FBI Issues Code Cracking Challenge

coondoggie writes to tell us that the FBI has issued another cracking challenge for a new cipher on their site. Tens of thousands responded to a similar challenge last year. In addition to the challenge, the FBI is also offering a few primers on the subject. There are a number of sites offering cipher challenges, but it's funny to see the FBI encouraging such behavior.

First Post

[Hadlock]

Love the article:
 
 

coondoggie writes to tell us that the FBI has issued another cracking challenge for a new cipher on their site. Tens of thousands responded to a similar challenge last year. In addition to the challenge the FBI is also offering a few primers on the subject. There are a number of sites offering cipher challenges, just funny to see the FBI encouraging...NO CARRIER

Hillarious.

Oh, the fun and prizes!

[Anonymous Coward]

The winner receives an all expense 1 way trip to the tropical island of Cuba!

This will really piss of the Chinese

[Alain Williams]

or whichever foreign government owns the code that the FBI has just recruited the bright kids on the Internet to crack :-)

Re:First Post

[Ethanol-fueled]

Maybe their service was just disconnected because they didn't pay their phone bill [fastsilicon.com].

FBI's "Add yourself to suspect database contest

[Jason Quinn]

Dear citizens: Please inform us if you have the talents necessary to be suspects in criminal cyber-cracking cases. That is all. Love, The FBI

This is like the Last Starfighter

[synthesizerpatel]

Except for video games and aliens, it'll be a bunch of crypto guys battling it out with Matlab.

Everyone is a Winner

[retech]

It's interesting to note that all of the participants in the challenge last year got an all expenses paid vacation to an undisclosed location. I guess it was a really cool vacation since none of them returned home.

Re:First Post

[HTH NE1]

Hillarious.

RING
RING
CONNECT 1200
|x{
NO CARRIER

Re:First Post

[morgan_greywolf]

We're the phone company. We don't have to care.

Re:First Post

[anomnomnomymous]

To be honest, I find it quite mountainarious.

Re:Oh, the fun and prizes!

[morgan_greywolf]

"You'll love our fun-filled resort on beautiful Guantanamo Bay!"

Meh. The resort is okay, but I hear the service is torture!

Re:Fill in the blank

[morgan_greywolf]

Well, actually, I think it's supposed to be

I cracked it...

[Anonymous Coward]

"Be sure to drink your ovaltine"

What the hell does that mean?

I win

[binaryseraph]

I have decrypted. Answer is: U R under Arrest.

damn!

Re:First Post

[ILuvRamen]

it's actually a clue. You have to decrypt the rest of the summary using the first letters of every prime numbered word.

Re:Oh, the fun and prizes!

[Anonymous Coward]

"You'll love our fun-filled resort on beautiful Guantanamo Bay!"

Meh. The resort is okay, but I hear the service is torture!

I heard the place is full of violent, religious fanatics who hate America.

I'd rather vacation somewhere like Europe where they're not violent, religious fanatics.

Re:Oh, the fun and prizes!

[Koiu Lpoi]

This is how I feel about that. [instantrimshot.com]

Re:link to challenge

[Raynor]

Was the the only person who started this by guessing YYY.AHB.MSK was www.fbi.gov? Seems like including a fully formatted URL is a bad idea...

Re:A similar challenge for linux web servers...

[Anonymous Coward]

Now that you've learned Linux, please learn about paragraphs [wikipedia.org]. Thank you.