CHAPTER 14
— CONSIDERED BY MANY to be the Internet's biggest unsolved mystery, — Cicada 3301— consists of a set of logic puzzles, involving cryptography and steganography, published on the Internet since 2012, with the supposed purpose of a mysterious organization, to recruit the most smart on the planet.
' But for what? ' — Asked Morant — CIA? NSA? A Secret Society?
— Nobody knows... The fact is that it has been mobilizing a mass of young mathematical geniuses, who try to solve a labyrinth of riddles within riddles. It more or less resembles an Alan Turing adventure, in deciphering the Enigma machine of the Nazis, however, without the heroism and glory of the past. Today, just a symptom of the minimalist philosophy of, — I did It! — in today's culture.
— If we can even call it culture proper.
— Everything is a form of culture.
Father Zumerick laughed and Morant continued.
— Fetishistic logic of delirium in the void and exaltation of an inconsequential feat. If that's true, Cicada 3301 could be a trap: Mathematical geniuses delivering the modus operandi, activist hacker like Big Date for the future Matrix. A newly sentient Internet, being a gigantic Artificial Intelligence, eager to predict cyber— attacks from possible dissidents.
— Don't exaggerate, Morant, since 2003, 4chan.org has been a hotbed of prank calls, protests, meme factory and viral fads, a chaotic mix of illegal content and vandalism, where all users are anonymous. The site has already deceived presenter Ophra Winfrey, about the worrying news of an alleged pedophile group — with 9,000 penises to molest children —, hacked Sarah Palin's email, took down music industry websites and from there also emerged the hacker group. — anonymous activist. 4chan seems to live on the edge of a dark and frightening abyss called the Deep web and Darknet, whose depths would be inhabited by the scum and villainy of the algorithmic codes that weave the whole of the Internet.
— You're the expert here, Zumerick.
— Exactly! But behold, ten years ago, coming from the depths of the abysses of Deep Web suddenly appeared on 4chan an image that read:
— Hi. We are looking for highly intelligent individuals. To find them we created a test. There is a hidden message within this image. Find her, and she'll put you on the path to finding us. We look forward to meeting the few who will make it to the end.
Good luck.
3301— .
— This was the first in a series of complex logic puzzles involving encryption, data security and steganography — the use of techniques to hide one message within another. After a dead end, which led to the image of a duck, they discovered a link to Reddit, with images with strange symbols, Mayan numerals, reaching a text about King Arthur, from which a certain phone number is extracted. with a recorded message with another dead end... But the problem is now more complex...
— Why more complex?
— Because now, it seems, they're actually putting lives in danger...