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How the NSA-led US Cyber Command Wishes You a Happy Valentine's Day (twitter.com) 88

Posted by EditorDavid from the violets-are-team-blue dept.
Slashdot reader DevNull127 writes: The U.S. Cyber Command, headed by the National Security Agency's director, has been a part of America's Department of Defense since 2009.

Today this unified combatant command wished its followers on Twitter a happy Valentine's Day, adding "As our gift to you, we present 12 crypto challenges designed by the information security community.

"Love is in the air, find it if you can. #BeOurValentine #cryptochallenge #VDayGifts."

They shared a link to the official U.S. Cyber Command Valentine's Day 2021 Cryptography Challenge Puzzles.
There are 12 tricky puzzles in all — 3 .jpgs, 6 .pngs, 2 .mp3s and a .bmp file — and I couldn't solve a single one of 'em.

Each one has a hint — though that hint is just the number of words in the answer, as well as its number of characters.
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How the NSA-led US Cyber Command Wishes You a Happy Valentine's Day More

How the NSA-led US Cyber Command Wishes You a Happy Valentine's Day

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  • Why couldn't it have just been syphilis?

  • Recruitment tool? (Score:3)

    by redelm ( 54142 ) on Sunday February 14, 2021 @07:14PM (#61064028) Homepage

    ... always looking for a few good men ^H people.

    • Re:Recruitment tool? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by lessSockMorePuppet ( 6778792 ) on Sunday February 14, 2021 @07:25PM (#61064054) Homepage

      Please don't advertise for the NSA, an agency notorious for illegally fucking over US citizens and mass unconstitutional surveillance.

      You are promoting terrorism, Slashdot.

      • To clarify, you can keep posting this stuff. Nobody's stopping you. I am choosing to respond with my opinion that it's just.. uh, a wee bit distasteful for this website.

      • Re:Recruitment tool? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Antique Geekmeister ( 740220 ) on Sunday February 14, 2021 @07:54PM (#61064114)

        I'd not classify it as terrorism: it's not designed to instill fear in the populace to accomplish a political goal through violence. It is frequently criminal behavior, in violation of the US Constitution, international treaties, and the mission statement of the NSA published at https://www.nsa.gov/about/miss... [nsa.gov]. Their abusive monitoring of domestic communications violates every one of their published goals. Yet, as documented by Edward Snowden and visible from the leaked documents at Wikipedia, they engage in illegal monitoring of US communications as a matter of routine practice. They are demonstrably unwilling or unable to obtain intelligence on human trafficking or narcotics entering the USA, or to provide intelligence to allies to control the enormous heroin trade from Afghanistan.

        That trade is fascinating, Heroin is much more profitable than any other crop in Afghanistan, and the spread of the heroin trade is improving the Afghan ecology. They're using solar panels to fuel water pumps, and the water is encouraging other plant growth around the farms, which retains water better in the soil and reduces chronic erosion problems.

        • It's probably worse. Edward Snowden is almost certainly an active (rather than former) NSA operative. By "revealing" his name, he split the public opinion into against-surveillance and against-snowden camps. Before his revelation, it was almost universally against surveillance. He thus halved the political opposition to the SLC installation at the moment when it was being publicly debated.

          • Yeah, and do you have ANY evidence one way or the other WHATSOEVER?

            Or do you confuse this for a church?

            You haven't even freaking met Snowden yet. For all you know, it might be a simulation in an universe entirely simulated by your mind... a Boltzmann brain (look it up)! ^^
            As is this comment. :P

            • I did follow the opinion polls around the time that it happened. I didn't keep track of it in case someone, who would create a new account in the future, would challenge my memory. But I did observe that evidence (the opinion polls). The idea that the most sophisticated intelligence service in the world would not take steps to divide public opinion which was against it... well, it's cute. But then this type of manipulation that you engaging in should be done from a more veteran account to be even remotel

              • Re: (Score:3)

                by N1AK ( 864906 )

                My memory is good enough.

                Not for me, and apparently not for the person you are replying to... if there's one thing Trump's presidency has shown it's that we want people to be incredibly sceptical of non-evidence based assertions.

                • That's Ok. You just made a number of assertions in your post which are purely your opinion (vis a vis Trump). I am sure you be happy to supply some anecdotal evidence which helped you formed your opinion, but you won't be able to give any authoritative sources showing those opinions to be facts.

                  The only problem, of course, is that you won't be able to supply even anecdotal evidence 10 years from now.

                  In 10 years, you'll just state your opinion based on what you will believe you will have studied rigorous

                • Which is to say that this is not a non-evidence based assertion. It's a conclusion from evidence whose sources I have not bothered to commit to memory or record. Which was the standard practice in the age when publicly-available evidence was easily re-discoverable.

        • You're not wrong. I'll just point out the page you linked to has two separate sections, Mission and Values. The second half is Values and that can be taken with a mountain of salt as you pointed out.

          The first half of their page is their stated mission. Their mission is:

          --
          Mission Statement
          The National Security Agency/Central Security Service (NSA/CSS) leads the U.S. Government in cryptology that encompasses both signals intelligence (SIGINT) and information assurance (now referred to as cybersecurity) produ

      • That's just great. They support terrorism but still can't support UTF-8.

      • Wait, there's legal fucking over US citizens too? Where can I sign up? ;)

        Oh, and fucking over foreign citizens is OK or what? Little four year old girl in Afghanistan that never did anything wrong, totally deserves it? Wtf.

      • Humanity is evil (some humans are good, don't confuse the two) and composed of violent amoral competitors.
        It cannot be different and our race evolved to compete this way. There is no "good", just "advantage".
        War and espionage are necessary. They should be better managed but the choice is which nation you'd prefer as hegemon, Putin's Russia, China or the US. There is no third real option. Grow up and forget your ideals. The world does not run on them.

        • Why do you think I'm against war and espionage?

          I just want them to do their chartered job: spying on the electronic communications of foreign powers.

          A peacenik I am not.

      • BS.
        WHile a major fuckup occurred under W, the NSA has been overall above reproach.
        CIA has had issues, but the NSA is not part of that.

        • I think you need to read The Puzzle Palace and get back to me on that. They most certainly are not above reproach for violating their charter.

          • I have already worked in intelligence. I saw what we are up against. The west is under CONSTANT attacks/threats/infiltration attempts.

            • Uh, goalposts moved. Got it. Conversation over.

              I've repeatedly said I have no issues with them working per their charter--spying on foreign enemies' ELINT.

    • Of course it's a recruitment tool. And it's significantly cheaper than the DoD's recruitment tools like paying for the star-spangled banner before sporting events.

      • There are a lot of Mensa type mathematicians working for the NSA. Math degrees only open so many doors. These people enjoy showing how clever and or intelligent they are with puzzles. Quickest person to solve a puzzle will multiply their own enemies. Someone unable to solve a puzzle will be considered to be of lesser standing.
    • Hy.I'm serh a bd by fr relaing tgethr I m waiting you Se me hre ==>> http://gg.gg/oa9py [gg.gg]

  • I could decipher all of these in under 5 minutes.

    IF I had the computing power and software that the NSA has to throw at it.

    If you can do it in your head you will probably get recruited, or already have been.

    And if you can't, your probably going to get investigated for having that level of decryption software installed on your personal computer.

    • >If you can do it in your head you will probably get recruited, or already have been.

      Some of us made the choice a long time ago not to work for governments and to never sign a secrecy agreement with any government.
      It's not a principled move. It frees you to work on cryptography in the commercial domain and security without being compromised. 90% of a career later, I think it was a good choice.
      I don't hire people with clearance, you don't know who they are working for.

      So being recruited? No thanks.

      • They get really butthurt when you tell one of their recruiters on a college campus that you'd be happy to work for them, except for the part where they aren't actually doing their job.

        • True story: I declined to sign the official secrets act prior to an interview at a satellite company . End of interview.

          Many years later I was presenting my design for the 802.16 PKMv2 link security protocol at an 802 conference in Shenzhen China. If I had signed that bit of paper in the mid 90s, I may well have not been allowed to do that.

    • Anyone smart enough to solve such riddles, is also not dumb enough to work for the Gestapo. They are struggling to find people nowadays, and they know it.

    • Re:Easy to break (Score:5, Insightful)

      by bradley13 ( 1118935 ) on Monday February 15, 2021 @06:54AM (#61065190) Homepage

      Computing power is useless until you know what to aim it at. Take the first puzzle: Where is the message encoded? Is it the poem itself? The words "mallows" and "xylobiums" are a bit odd - but where do we go from there? What about the scrolls and decorations in this overly decorative font? Or perhaps the poem is irrelevant, and the message is actually in the flower petals of the picture at the bottom left? Probably not, for the first puzzle, but what about steganography - there is an awful lot of JPG noise, you could hide a truck in there.

      You may have to try more than one of these ideas. And for each idea, you get the next question: how is the message encoded?

      That "how" is difficult on its own. Take the second image: Each cross contains two threads, each of which has four colors. So each cross is a nibble; two crosses make a byte. That would work for a fixed encoding of ASCII, but there are 135 crosses (so 67.5 bytes) whereas the message only contains 33 characters. A 16-bit encoding might be a better fit, or perhaps a variable-length encoding - but which one? Or maybe some of the crosses are distractors - but which ones? Computing power will help you check an idea, but it isn't going to make these decisions for you.

      You don't need computing power, anyway, not more than your average PC. You need good ideas and a lot of determination.

  • They know if we have a girlfriend and her name from our phone contacts, just as those of our friends and business partners and our search and browsing history ...

  • The Director of the NSA is a 3-star position, Commander of COCOMs (including USCYBERCOM) are 4-star positions, so ...

    • The actual director is never revealed, and the one they tell you is the director, is a placeholder, so nobody can kidnap the actual director and threaten them. Every spying agency in the world does that.

  • Keeping us safe... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Patent Lover ( 779809 ) on Sunday February 14, 2021 @08:28PM (#61064202)
    If only they could have figured out that a mob was going to storm the Capitol.

    • Re: (Score:1, Troll)

      by BAReFO0t ( 6240524 )

      Or 9/11 for that matter.

      It's funny, they got access to EVERYTHING, yet don't stop the dumbest, most obvious things.
      Which leaves only one conclusion: They wanted it.

    • If they had, you wouldn't know that they had. Maybe a mob is going to storm the Capitol every other year and the NSA missed it for the first time ever.

  • The password to your own HDD.

  • There are 12 tricky puzzles in all — 3 .jpgs, 6 .pngs, 2 .mp3s and a .bmp file — and I couldn't solve a single one of 'em.

    Holy crap, MP3 and BMP? Did I wake up in 1995?

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by rjr162 ( 69736 )

      What was curious to me is that they used a PDF and not just an HTML page to host the links... I suspect there's something hidden in that PDF as well

      • You could open and read it. A PDF is a text file, after all, with optional compression--but you can decompress the sections and read/edit them just fine in your favorite text editor. Extract any image streams to a separate file and view.

        Source: I am far too intimately acquainted with the PDF specs and writing PDFs by hand and fixing bugs in the PDF output of various software.

      • More flaws in PDF readers to get onto your system.

        You think they hire anyone they don't know every intimate detail about?

        Yeah, they don't care for your baby-dog-guro-orgy snuff or swastika wall decoration. Probably got that themselves. All they care for is that you got NO conscience whatsoever and are easily deluded into justifying the most evil things.

  • I count puzzles 0 through 10 as 11. The inventory also miscounts the number of .jpg puzzles (2), so I suspect they're counting the key for puzzle 9 as the 12th item.

    My favorite comment is the one that says they've solved #12, with a little trouble. Ouija board difficulty, I'm guessing.

    (yeah, I know. Nobody reads the article. )

  • The correct puzzle answers. (Score:3)

    by Gravis Zero ( 934156 ) on Sunday February 14, 2021 @09:41PM (#61064368)

    The correct answer to the puzzles is, "I couldn't figure them out so I infiltrated your workstation to find the answers." ;)

    • NSA: We know. We've been looking at your PC while you did it. What do you think the PDF was for?

  • Go fuck yourselves with a chainsaw.

    You're as bad as the Gestapo for Stasi themselves, and every single one of you pieces of shit deserves decades in prison for being traitors to their own people.

  • Another reason China is the new enemy du jour

  • Instantly conjured up an image of a psychotic person giving me a Valentine's day card with razor blades carefuly concealed within the edges of the card so I wouldn't know they were there until my hands started bleeding.

    Now I wonder why my mind would come up with such a crazy idea? :-|

  • Puzzle difficulty psychology (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Traf-O-Data-Hater ( 858971 ) on Monday February 15, 2021 @12:06AM (#61064672)
    Well I had a look at them, as did my wife, and neither of us had the faintest idea of where to even start. So, we lost all interest in a few minutes.
    I think they should have made the first one or two puzzles drop-dead easy to solve, to give an "Aren't I clever!" sugar hit and thus keep people engaged enough to bother tackling the others.

  • Solved it. (Score:5, Funny)

    by zawarski ( 1381571 ) on Monday February 15, 2021 @02:24AM (#61064818)
    Greetings, Starfighter. You have been recruited by the Star League to defend the Frontier against Xur and the Kodan armada.

  • Challenging puzzles! (Score:3)

    by bradley13 ( 1118935 ) on Monday February 15, 2021 @04:44AM (#61065004) Homepage

    Wow. If I were in my 20s, with more time on my hands than I knew what to do with, i would really enjoy these puzzles. Some, it's easy to see how to approach them, but even knowing the direction you need to go, these puzzles are tough.

    And, yes, this is an obvious recruitment tool for the NSA.

    It's a shame. The NSA, I mean. It represents a collection of really fine minds, that could be applied to really important things like - for example - working on newer, really solid approaches to cryptography. Instead, somewhere in the past couple of decades, the whole organizations has been perverted. You cannot trust the work they produce, because they've been caught deliberately weakening protocols. Snowdon's revelations show that they no longer consider themselves bound by law, but only by "don't get caught".

    At this point, the whole organization should just be disbanded, because they are totally untrustworthy. Of course, that applies to virtually the entire US federal government: there is no better example of Pournelle's Iron Law.

  • They sent *me* a personalized popup addressing me by name, along with a note about the date, time, and cause of my death. But I guess what they sent the rest of you was neat, too.

  • I don't need logic puzzles, I need security.

  • They are cool puzzles, not hard by any stretch, but they are not meant to be 'Hard', they are meant to be FUN, take it like that people, geeze....check the color channels, look for offset bit shifts, ascii encodings come on, its fun!

  • Did they use a real 303, and is that a clue?

  • The answers, in order are:
    correct
    horse
    battery
    staple

  • U.S. Cyber Command: a total waste of space
  • I'm not touching anything, willingly, published by the NSA.

  • The NSA is clearly on a recruitment drive, they have discovered that by only employing thugs and undertaking activities which are distasteful to anyone with morality, that now they have no-one who is capable more intellectual based activities that may give them a clue about whats going on.

  • thank you for the riddles I liked because I for St Valentine I spend it looking for weird places that could meet the need for a perfect date or a different experience I found this place the truth I get very attention because it is easy to get lost with all the details I in particular recommend them in case you want to enter and check I will leave the home page here home page [www.interr...tes.online]
  • thank you for the riddles I liked because I for St Valentine I spend it looking for weird places that could meet the need for a perfect date or a different experience I found this place the truth I get very attention because it is easy to get lost with all the details I in particular recommend them in case you want to enter and check I will leave the home page here home page [www.interr...tes.online]

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