Challenge #1: Hail Caesar<\/h1>\n
The challenge opens with a tweet<\/a> that reads, simply:<\/p>\n Classic cryptanalysis requires spotting patterns, and something that many people will have noticed in that tweet is this: jhv:kwwsv:\/\/zzz.odq<\/span>. Using your world knowledge, you might guess that this is a web address, and you will also probably know that most web addresses start with www<\/span>, so instantly, you have one letter cracked. But then if you work backwards you can also guess that many web addresses start with http:\/\/<\/span> or https:\/\/<\/span>, and in this case, kwwsv<\/span> has a repeated-W<\/span> which is probably the repeated T<\/span>. So, now you have H<\/span>, P<\/span>, S<\/span>, T<\/span>, and W<\/span>. From here, you can actually crack this whole cipher just from this if you can derive the key from these five examples:<\/p>\n The cryptanalyst is always looking for patterns, and the pattern here is that each letter of the plaintext alphabet has shifted forward three letters to produce the cipher alphabet. This is, in fact, a particularly famous (though as you can see, not a very secure!) cipher known as the Caesar Shift Cipher<\/a>, so named because Caesar made much use of it. He also happened to favour the +3 key, where the cipher alphabet is created by shifting the plain alphabet along three, but of course, you could shift any number up to +25 or -25. In this case, since you now know that your Caesar Shift Cipher key is +3 all you need to do is reverse that process, and shift every letter in your cipher text back <\/em>by three letters. From your key, you can easily work out the whole cipher alphabet:<\/p>\n Thus you can now crack your first message:<\/p>\n Then you just need to reinsert your missing spaces:<\/p>\n Oooh, a link! Onto the next challenge.<\/p>\n This link takes us to the next rendezvous point: a page entitled Enigma \u2013 Hydra<\/em><\/strong>. Because this challenge was launched before the Enigma episodes went out, and because lots of people didn\u2019t know what the miniseries was going to be on, Hydra was in fact a clue about the upcoming topic. Hydra was the name given to the second version (M2) of the Enigma machine (there were many versions) and so this indicating an increasing level of difficulty.<\/p>\n The Enigma \u2013 Hydra<\/em><\/strong> page is black with green writing that reads as follows:<\/p>\n And that, it appears, is that.<\/p>\n Or is it?<\/p>\n This page uses the age-old art of steganography<\/a>, and in particular, \u201cinvisible ink\u201d. Just underneath that sentence, in black writing on this black page, is the following:<\/p>\n So what is this all about? Well, it links to a file called, unsurprisingly, triton.png, held at the following address: https:\/\/www.lancaster.ac.uk\/fass\/media\/forge\/triton.png<\/a>. If the link is clicked it will probably show a picture that looks something like this:<\/p>\n Note: I AM A REPLICA OF THE ORIGINAL, so I don’t work!<\/p><\/div>\n Depending on your device, the real image at the link might cut off at the error, or it might not show at all. Whether you can see some, all, or none of the image at all, the error is actually deliberate. This is a clue to the third part of the challenge.<\/p>\n What is Triton all about, you ask? Well, that\u2019s the name of the next iteration of the Enigma Machine \u2013 the M3 and then M4, which upgraded to such high levels of encryption, the resultant Enigma cipher all but defeated the British cryptanalysts during World War II. In other words, if you\u2019ve got to Triton, you\u2019ve hit the hardest part of the challenge so far. So now what do you do?<\/p>\n Well, triton.png is yet another steganographic puzzle. The error in the picture actually indicates that the file itself has been tampered with in some way. (Note: good steganographic images will not give away any indications that they contain extra, hidden information!) But how to get in<\/em>? There are several solutions. The simplest is to change the file extension and open the file with a different piece of software. In this case, after creating the original .png, I changed the extension to .txt, opened it in a notepad, scrolled down, added in some extra content, saved it, and changed the extension back to .png. The picture was then slightly distorted, but in this case, that\u2019s useful, since most people attempting this will be amateur cryptanalysts and the occasional pointer is useful. I could have modified it in such a way that no distortion showed but that seemed a little cruel.<\/p>\n So to reveal the steganography, you could effectively reverse the process:<\/p>\n There, about two third of the way down the file, after a lot of incomprehensible gibberish, you will suddenly see the following:<\/p>\n Aha! Now all that remains is this very last step. Of course, you could go straight to the web address given, but then you would be prompted for a password, and after all this, the password isn\u2019t going to be something simple, right?<\/p>\n Hmmm\u2026 so what are all those dots and dashes about\u2026<\/p>\n Perhaps you guessed already, but if you didn\u2019t, that\u2019s a visual representation of Morse Code. The easiest solution here is to copy and paste the dots and dashes into an online Morse Code translator<\/a> and it should produce for you eight letters, thus:<\/p>\n But what are those letters? They are the initials of four extraordinary cryptanalysts: Jerzy R\u00f3\u017cycki<\/a>, Henryk Zyglaski<\/a>, Marian Rejewksi<\/a>, and Alan Turing<\/a>. And if you want to know more about them, then listen to the November miniseries of en clair.<\/p>\n Once inside the final site, you can find the validation protocol \u2013 the way to check in and let ECHQ know that you\u2019ve cracked the code, but even this this follows an encryption method so that you can publicly validate your success without simply giving away the validation protocol key to everyone else.<\/p>\n Welcome to ECHQ!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" As a warm-up to our ESRC Festival of Social Science mini-series on Enigma, I posed a small series of cryptological challenges – a Tiny Enigma. Within the challenge is a sprinkling of clues, and in this post, I present the solutions to each stage, as well as a little insight into what the various clues […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":77,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"episode_type":"","audio_file":"","podmotor_file_id":"","podmotor_episode_id":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","filesize_raw":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","itunes_episode_number":"","itunes_title":"","itunes_season_number":"","itunes_episode_type":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-477","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paoUKh-7H","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":529,"url":"https:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/enclair\/2019\/11\/09\/case-s01e15-enigma-part-3-of-3\/","url_meta":{"origin":477,"position":0},"title":"Case S01E15 – Enigma, part 3 of 3","author":"DrClaireH","date":"09 November 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"CONTENT RATING:\u00a0PG-13 (themes: war, death) See the Self-care page if you need support. Enigma was one of the most advanced mechanical ciphers of its time. In this final episode, as war consumes Europe, Alan Turing and Bletchley Park take on the ultimate version of the Enigma mechanical cipher - the\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"Bletchley Park","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/enclair\/files\/2019\/11\/bletchley_park-1024x603.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/enclair\/files\/2019\/11\/bletchley_park-1024x603.jpg?resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/enclair\/files\/2019\/11\/bletchley_park-1024x603.jpg?resize=525%2C300 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":521,"url":"https:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/enclair\/2019\/11\/06\/case-s01e14-enigma-part-2-of-3\/","url_meta":{"origin":477,"position":1},"title":"Case S01E14 – Enigma, part 2 of 3","author":"DrClaireH","date":"06 November 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"CONTENT RATING:\u00a0PG-13 (themes: sex) See the Self-care page if you need support. Enigma was one of the most advanced mechanical ciphers of its time. In this first episode, we look back at the history of cryptology to see the ashes from which this cryptographic titan rose. Below you will find\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"Marian Rejewski","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/enclair\/files\/2019\/11\/rejewski-1024x1017.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/enclair\/files\/2019\/11\/rejewski-1024x1017.jpg?resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/enclair\/files\/2019\/11\/rejewski-1024x1017.jpg?resize=525%2C300 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":502,"url":"https:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/enclair\/2019\/11\/03\/case-s01e13-enigma-part-1-of-3\/","url_meta":{"origin":477,"position":2},"title":"Case S01E13 – Enigma, part 1 of 3","author":"DrClaireH","date":"03 November 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"CONTENT RATING:\u00a0PG-13 (themes: torture, death) See the Self-care page if you need support. Enigma was one of the most advanced mechanical ciphers of its time. In this first episode, we look back at the history of cryptology to see the ashes from which this cryptographic titan rose. Below you will\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"A four-rotor Enigma machine","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/enclair\/files\/2019\/11\/enigma-1024x768.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/enclair\/files\/2019\/11\/enigma-1024x768.jpg?resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/enclair\/files\/2019\/11\/enigma-1024x768.jpg?resize=525%2C300 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":569,"url":"https:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/enclair\/2019\/11\/30\/case-s01e99-season-two-trailer\/","url_meta":{"origin":477,"position":3},"title":"Case S01E99 – Season Two Trailer","author":"DrClaireH","date":"30 November 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"CONTENT RATING:\u00a0Universal See the Self-care page if you need support. We\u2019re going on holiday for a bit. It\u2019s a vacation before we start Season Two. On this note, what sort of cases, you might ask, will Season Two bring? And what can you listen to, read, or watch, till en\u2026","rel":"","context":"With 1 comment","block_context":{"text":"With 1 comment","link":"https:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/enclair\/2019\/11\/30\/case-s01e99-season-two-trailer\/#comments"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":185,"url":"https:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/enclair\/2019\/02\/28\/case-notes-s01e05-messages-in-music\/","url_meta":{"origin":477,"position":4},"title":"Case notes: S01E05 – Messages in Music","author":"DrClaireH","date":"28 February 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"CONTENT RATING: universal Authors and painters have found many ways to encrypt messages into their creations, but how do you do this if you are a musician working with instruments? Below you will find the data, audio credits, further reading, and a transcript of the podcast. Audio credits Kai Engel\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":778,"url":"https:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/enclair\/2021\/02\/01\/case-s02e02-codetalkers\/","url_meta":{"origin":477,"position":5},"title":"Case S02E02 – Codetalkers","author":"DrClaireH","date":"01 February 2021","format":false,"excerpt":"CONTENT RATING: Universal See the Self-care page if you need support. When you have codebreakers like Alan Turing to contend with, how do you come up with a code that even the smartest people alive can't break? This episode tells the story of the Native American codetalkers, starting with the\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/enclair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/477","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/enclair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/enclair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/enclair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/77"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/enclair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=477"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/enclair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/477\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":497,"href":"https:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/enclair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/477\/revisions\/497"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/enclair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=477"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/enclair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=477"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/enclair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=477"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}zhofrphwrhqfodlu'vwlqbhqljpd.brxkdyh25gdbvwrvroyhd\r\nvhulhvrifubswrorjlfdofkdoohqjhv:\r\nkwwsv:\/\/zzz.odqfdvwhu.df.xn\/idvv\/phgld\/irujh\/kbgud.kwp<\/pre>\n
\n
Plain \u00a0alphabet: A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z\r\nCipher alphabet: D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z A B C<\/pre>\n
welcometoenclair'stinyenigma.youhave25daystosolvea\r\nseriesofcryptologicalchallenges:https:\/\/www.\r\nlancaster.ac.uk\/fass\/media\/forge\/hydra.htm<\/pre>\n
Welcome to en clair's tiny enigma. You have 25 days to\r\nsolve a series of cryptological challenges:\r\nhttps:\/\/www.lancaster.ac.uk\/fass\/media\/forge\/hydra.htm<\/a><\/pre>\n
Challenge #2: Hydra<\/h1>\n
So far so good, 009, but can you get any further?<\/strong><\/span><\/pre>\ntriton.png<\/a><\/strong><\/span><\/pre>\n![\"Note:](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/enclair\/files\/2019\/10\/replica.png?resize=600%2C600\")
Challenge #3: Triton<\/h1>\n
\n
nR\u2018\u00fe\u201cl\u00a6\u00c9I}\u00e9 y9k.}l\u00fdO\u00d6\u00cfO\u2018=\u00f71s\u00ac!atl\u2019\u00f7\u0160\u201a\u00f6\u00c6O\u201e9\u00ad\u00dc 3\u0152*Z\u0160\u017e\u00b4\u00c4\u201a\r\nvr\u017e\u00deu\u00f4\u00d9\u00df\u00c9DG\"\\\u00e1\u2011 k\u2014Z\u00e7E'\u00b0\u2030\"\u009d\u2013L\u201e\u00fd\u00fbyX DN\u008d\u00d6\u00a3df\u0152\u00e4\u00b1\u2013\u00c32w\u0090\u00db6?\r\n\u00ca\u00a3`\u00bd;\u00ea\u017e\u00f3!\u00baZ\u00e9t%J\u201elI\u00bc\u00bd&\u00b6\u00e0\u00e2\u00a9\u00a5e\u00bfn\u00b1\u00ad\u00d1\u201c\u00d2~~\u00b8t\u2011\u00d7\u00bd&\u00c8\u00de=\u00aa~ \u00aa\u00f6\u00d9q\u00f8)\r\n\u0192\u00d3\u00f3,o\u201ae\u00c4\u00da\u00b6FG{\u008f\u00bf\u00cd\u00a9D\u00eak\u02c6\u00c5\u2018\u00ddl\u00a6)1\u00bfm\u008d\u00b2\u00bcX{MO\u00a9bM\u00b0c:\u00bf\u00c8a\u2122K\u00d57\u00ba\u00fb\r\n\u00e4Ku\u00e0\u00ed\u00fcF:a\u00bfL\u00f4 h:\u00a2jV\u00e1\u00d6\u00cbT\u00ce_\u00a8\u0178\u00c2\u00c3c\u00c7\u2030\u00e2f\u00f4I\u0081\u2014\u00f2m$>~\u00f6\u00af\u00bd\u0160\u017e D\u2021e`\r\necYu\u00c8\u00abn\u2019\u00cd\u00f7S\u00e9\u008f\u00a9t~%\u00b5\u00a4X\u00fd\u00cbw\u0178\u00adwe6\u00d5gw83\u00d9\u00cc\u00c7\u008f\u00afJc\u00ce]\u2011wn\u2039\u00b4\u2013S\u2030U\u00ae\r\n\r\nWell done, 009. You've come so far, but there is one\r\nlast challenge ahead.\r\n\r\nwp.lancs.ac.uk\/enclair\/enigma\r\n\r\n.--- .-. .... --.. -- .-. .- -\r\n\r\nmf\u00a4\u00f9\u00c4\u00fc%[1]<\/pre>\njrhzmrat<\/pre>\n
Validation protocol<\/h1>\n