Solving the Australian Signals Directorate cryptography challenge coin | Hacker News Reader

Solving the Australian Signals Directorate cryptography challenge coin

senwerks.com

110 pointscjg13 comments

Australian Signals Directorate coin code cracked by 14yo in 'just over an hour' - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32688802 - Sept 2022 (100 comments)

The article mentions the use of CyberChef in cracking the puzzle.

CyberChef is an online Swiss knife that merits a lotta love.

https://gchq.github.io/CyberChef/

Here is a GitHub repo of about 70 CyberChef recipes, and other related things:

https://github.com/mattnotmax/cyberchef-recipes

Without spoiling anything, has anyone here solved it? I have no idea where to start. The answer I get for layer 1 seems ridiculous (just two characters).

Not sure what type of clue you’re after, but all of layer 1 is on the “heads” side in its entirety if that helps… and gives you a very clear clue to what layer 2 involves.

I have no experience in solving these types of puzzles/no background in math. Is it something I should be able to do?

Looks like the NSA puzzles are a lot harder.

I don't think it aimed at being achievable only by few.

They mentioned in the release of the coin that it was celebratory. So if it brings kids to being aware of such puzzles and gets the press to open more eyes to it, it's a bigger win than some super nerdy puzzle designed to hire future analysts.

Or kids in Australia are smarter ...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terence_Tao

What does this link have to do with anything, it says he is an Australian-American mathematician originally from HK. Not sure how this works that smoothly to demonstrate your point.

Just to clarify, his parents were from Hong Kong. Terrence was born, raised, and schooled in Adelaide, Australia. He completed his Bachelors and Masters at Flinders University by the age of 16.

As clarified by handspun Terry was born, raised, educated here in Australia - largely homeschooled he had support from the Australian public school and university system which did at the time a pretty decent job of lifting young talent, he was part of the same undergrad math club group that had Paul Erdos visiting that spawned a few crypto punks, cosmologists, math professors, etc.

For clarification, this appears to be a cryptography-challenge coin, not a cryptography challenge-coin.

To elaborate, a challenge-coin would be awarded for achievement or entry into a prestigious group. The coin is usually decorative but contains no challenges in itself.

In this case, the coin contains challenges, and anyone can purchase it - rather than it being awarded.

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