Cicada 3301
“Hello. We are looking for highly intelligent individuals. To find them, we have devised a test. There is a message hidden in this image. Find it, and it will lead you on the road to finding us. We look forward to meeting the few that will make it all the way through. Good luck.”
That is the 2012 message that served as the catalyst for one of the biggest online mysteries. The enigma soon gained a name: Cicada 3301. It was posted by an account with the username 3301 and featured a cicada image as its logo.
Since then, numerous codes have been posted. They exist in various forms and employ numerous methods, like steganography and encryption, to conceal their message so that only the most savvy code breakers would be able to unravel the web, find the solution, and take home a prize.
What occurs if you do it correctly? We are still unsure. None of the individuals that successfully cracked one of these riddles made their discoveries public. Some have conjectured that Cicada 3301 is a very sophisticated recruitment tool used by a government organization like the CIA or MI6, or a private cybersecurity firm, to locate the greatest code breakers in the world.
Some think a more shady organization, such a cult or the Freemasons, is responsible for the puzzles. Cicada 3301 may be the subject of further research in the future, but for the time being, it is one of the biggest online mysteries.
