Code: eb 04 af c2 bf a3 81 ec 00 01 00 00 31 c9 88 0c 0c fe c1 75 f9 31 c0 ba ef be ad de 02 04 0c 00 d0 c1 ca 08 8a 1c 0c 8a 3c 04 88 1c 04 88 3c 0c fe c1 75 e8 e9 5c 00 00 00 89 e3 81 c3 04 00 00 00 5c 58 3d 41 41 41 41 75 43 58 3d 42 42 42 42 75 3b 5a 89 d1 89 e6 89 df 29 cf f3 a4 89 de 89 d1 89 df 29 cf 31 c0 31 db 31 d2 fe c0 02 1c 06 8a 14 06 8a 34 1e 88 34 06 88 14 1e 00 f2 30 f6 8a 1c 16 8a 17 30 da 88 17 47 49 75 de 31 db 89 d8 fe c0 cd 80 90 90 e8 9d ff ff ff 41 41 41 41 Might interest you that this is a GCHQ enrolment 'method'.
Tried converting the stuff to binary, then to text. That fell over. Doesn't appear to be a Square Cipher, just in Hexadecimal, either. So no. I can't crack it. Then again; I've never studied Cryptography. So It's not all that surprising.
Is this supposed to be a message, something that can be translated into text? edit: I suspect this is harder than I first thought.
Well if you just raw convert the lot, you get this: Code: ë¯Â¿£ì1Ɉ ? þÁuù1Àºï¾Þ ?ÐÁÊŠ Š<ˆ ˆ< ?þÁuèé\‰ãÃ?\X=AAAAuCX=BBBB?u;Z‰Ñ‰æ‰ß)Ïó¤‰Þ‰?щß)Ï1À1Û1ÒþÀ ?ŠŠ4 ˆ4ˆ ò0ö?Š Š0ÚˆGIuÞ1Û‰?ØþÀÍ€èÿÿÿAAAA? So it's obviously some fun form of encryption.
It translates into one word. Click on the code image and it'll take you a website. I'm not going to lie - it's pretty hard...
No, no, I mean post-deadline will the solution be published? Obviously now it's an unfair disadvantage to you folks who have cracked it.
edit; n/m. Given that this translates into one word suggests that there's a lot of encryption information here.
Wow that's awesomesauce. 12th Dec will be worth checking out for the perverted methods they've invented!
Working on this as we speak. Hopefully having a good few years experience in programming (which brings a lot of knowledge about raw data and how to parse it) will help. We shall see. Or you're using the wrong encoding standard.
Because they clearly won't have though of that. Not to mention this probably won't just be an English word or something. Far too easy to crack. It'll probably be a random sequence, which would take far more than 10 days to guess.
Tried many encodings. Doesn't appear to simply be an encoded message. That'd be far to simple tbh. Trying some bitwise stuff. Onwards!
Perhaps this quote from the press release may throw some light on the matter :- "The challenge has six parts, each containing three puzzles, and all leading to a single answer which takes the form of a nine-letter word with a mathematical connection." Rather than brute-forcing anything (which would in any case make you ineligable for the prize as illegal hackers are specifically excluded) you could just work your way through a short-list of 9 letter words with mathematical connections - there can't be that many of them In any case the "code" presented looks pretty straight forward, but I don't want to spoil the fun for anyone who wants to work it out for themselves. Once you see it for what it is it's a real Homer "Doh!" moment.
