CHAPTER 40
— MANY GAVE UP here in the challenge, as this link leads to this image.
They saw a duck with a yellowish head and neck and a brown body with the words:
"WOOPS
Just decoys this way.
Looks like you can't guess how
To get the message out."
"WOOPS
Just bait on the way.
Seems like you can't guess how
get the message across."
— Just pranks around here, it seems you can't really guess how to decipher this message...
— The image seems to indicate that we are going to the wrong place.
— Obviously it's a prank.
— That's what they wanted us to find, the clue in this image is the words: GUESS and OUT, which stands for a software called OUTGUESS, which is used to hide messages within images.
He opened the software.
— The way that Outguess works is that it takes specific pixels from the image and changes their color into values, it is imperceptible to the naked eye, however, the program can recognize where these little squares are and can convert them into messages, for example, if take the image of the duck, throw it in photoshop and burst its brightness, you will see several strange squares, remember when I said in the first image that this was not there, but this is where we will make use of that knowledge, you will get this result here.
They read the encryption of the first image.
— But it's the same message.
— Whoever did this here is a genius... let's go to the sequel now...
— The duck...
Zumerick did the same thing with the duck and a sentence appeared:
Here is a book code, to find the book, and more information, go to:
http://reddit.com/r/a2e7j6ic78h0j/
— Another link...
— Get used to it, look at this sequence of numbers here:
1:20 — 2:3 — 3:5 — 4:20 — 5:5 — 6:23 — 7:1 — 8:8 — 9:2 — 10:4 — 11:8 — 12:4 — 13: 13 — 14:4 — 15:8 — 16:4 — 17:5 — 18:14 — 19:7 — 20:31 — 21:12 — 22:36 — 23:2 — 24:3 — 25:5 — 26: 65 — 27:5 — 28:1 — 29:2 — 30:1 — 31:32 — 32:10 — 33:3 — 34:25 — 35:10 — 36:7 — 37:20 — 38: 10 — 39:32 — 40:17 — 41:3 — 42:43
— That's the secret of this part.... The hidden code consists of a list of 75 combinations of numbers separated by colons, like 1:20 and 2:3, for example, which consisted of instructions that should be applied to a text— — where the 1:20 meant that the first letter of the twentieth line was to be struck out. You apply it to some pre-set text and remove the twentieth letter from the first line, the third letter from the second line, the fifth letter from the third line and so on. After yet another round of speculation and steganography on images found on Reddit, we discovered that the strange symbols, which were Mayan numerals, decoded the scrambled lines, arriving at a text about King Arthur, in old— fashioned language. Applying the Cipher in Book to this material, a message is revealed to us telling us to call a certain phone number, which was answered with a recorded message saying:
"Very well. You did well. There are three prime numbers associated with the final original image, — .jpg— . You need to find the other two.
Multiply all three numbers together and add a ".com" to find the next step.
Good luck.
Goodbye."
— Remembering that the first image, posted there at the beginning, 3301, is one of them.
— Because the code led to a URL on Reddit, which contained seemingly random phrases and sequences of dots and lines, as well as a series of strange symbols, which apparently made no sense, all made by the same person:
Zumerick showed the name.
— CageThrotteUs.
— These dozens of posts don't interest us, we have to focus on the only message that wasn't from him... the guy ImagoOnNib and his image called Problems, but in addition to this one, that CageTrottleUs, he also posted a message:
"Welcome"
— This image is a welcome mat, the kind you put on your doorstep, and obviously, we threw it at Outguess and found one of the most important messages from this first round:
"Going forward, we will cryptographically sign all messages with this key. It is available on MIT servers.
ID: 7A35090F
Patience is a virtue.
Good luck
3301"
— And after that we have our famous sequence of numbers and letters again, which again seem to tell us nothing, but...
— Similar to the first image.
— And what is it this time?
— This is our PGP signature.
— And what would that be?
Yuliya answered this time.
— PGP signature stands for, "Pretty Good Privacy", it is an encryption system that literally translates to: "Very good privacy", in short, there are two different keys, one key responsible for locking and hiding a message you want.
— That is, encrypt it.
— You're getting the hang of it, Greg.
— And the other key is for opening it, so...
— Yes, in our case, unlocking and revealing the message that the person hid in the first place, only the key you use to hide the message is public, everyone has access to it, if you want to hide a message with the name of the Cicada can, but the main key, which unlocks and reveals the message, is secret and only its owner has it, but that's exactly the secret, because that's the way to sign your messages and make sure they are them, and since it's a secret key... no one has access.
— That is, it is impossible for anyone to copy or clone.
— Perfect, Mr. Evans — said Yuliya.
— So Cicada took these two keys and put them on the MIT servers... so that means we can take a key verification program, like this one called Kleopatra from Windows, look for Cicada 3301 on the MIT servers, obviously a lot of people nowadays try to impersonate Cicada 3301, so there will be a hundred fake keys, you have to find there in the middle, that ID they passed during the round.
— In this case, this 7A35090F...
The priest didn't answer, he realized that the detective caught things faster than he imagined.
— Until, for an old man who used a typewriter, you take things quickly from the digital world.
Gregory Evans bowed in thanks for the compliment.
— Finding this ID and selecting it, you can copy a message that Cicada posted and paste it into the Kleopatra program, it will tell you if this message was officially signed by Cicada or not, this is the most important step of all to solve Cicada's riddles, because then you are sure that everything you are solving comes directly from them and not someone impersonating them to deceive innocent people.
— From what I can see, in a brilliant idea of theirs, they already left the key to verify that 'it's them', right at the beginning of all the enigmas.
— Or rather, Mr. Evans, they left the key under the entrance mat.
They laughed.
— Nowadays there is a site called "Is it Cicada?", it does all this automatic verification process, so we know if it is really Cicada, saving us a lot of time, so everything you need to know if it is really Cicada or not Cicada, is to press "Ctrl C" in the message and "Ctrl V" on this site, but that's all this PGP key will do.
— It couldn't be any easier, then.
— I would say you can't go wrong.
— And now we come to the Holy Grail...