(NOTE: This article uses a lot of words that are specific to the tech and cryptology savvy. If you have no idea what a word is, check the bottom because I have probably defined it.)
On January 6, 2016, citizens of the internet woke up to a pleasant surprise: Cicada 3301, a prominent internet puzzle, had started again. After not happening in 2015, the smartest people on the internet readily accepted a quest with almost no idea what they were looking for.
Cicada 3301 is an internet puzzle stretching across the “daytime” internet, the dark net*, and even into real life. It has been named one of the most eerie, mysterious puzzles on the internet. It all started on January 4, 2012, when an anonymous user posted an image on the /b/ board on 4chan.org.
As people usually do on /b/, they jumped on it. People used stenography** tools to decode the image, and found a picture of a cicada in the background. When people opened the image in notepad, bringing out the code of the image, people found another message, with a reference to the Roman emperor Caesar, and a website scrambled with a Caesar cipher***. The website led to an image of a duck, which, when put through stenography tool OutGuess****, created a message, a Book Code*****, and a link to a subreddit.
The subreddit contained 2 images, named Welcome and Problems. “Problems” was found to be a stereogram****** of a chalice, which was made with images of King Arthur. When put through OutGuess, these images also contain a message. Also on the subreddit was a string of scrambled text. This text could be decoded with a string of numbers found in the title of the page. When unscrambled, the text became a phone number.
When the phone number was called, a recording played, instructing listeners to multiply 3 prime numbers associated with the original message, then to add a “.com” to the end of said number. The recording says that 3301 is one of them. These numbers were revealed to be the dimensions of the image in pixels: 509 and 503. When multiplied with 3301, you get the number 845145127.
The website contained an image of a cicada, and a countdown to a certain date. When the image was put through OutGuess (noticing a common trend here?) a message was found saying that “Patience is a virtue. Check back at 17:00 on Monday, 9 January 2012.” On the 9th of January, the site changed and revealed a string of numbers.
The string of numbers led to locations all over the real world, which were revealed to have a picture of a cicada and a QR code******* at said locations.
The QR codes led to websites with images of cicadas, which were then OutGuessed to find a poem (“Agrippa” by William Gibson) which led to an onion (TOR) link********, in which people put their emails. Soon after, the website shut down, leaving only a few lucky people in the race.
Those lucky few got an email, and then went dark after. No one knows what happened to the competition after that. However, it is commonly assumed that someone won, because it started again the next year. It happened again in 2014, but did not occur in 2015 because nobody had finished the 2014 puzzle. This year, the puzzle started again, and the focus seems to be on music. As the puzzle goes on, it will surely become more complicated. Even though people have no idea who is behind these puzzles, they will still gladly contribute to them.
Vocabulary
Darknet*: a part of the internet that can only be accessed with certain programs, such as TOR. This is where most of the internet’s underworld transactions go down. This should not be confused with the “Deep Web”, which is the internet’s store of private data (emails, intranets, and even missile defense programs).
Stenography**: the art/practice of hiding information, such as text, and even images, within other media, such as images, files, text, and even audio.
Caesar Cipher***: a cryptology method where you write your message, then create an encrypted alphabet by offsetting it by a certain key (usually a number), then convert your message to the cipher-text using the encrypted alphabet
OutGuess****: stenography software used to hide and find information in images, provided you have the key (password)
Book Code*****: also known as a book cipher, it is where you use a plain book with a key that tells you a certain page and word on the page to create your message
Stereogram******: a flat diagram of a 3D image, giving it 3D representation
QR code*******: a code readable by most modern machines with a camera, it consists of an array of black and white squares. It is typically used for referencing media, such as links, pictures, and even audio.
Onion (TOR) link********: a link that can only be used on TOR, a browser for the darknet. TOR works by sending people through nodes, and adding a layer of encryption at each node you go through, creating the moniker “The Onion Browser.” This type of encryption is very difficult to break, but it is rumored that the NSA has broken it.
Programming, Ascended 