For the past two years, a secretive online organisation has piqued the interest of the world’s finest code-breakers in a series of seemingly unsolvable puzzles. But why? And who is behind the puzzle? Welcome, friends, to the dark and twisted world of Cicada 3301.

Last year, geeks and code-breakers noticed a message appearing in online forums. “Hello,” it said.

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.

The message was simply signed, “3301”.

Code-breakers the world over instantly had their interest piqued. Skilled PC-nerds recognised the message as an example of digital steganography: the concealment of secret information within a digital file. A recipient can work out the code – for example, to alter the colour of every 100th pixel – to retrieve an entirely different image from the randomised background image.

Initial puzzle-solving found a reference to “Tiberius Claudius Caesar” and a line of meaningless letters. It was, some suspected, an embedded Caesar cipher – an encryption technique named after Julius Caesar, who used it in private correspondence. It replaces characters by a letter a certain number of positions down the alphabet.

Feeling as if they were getting close, code-breakers soon found another web address buried in the image’s code. They found a link, but when they clicked it, all they got was this:

Code-breakers live for this shit, and they were soon enraptured with the Cicada mystery. Until now, the hunt has required a knowledge of number theory, philosophy and classical music. An interest in both cyberpunk literature and the Victorian occult has also come in handy, as well as an understanding of Mayan numerology.

Many took the duck image as a clue in itself, and decoding it further lead to a messageboard on Reddit. There, encrypted lines from a book were being posted every few hours. There were also strange symbols comprising of several lines and dots – Mayan numbers.

From there, the puzzles kicked up a gear. They mutated into hexadecimal characters, reverse-engineering and prime numbers. Pictures of the cicada insect – reminiscent of the moth motif in ‘The Silence of the Lambs’ – became a common trend.

The cicada insect only emerges every prime number of years – 13, or 17 – to avoid synchronising with the life cycles of their predators. The pieces were starting to fit together.

A dedicated team of 4chan users set upon the task, taking leave from work to spend more time on the Cicada puzzle. After weeks of hardcore code-breaking, they managed to unlock the secret behind a long series of encrypted poems, songs and pre-Christian medieval Welsh manuscripts.

“Call us,” it read, “at telephone number 214-390-9608.”

Callers heard a robotic voice advising them to find the prime numbers in the original image. By multiplying them together, the solvers found a new prime and a new website: 845145127.com. A countdown clock and a huge picture of a cicada confirmed they were on the right path. (The website is now a “russian dating website” – check it out.)

Once the countdown reached zero, at 17h00 GMT on January 9, it showed 14 GPS coordinates around the world: locations in Warsaw, Paris, Seattle, Seoul, Arizona, California, New Orleans, Miami, Hawaii and Sydney.

But then, a warning from an ex-cicada member emerged.

Cicada was a Left-Hand Path religion disguised as a progressive scientific organisation, comprising of military officers, diplomats, and academics who were dissatisfied with the direction of the world.

Their plan, the anonymous writer claimed, was to transform humanity into the Nietzschen Übermensch. (A super-breed of people as envisaged by  Friedrich Nietzsche.)

This is a dangerous organisation. Their ways are nefarious.

To read the rest of the story, click here.

[Source : Telegraph]