‘Can You Crack It?’ UK Agency’s Website Seeks New Spies
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'Can You Crack It?' website, set up by British GCHQ intelligence agency.
They’re looking for a few good spies. GCHQ, the intelligence service of the government of the United Kingdom, is looking for some web-savvy cyber-sleuths-to-be, and apparently decided a post on Craigslist wouldn’t quite do it.
So it put up a website with the enigmatic title “Can you crack it?” and spread the word on Facebook, Twitter and other social media. The site has a matrix of letters of letters and numbers on the homepage — surely something is hidden in them — and a place at the bottom inviting you to “Enter Keyword.”
If you crack the code, please let us know — though you may not get the chance. If you enter the right keyword, you’ll get past the homepage and possibly into the intriguing world of intelligence-gathering.
Britain’s GCHQ (short for Government Communications Headquarters; it’s been around since 1918) says it usually recruits bright young people right out of university, but in the digital age, it says, there may be a lot of bright young hackers out there who are worth talking to.
“The target audience for this particular campaign is one that may not typically be attracted to traditional advertising methods and may be unaware that GCHQ is recruiting for these kinds of roles,” said the GCHQ in U.K. media.
“Their skills may be ideally suited to our work and yet they may not understand how they could apply them to a working environment, particularly one where they have the opportunity to contribute so much.”
That may be flattery. Prime Minister David Cameron’s government said last week it is setting up a Joint Cyber Unit to protect against cyber attacks from hacktivists, organized crime, hostile states and would-be terrorists. Having disaffected young hackers work for the government would be better than seeing them work against it.
GCHQ has tried unusual promotions before; in 2009 the BBC says it placed video content on the Xbox Live network, where it appeared during such video games as Call of Duty and Assassin’s Creed.
The “Can you crack it?” contest ends Dec. 12; there’s a countdown clock in the lower left corner of the homepage.
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Posted by: ricky | December 2, 2011, 1:16 pm 1:16 pm
I give you a hint to the answer: It’s in this article, it’s using a hex 128bit encryption
Posted by: john doe | December 2, 2011, 1:45 pm 1:45 pm
Some genius solved it by going through a number of very complicated steps & extracting the above answer from this base64 encryption shown on the page. Now, its all over the internet. After reading the method used, I was amazed the lengths they went through to find the answer. Copy and paste the keyword into the website and hit submit. There you will be offered a job application to fill out and shown how much the position pays.
Posted by: jay | December 2, 2011, 2:08 pm 2:08 pm
It isnt actually that hard if you are IT savvy, they pretty much gave a huge clue away mentioning that it is cyber based, and on that, one that is IT savvy would assume this is more of a binary cipher, ie binary, hex and ascii which are all forms of web coding, this wasnt so much of a hack as it is cross translation of those languages! However what amuses me the most is that being an intelligence agency they did not have any foresight! now they have 8 days themselves to cipher through the genuine individuals that have worked this puzzle out and those that have copied and pasted! I find that hugely amusing for such a high end technological/governmental department to oversee something so simple! but then again, history always repeats its self! We as huimanity never learn! were to egotistical as a species!
Posted by: Mark | December 3, 2011, 3:51 am 3:51 am
Any person with talent in this work will be providing intelligence gathering entities his/her identity. It doesn’t seem to me to be in your interest(s) to be on the cloak-and-dagger Big Brother’s lists.
Posted by: manuzzle | December 3, 2011, 4:09 pm 4:09 pm
What a joke, done in 5 minutes
Posted by: John | December 3, 2011, 4:51 pm 4:51 pm
If you can’t figure out the code yourself, then there’s no reason to even care…because applying would be dumb. If you can figure it out on your own…then there’s no reason to think you’ll get a job. Oh boy you can search online! Go work for _kgb then.
Posted by: Polantaris | December 3, 2011, 5:33 pm 5:33 pm
there is actually another password..
Posted by: Joshua | December 3, 2011, 5:44 pm 5:44 pm
I wish i knew how to do this kind of stuff . . Its very interesting to me . . But im probably to old to learn . .
Posted by: Creepywink | December 3, 2011, 5:45 pm 5:45 pm
Or, you could just google the site which shows you the link to the next page….
Posted by: tmpagrl | December 3, 2011, 10:05 pm 10:05 pm
The same as numbers or cominations are the key to the encryption…..there is a patter of the number of sames and then the combination fo the numbers/letters in order…..pretty straight forward….
Posted by: Doug | December 3, 2011, 11:08 pm 11:08 pm
There is more than one password one leads you to the application the other leads you to another challenge.
Posted by: KellyR90 | December 3, 2011, 11:16 pm 11:16 pm
How is that the answer. im not computer savy im just curious on how you got that as an answer….
Posted by: kk | December 4, 2011, 1:49 am 1:49 am
I knew it was cross referencing different coding languages, i just didnt know which languages, or how to read them.
Posted by: Tyler | December 4, 2011, 2:22 am 2:22 am
ok so i just did it and its a job app and you have to be a british citizen to apply so there is no point in doing it.
Posted by: nic | December 4, 2011, 3:02 am 3:02 am
“pretty straightforward”… the level of ignorance here is astonishing.
The puzzle was extraordinarily difficult.
Firstly, the code was not ciphertext because of its entropic content and was x86 asm shell code.
It contained an int 80h instruction indicating a call to a linux kernel. So then have to find out how to execute it, and obtain the result. There was also some encrypted code stored in the comment section of the png file itself, which on its own was useless.
Solving the first led to a url to get a java program that was an incomplete virtual machine, which executed supplied custom code. There was an explanation of how these VM’s instructions should work. The challenge here was to write the microcode of the processor to execute those instructions to reveal another clue – not too trivial.
Once done, then another url is presented to get a windows exe that required some codes extracted from the previous two steps to reveal a result. It is not clear if the challenge has been finally solved.
However, I think the security services are going to need a bigger and better paid army.
They have created thousands more hackers overnight!
Posted by: Andy | December 4, 2011, 7:07 am 7:07 am
You mention that “amuses me the most is that being an intelligence agency they did not have any foresight! now they have 8 days themselves to cipher through the genuine individuals that have worked this puzzle out and those that have copied and pasted!”
Another angle to look at it: Sometimes the Worlds most secret communications are hidden in plain sight. And sometimes the answers stare us in the face. It’s not only a test of your deciphering abilities, but Analytical abilities as well. You’re “seeing the forest for the trees” ability is something lost in the general populace, and highly regarded in the Craft.
With that said, I will agree: “…were to(o) egotistical as a species!” ;)
Posted by: Sun | December 4, 2011, 5:49 pm 5:49 pm
The answer is simple, solved quickly thru a python beta program. They could have done better. There must be more.
Posted by: Uncommon | December 6, 2011, 9:58 pm 9:58 pm