Solving the darknet riddle (2022) | Hacker News Reader

Solving the darknet riddle (2022)

sizeof.life

122 pointsFLpxpyJ28 comments

Feels like Cicada 3301. Something about being hosted on Tor makes the puzzles feel spicy rather than an ordinary ARG. Are there any currently active?

Cicada was/is a cypherpunk recruitment effort.

I was going to dispute your assertion, but instead ended up confirming it: https://uncovering-cicada.fandom.com/wiki/The_Leaked_Email

Apparently the email I was thinking of where they describe their goals is, in fact, PGP-signed.

Still, quite ARG-like.

Ah man, one childhood mystery I wish I didn't know the answer to.

Well if it makes you feel any better, Liber Primus isn't anywhere near solved yet, so, if you get the bug, you can certainly take a stab at it.

Or if you're looking to get into the CIA, get into airforce intel, do well, and behave yourself, and you too can file paperwork for the most illustrious of spy agencies.

My mom bought me a simple puzzle game subscription called "Finders Seekers". The puzzles are much, much simpler than this but still give you a great "that was clever" feeling.

I will be playing the next installment with her next weekend. If you like the escape room board games you should check it out. I also heard "Box One" is good and we'll pick that up in a couple months.

I super don't mean to be rude if you truly enjoy this game but this sounds a lot like a youtube-esque product placement

Please like and subscribe for more content like this

Sorry you perceived it as an insincere ad.

> The ‘get‘ word was chosen purposely and it referred to a http GET request.

This never would have occurred to me. What can one do for their brain to make this kind of lateral leap? Seems like it would be helpful in the debugging and comedy parts of my life.

It's probably experience in this case. Correlating clue texts and finding a common word that has an alternate meaning is not a new challenge in online riddles. And the author seems very aware of the usual tricks. Also not pictured: all the things he did try that were not the inteded meaning of the text.

I think this one is just about context. If you know about HTTP then it becomes clear, if that isn't on your mind it isn't. I have been following through a book on TLS and HTTPS so it is very on my mind.

This was the only obvious one to me. But I'm only a simple webdev, so that might explain it.

NotPron is a classic of this genre, highly recommended for anyone how enjoyed reading that article! Neat that people are still doing these kinds of mysteries!

http://notpron.com/

The "riffle shuffle" (dovetail) is presumably taken to be deterministic? I take the shuffling of a card-deck to be non-deterministic; but what do I know, I don't hang around in casinos or with card-sharps.

A good card shuffler can absolutely deterministically shuffle a deck of cards by making sure the shuffle alternates cards perfectly. Do this a few times and you get back to the original order.

Yeah, I get that; I wouldn't bet on a riffle-shuffle if it wasn't augmented by (a) my cut, and (b) an alternative shuffle. But I regard determinstically shuffling as cheating.

I'm getting flashbacks to the circa-2000 CyberArmy/Zebulun challenges.

Your level of success affected certain site flair/permissions.

I am so impressed that you were able to figure so many things out in the puzzle! I feel like I would never be able to do that, but I feel like all that is needed is a lot of patience, a lot of time, and a lot of deep thought.

Yes! OP is far more clever than me. I used to think I was a smart person but it takes regular reminders like that to assure me I'm average at best!

That Russian word had a useful information. It means "contrast", and that obviously implies "Increase the contrast to reveal the secret message".

It also reads KONTRAST, you don't even need a dictionary or google translate ;)

How much time has to pass before an [admittedly fascinating] walkthrough such as this isn't a legitimate spoiler?

None. If you’re solving the darknet riddle on your own, you won’t click through into the article; the title’s a spoiler warning.

Reminds me of a classic riddle French website called "Ouverture Facile"

This very much feels like an ARG. Super neat!

Aced it … good work.

Really good story

Reply on news.ycombinator.com