

• Set the Security level to High. Although the speed decreases, the connection becomes highly secured.

• Ensure that all the websites have a https infront of them. You might have heard about HTTP.  "https" is a secured hyper text transfer protocol.

• Do not allow the Scripts (Forbidding Scripts e.g. JAVAScript) :-

• Go to Securities through the 3 lines on the right-top corner.

• Now go to Advanced Settings and Disable the Browser Health Report checkbox.

• Now the last tip. Always ensure that your Tor Browser isn't maximized. This would help the crackers to know your Screen Size(which in some ways is not good) .

Exploring the Deep web is really an exciting thing to do. Google works fine in Tor Browser as well but it still won't help us with the deep websites. Therefore we have DuckDuckGo and Dissconnected.

Also we have a whole Deep Wikipedia too- thehiddenwiki.org 

You can also refer to Youtube channels such as - Takedownman , M.D.W. Daniel Pacheco , MDW2 etc.

Now that you have sufficient information to begin with, start exploring the DEEP and DARK WEB.

Thank you for reading. Do feel free to comment and ask any questions. 

Till then Keep Digging!

The Deep Web

In our previous article we discussed about DNS (Domain Name system).
We came to know about the different servers that maintained the database of all the Domain names with their corresponding IP Addresses, making it easier to approach the websites. We further came across a whole another set of domains - .onion. These websites are known as "The Deep Net Websites". People often misinterpret Deep Web with the Dark Web. But these two are two different Entities.
Well now that I have struggled my way through the Introduction part, let's dig into the Mystic Realms of The Deep Web.

A Bit of a History:

Tor was the basic foundation of the Deep Web. It was developed somewhere near 2002 by the US Naval Research Laboratory. It followed The Onion Routing protocol which was created earlier in the mid 1990's. Everything was going great till 2009 until Satoshi Nakamoto created the Bitcoins .

Satoshi Nakatomo

Bitcoins are a type of online currency having a worth of 2456.00 US Dollars (per unit bitcoin). Now people had a way to pay for certain services without being traced. Then in 2011, came the 'Amazon of Crime' -  Silk Road (In reference to the historically important international trade route between China and Mediterranean ). Here people could buy all illegal stuff like Drugs, Weapons, Human organs and the list of creepiness and insanity goes on and on.

All in one place - http :// silkroad6ownowfk.onion (Don't bother going through this URL , It's closed now)

Why .onion ???

Well, as an Onion has many layers, which you have to peel off to get to the core of it... To access the deep web, you have to go through a series of layers first.

The Onion Routing Protocol

Variety of Browsers:

We cannot access these Deep Websites using our regular browser. We need a highly secure browser that would allow us to surf Anonymously. There are a variety of web browsers but Tor and I2P are used widely. First let us take a look at Tor Browsing.

Tor:

Tor is a browser that was created by the Tor Browsing organization in 2000. It lets us go full anon and takes us to the great depths of Deep and Dark Web.

Basically, our message goes through a series of Routers(as it normally does in the Standard Protocols). The routers mask the IP Address of the sender with Multiple Layers. This means that the IP Address of the sender is changed on every hop ,making it almost impossible to track us . Now I know some of you might think of this as a very obvious thing- "Of coarse, the IP Address of the packet that carries message through a Network would change with every hop...then what's the big idea here??? "

The changed IP Address would show large variations. On Tracing the Packet that carries the message, we will find that once the source IP Address of the packet is from Singapore, on next hop Russia ,later United States then China and so on...

This way it is almost impossible to find the source address of the message.

It is not all the way bad though. It can surf regular surface websites too.

I2P:

The Invisible Internet Project. It is similar to the Tor but it is primarily used for messaging purpose. It can also surf the dark web. Dark web are the part of internet that has series of websites specialized for illegit activities.

The Levels of Deepness:

The Deep web is only one of the 5 levels of internet.

Level 1:

The top most layer with no as such "protection" is comprised of the local Social Networking Websites, the Search Engines etc.

" Yeah! You're at level 1 dude!!! "

Level 2:

The Bergie Web. The websites that are a little hard to find but can be spotted by a search engine.

For instance: utorrent, piratebay, all pop ups etc.

Level 3:

The Deep Web. The websites in this region cannot be listed under any normal search engine. There is however a search engine known as Duckduckgo .

Level 4:

The Dark Web. The place for all nasty illegit stuffs. Hier a hitman, buy dolls with real human organs, pedophilic websites, torture dungeons and other god forsaken things.

Level 5:

The Marianas Web. It is the Deepest place in the whole internet. Here lies the deepest secrets of the world such as : the coordinates of Atlantis, the holy grail and also a female AI, that controls the whole internet. Which is basically a concept of Quantum Computers(which are not invented yet)...

Now some of you might be curious and would want to visit the Deep/Dark Web. Don't let your curiosity kill you... One has to be very careful while surfing in the deep web. There are however many tutorials to visit the Deep web. I'll be coming up with a secure one soon. Till then keep Exploring...