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this post was submitted on 25 Feb 2024
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Almost all the "internet mysteries" I hear of turn out to be overblown normal things, such as that Cicada 1138 thing which turned out to be not an agency recruiting tool but a band gimmick, or that missing Nova Scotia guy who had been known for years but whose identity was ignored to keep the vibes going. The closest things to what you're asking would be stuff like what you'd find on r/TOMT.
It's Cicada 3301 and I have no idea where you heard the "band gimmick" thing but it's just not true. I mean.... It doesn't even make any sense. If it was a gimmick to get a band popular then it did an insanely bad job at doing so after multiple puzzles across multiple years and swearing the winners to privacy.
Was trying to say Cicada 3301 went nowhere. It's been a decade. The puzzle gave no assurance that it wasn't some amateur thing to start out with, and there was a TopTenz video that showed the end of the clue hunting puzzles was simply some obscure musical band making a game with no other prize than front row seats to a personal performance.
Another example of overblownness, if we may call it that, is the CIA's supposed Kryptos statue. Or the Gravity Falls puzzle. When was the last time you heard a puzzle actually culminate or clarify the "race" ended? How do people think cults work?
I cannot find a single credible source for the band thing. There is a band called Cicada 3301 but they are completely unrelated. They named themselves after it but do not have any connection or affiliation. I wouldn't exactly use a Top 10 video as a reputable source.
As for Kryptos, it's a world famous and unsolved bit of cryptography. If it's overblown then solve it?
I mean its status as a piece of world class cryptography is overblown. Anyone can jumble a message together and say it's something special. I have a coding reputation and can attest there's strength in having applicability be in the balance. Not only that, but the amount of times the sculptor had to correct himself, and the fact that the decoded messages are jibberish even when decoded, just makes it sound like he wanted to kill time.
You have been consistently and provably wrong throughout this entire exchange. Forgive me, but your opinion on its status holds exactly zero weight. Especially when you said that you heard the Cicada 3301 thing (something you got the name wrong of) from a TopTenz video.
I'm going to stick with the people who have worked with the NSA for years and who have broken the first three codes into something that was not jibberish. While I abhor what the NSA does, they are good at what they do. Which is cryptography. And if they're saying that it actually is something, as well as every other expert in the field, then I'm going to believe that over someone who has a coding reputation.
This is a waste of my time lol
Is Wikipedia a good enough source for you, because I linked to that too, as long as you wish to posit I am "provably wrong". Aside from solving it, the NSA, who like anyone in existence can only go by the knowledge given to them in preparation (hence why it took an AI to solve the Zodiac Killer messages, as if one killer is more capable than a whole agency), did not in particular have anything to actually say about the code, which comes off as randomly assembled utterances if you go down to the "solutions" section of the page, the code explicitly having connotations with the CIA, who admitted in the very same section...
The only reason I haven't given more sources is due to the temporary rule on Lemmy right now to only use sources from known sites in order to make it easier to spot spam. Had this not been an issue, I'm sure you'd be asked right about now about your, erm, sources.