Cicada 3301 is the name given to three sets of puzzles posted under the name "3301" online between 2012 and 2014. The first puzzle started on January 4, 2012, [1] on 4chan [2] and ran for nearly a month. A second round of puzzles began one year later on January 4, 2013, and then a third round following the confirmation of a fresh clue posted on Twitter on January 4, 2014. [3] [4] The third puzzle remains unsolved. The stated intent was to recruit "intelligent individuals" by presenting a series of puzzles to be solved; no new puzzles were published on January 4, 2015. A new clue was posted on Twitter on January 5, 2016. [5] [6] Cicada 3301 posted their last verified OpenPGP-signed message in April 2017, denying the validity of any unsigned puzzle. [7]
The puzzles focused heavily on data security, cryptography, steganography, and Internet anonymity. [8] [9] [10] It has been called "the most elaborate and mysterious puzzle of the Internet age", [11] and is listed as one of the "top 5 eeriest, unsolved mysteries of the Internet" by The Washington Post , [12] and much speculation exists as to its function. Many have speculated that the puzzles are a recruitment tool for the NSA, CIA, [13] MI6, a "Masonic conspiracy", [14] or a cyber mercenary group. [2] [8] Others have stated Cicada 3301 is an alternate reality game, although no company or individual has attempted to monetize it. [11]
The stated purpose of the puzzles each year was to recruit "highly intelligent individuals", although the ultimate purpose remains unknown. [2] Theories have included claims that Cicada 3301 is a secret society with the goal of improving cryptography, privacy, and anonymity or that it is a cult or religion. [15] [16] [17] According to statements of several people who won the 2012 puzzle, 3301 typically uses non-puzzle-based recruiting methods, but created the Cicada puzzles because they were looking for potential members with cryptography and computer security skills. [15]
The first puzzle, of 2013, was solved by Marcus Wanner. [18] According to him, those who solved the puzzles were asked questions about their support of information freedom, online privacy and freedom, and rejection of censorship. Those who answered satisfactorily at this stage were invited to a private forum, where they were instructed to devise and complete a project intended to further the ideals of the group. [15] He did not finish his work on a method of general decryption and the website was removed.[ citation needed ]
The Cicada 3301 clues spanned many different forms of communication media, including but not limited to the Internet, telephone, original music, bootable Linux CDs, digital images, physical paper signs, and pages of unpublished cryptic books written in runes. In total, there were two pieces of music, titled "The Instar Emergence" and "Interconnectedness", accompanying the Cicada clues. However, neither of them were part of a standard repertoire, and neither the composers nor performers have been identified. Cicada 3301 also wrote a book, titled Liber Primus (Latin for First Book), which contains many pages, only some of which have been decrypted. In addition to using many varying techniques to encrypt, encode, or hide data, these clues also referenced a wide variety of books, poetry, artwork, and music. [2] Each clue was signed by the same OpenPGP private key to confirm authenticity. [10] [19]
Authorities from the Los Andes Province of Chile claimed that Cicada 3301 is a "hacker group" and engaged in illegal activities. Cicada 3301 responded to this claim by issuing a PGP-signed statement denying any involvement in illegal activity. [20] [21]
In July 2015, a group calling themselves "3301" hacked into Planned Parenthood's database; [22] however, the group appeared to have no association with Cicada 3301. [23] Cicada 3301 later issued a PGP-signed statement stating they "are not associated with this group in any way" and also stated that Cicada 3301 did not "condone their use of our name, number, or symbolism". [24] The hacker group later confirmed that they were not affiliated with Cicada 3301. [25]
During the first months of QAnon's existence, there were rumors that Cicada 3301 had created QAnon. [26] One early QAnon promoter urged Cicada 3301 puzzlers to help decode Q's messages. [27] Despite this, 3301 themselves have not publicly stated to be involved with QAnon in any way.
The United States Navy released a cryptographic challenge based on the Cicada 3301 recruitment puzzles in 2014 calling it Project Architeuthis. [28] [29]
The plot of "Nautilus", a 2014 episode of Person of Interest , featured a large-scale game very similar to the Cicada 3301 puzzles. Both feature a series of worldwide cryptographic puzzles, but as the title implies, these feature the image of a nautilus shell instead of a cicada logo. [30] Person of Interest creator Jonathan Nolan and producer Greg Plageman stated in an interview that Cicada 3301 was the inspiration for the episode: "Episode 2, I'm particularly fascinated by the subject underneath it. Look up Cicada 3301 on the Internet. It's a very interesting concept out there that we then put into a larger story that connects to our show". [31]
The organization is the subject of the 2021 comedy-thriller film Dark Web: Cicada 3301 . [32] [33] Directed by Alan Ritchson, who co-wrote the script with Joshua Montcalm, it stars Jack Kesy, Conor Leslie, Ron Funches, Kris Holden-Ried, Andreas Apergis, and Ritchson. The film follows a hacker who participates in Cicada's recruitment game while evading the National Security Agency (NSA). [34] [35]
In the video game Assassin's Creed Origins , a member of the Isu civilisation references Cicada when listing off various mysteries of history. [36]
The Cicada 3301 puzzles play a major role in the visual novel Anonymous;Code .
Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) is an encryption program that provides cryptographic privacy and authentication for data communication. PGP is used for signing, encrypting, and decrypting texts, e-mails, files, directories, and whole disk partitions and to increase the security of e-mail communications. Phil Zimmermann developed PGP in 1991.
Philip R. Zimmermann is an American computer scientist and cryptographer. He is the creator of Pretty Good Privacy (PGP), the most widely used email encryption software in the world. He is also known for his work in VoIP encryption protocols, notably ZRTP and Zfone. Zimmermann is co-founder and Chief Scientist of the global encrypted communications firm Silent Circle.
A secret society is an organization about which the activities, events, inner functioning, or membership are concealed. The society may or may not attempt to conceal its existence. The term usually excludes covert groups, such as intelligence agencies or guerrilla warfare insurgencies, that hide their activities and memberships but maintain a public presence.
An alternate reality game (ARG) is an interactive networked narrative that uses the real world as a platform and employs transmedia storytelling to deliver a story that may be altered by players' ideas or actions.
Kryptos is a sculpture by the American artist Jim Sanborn located on the grounds of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) headquarters, the George Bush Center for Intelligence in Langley, Virginia.
The MIT Mystery Hunt is an annual puzzle hunt competition at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It is one of the oldest and most complex puzzle hunts in the world and attracts roughly 120 teams and 3,000 contestants annually in teams of 5 to 150 people. It has inspired similar competitions at Microsoft, Stanford University, Melbourne University, University of South Carolina, University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign and University of Aveiro (Portugal) as well as in the Seattle, San Francisco, Miami, Washington, D.C., Indianapolis and Columbus, Ohio metropolitan areas. Because the puzzle solutions often require knowledge of esoteric and eclectic topics, the hunt is sometimes used to exemplify popular stereotypes of MIT students.
A puzzle hunt is an event where teams compete to solve a series of puzzles, many of which are tied together via metapuzzles. Puzzlehunt puzzles are usually not accompanied by direct instructions for how to solve them; figuring out the necessary approach is part of the puzzle. These hunts may be hosted at a particular location, in multiple locations, or via the internet.
Alan Michael Ritchson is an American actor. He made his acting debut as Aquaman / Arthur Curry on The CW superhero series Smallville (2005–2010), where he appeared as a guest star between the fifth and tenth seasons. Ritchson had a starring role in the Spike TV sitcom Blue Mountain State (2010–2012), a role he reprised in the 2016 film sequel. He also headlined the SyFy action series Blood Drive (2017), and returned to superhero television as Hank Hall / Hawk on the DC Universe / HBO Max series Titans from 2018 to 2021. He gained wider recognition for portraying the title character in the Amazon Prime Video action thriller series Reacher since 2022.
Agrippa (A Book of the Dead) is a work of art created by science fiction novelist William Gibson, artist Dennis Ashbaugh and publisher Kevin Begos Jr. in 1992. The work consists of a 300-line semi-autobiographical electronic poem by Gibson, embedded in an artist's book by Ashbaugh. Gibson's text focused on the ethereal, human-owed nature of memories retained over the passage of time (the title referred to a Kodak photo album from which the text's memories are taken). Its principal notoriety arose from the fact that the poem, stored on a 3.5" floppy disk, was programmed to encrypt itself after a single use; similarly, the pages of the artist's book were treated with photosensitive chemicals, effecting the gradual fading of the words and images from the book's first exposure to light. The work is recognised as an early example of electronic literature.
Anonymous is a decentralized international activist and hacktivist collective and movement primarily known for its various cyberattacks against several governments, government institutions and government agencies, corporations and the Church of Scientology.
Jon Callas is an American computer security expert, software engineer, user experience designer, and technologist who is the co-founder and former CTO of the global encrypted communications service Silent Circle. He has held major positions at Digital Equipment Corporation, Apple, PGP, and Entrust, and is considered "one of the most respected and well-known names in the mobile security industry." Callas is credited with creating several Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) standards, including OpenPGP, DKIM, and ZRTP, which he wrote. Prior to his work at Entrust, he was Chief Technical Officer and co-founder of PGP Corporation and the former Chief Technical Officer of Entrust.
The Secret of the Nautilus is a 2002 adventure video game, inspired by Jules Verne's 1870 science fiction novel Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas. It was developed by Cryo Interactive and released for Microsoft Windows based PCs.
Satoshi Nakamoto is the name used by the presumed pseudonymous person or persons who developed bitcoin, authored the bitcoin white paper, and created and deployed bitcoin's original reference implementation. As part of the implementation, Nakamoto also devised the first blockchain database. Nakamoto was active in the development of bitcoin until December 2010.
Elonka Dunin is an American video game developer and cryptologist. Dunin worked at Simutronics Corp. in St. Louis, Missouri from 1990–2014, and in 2015 was Senior Producer at Black Gate Games in Nashville, Tennessee. She is Chairperson Emerita and one of the founders of the International Game Developers Association's Online Games group, has contributed or been editor in chief on multiple IGDA State of the Industry white papers, and was one of the Directors of the Global Game Jam from 2011–2014. As of 2020 she works as a management consultant at Accenture.
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Conor Marie Leslie is an American actress. Beginning her career in the late 2000s, her first major role was in the thriller film Chained (2012). She has worked frequently on television, including as a series regular on the Discovery Channel historical Western Klondike (2014), the Yahoo! Screen science fiction comedy Other Space (2015), and the Fox crime drama Shots Fired (2017). From 2015 to 2018, she also appeared on the first three seasons of the Amazon Prime Video alternate history thriller The Man in the High Castle. Leslie gained further prominence for portraying Donna Troy / Wonder Girl on the DC Universe / HBO Max superhero series Titans (2018–2021) and was part of the main cast during the second and third seasons.
Dark Web: Cicada 3301 is an action-comedy thriller film directed by Alan Ritchson, in his directorial debut, who co-wrote the script with Joshua Montcalm. Inspired by the eponymous organization, it stars Jack Kesy, Conor Leslie, Ron Funches, and Ritchson. Kesy portrays a hacker who participates in Cicada's recruitment game while evading the NSA.
"Nautilus" is the 2nd episode of the fourth season of the American television drama series Person of Interest. It is the 70th overall episode of the series and is written by Dan Dietz and Melissa Scrivner Love and directed by co-executive producer Chris Fisher. It aired on CBS in the United States and on CTV in Canada on September 30, 2014.
Unsolved! The History and Mystery of the World’s Greatest Ciphers from Ancient Egypt to Online Secret Societies is a 2017 book by American mathematician and cryptologist Craig P. Bauer. The book explores the history and challenges of various unsolved ciphers, ranging from ancient scripts to modern codes and puzzles. The book also invites readers to try their hand at cracking the ciphers, offering clues and hints along the way. The book received positive reviews from critics and readers, who praised its engaging style, comprehensive coverage, and intriguing content.
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