> There was a 112-digit prime number to factor, a computing task so laborious it required renting a special server to run for seven hours.
Well, that seems kind of trivial :-). Surely they meant "a 112-digit number to prime factor"
Re:Cicada 3301
by mootothemax on Tuesday July 01, 2014 @05:47AM
(#7969836)
I struggle with that article; the "leaked" email it links to is so incredibly poorly-written, I can't see any way to take the rest of it seriously:
The fun thing is: even if it was an elaborate secret-service recruitment drive, I'd feel a bit let down that it wasn't something "more."
Like the header says, it had been paraphrased/had structure modified to remove watermarking elements unique to each individual it was sent to.
Re:Cicada 3301
by mootothemax on Tuesday July 01, 2014 @06:06AM
(#7969878)
Like the header says, it had been paraphrased/had structure modified to remove watermarking elements unique to each individual it was sent to.
Yeah, that's kind of what I mean as well.
If it'd been written to only a few people, there are an incredible number of ways to watermark the content.
E.g. did all of the emails even include a questionnaire? Were some emails 5 words long, and others 5 paragraphs?
I guess the easy/lazy way would be to tailor the questions to each unique email.
Basically, I think the sanitation excuse is a bit too convenient, and an attempt to buy into the super-secret mythology.
I like that a group that claims to go without a name signs their emails with "3301".
http://www.wnyc.org/story/meet-teenage-codebreaker-who-helpe...
At the end:
> "On this web portal, there was a chat system, a forum system and a bunch of things set up so we could all communicate," Tekk said. "I guess their goal for us was to have this elite programmer society where we would make encrypted or anonymous services that would serve everybody."
> "Once we succeeded, once we were part of this thing, once we were working with them, we kind of lost interest," he said.