The GCHQ Challenge

James writes "The UK's GCHQ has set a challenge for visitors to their website. They have broken up a secret message and hidden it around their site... if you can figure it out, then they say you could be suited to a job as a spy!" I wonder if you automatically get an Aston Martin and a Walther PPK.

Comments

That is not misselling

[Anonymous Coward]

in English it is spelt Colour, only in US English is it spelt color.

Your comment just goes to show that you have no knowledge of the UK and the fact that we spell a lot of words differently

Re:That is not misselling

[Anonymous Coward]

It is misselling. Obviously if a word was advertised as having a U and when purchased, it didn't then it is missold, and you should ask for a full refund.

Re:That is not misselling

[Anonymous Coward]

ROTFLMAO

Re:That is not misselling

[Anonymous Coward]

actually, that's NO FUCKING SENSE OF HUMOUR ;-)

Re:That is not misselling

[Anonymous Coward]

Shouldn't that be LITTLE BLOODY SENSE OF HUMOUR?

Re:That is not misselling

[Anonymous Coward]

Your comments just goes to show that you have NO FUCKING SENSE OF HUMOR.

(Sore:2, funny)

[Anonymous Coward]

That post deserves this rating. hahaha!

U.S.A. vs The Rest of US [sic]

[Anonymous Coward]

Just a small observation, but it seems that generally speaking (note, there are always exceptions) United States citizens are so very insular whereas citizens elsewhere are very aware of what happens in the world outside their own nation. This is likely a "the media's fault", concentrating on local issues at the expense of foreign issues (call it good or bad, depending on your perspective).

For example, many people in New Zealand would know that "Washington D.C." is the capital of the United States but how many U.S. folks would know the capital of NZ?

Going further, this whole spelling issue (yes, I know it was originally a joke) is another example of how the U.S. ignores the differences of the rest of the world; the U.S., its territories and those influenced by U.S. society are the only ones whose official language is "English (US)". Everyone else who speaks the English language actually uses "English (UK)" - yet when American software is internationalised, it is (often) assumed that everyone speaks "English (US)".

And so, you end up with yet another (perhaps) unnecessary difference between nations:

• Australia, New Zealand, ...
  • English (UK)
  • Metric Measurement
  • PAL TV
  • GSM Digital Mobiles (CDMA in some areas)
• United Kingdom
  • English (UK)
  • Metric/British Imperial Hybrid Measurement
  • PAL TV
  • GSM Digital Mobiles
• United States, ...
  • English (US) - different
  • American Imperial Measurement - different
  • NTSC TV - different
  • GSM (if lucky), CDMA, TDMA, ... - different

Yeah, okay so this is a rant. Difference creates diversity which is worthwhile in a general sense, but sometimes (okay, often) the U.S. seems to seek out difference merely for the purpose of being different.

Then there's the whole patent/IP differences (where you can patent software/algorithms in the U.S. like LZW and RSA, but can't in Australia).

Aarrgghh...

To try and get this at least partially back on-topic, the US/UK equivalent "spy" organisations have already been listed - the Australian equivalents are:

• DSD (Defence Signals Directorate) - equiv of NSA/GCHQ
• ASIO (Australian Security Intelligence Organisation) - equiv of FBI/MI5
• ASIS (Australian Secret Intelligence Service) - equiv of CIA/MI6
• others... (eg., National Crime Authority, Australian Federal Police, etc.)

You sometimes get the impression that ASIO is just a cover for ASIS as you will encounter the rare story whereby an "ASIO agent" has been engaged in intel-ops overseas...

Of course, the DSD doesn't exist. That large, non-descript and TEMPEST attack-proof building in Canberra isn't really there. Just move along, please...

Phone Call Issue

[Anonymous Coward]

I can tell you from personal experience that they actually do.

Calm down......

[Anonymous Coward]

Working at GCHQ is somewhat more mundane than you all seem to think. The Cheltenham facility is the UK equivalent of the Fort Meade.

We've had ours for ages!

[Anonymous Coward]

The Aussie DSD (Defence Signals Directorate == equiv. of GCHQ/NSA) has a challenge as well ..

http://www.dsd.gov.au/puzzle2.html

It's a self referential crossword .. Looks Cool! :)

Listable images directory

[Anonymous Coward]

Look at the images directory.

Now, look at all the images called something_old.gif -- they all have the modification date 27 Oct 99.

Perhaps there's something suspicious about the something.gif images?

steve_sd@cat-box.demon.co.uk

Re:Listable images directory

[Muffhead]

Nope. It's the ones modified on the 17th of Dec. that are important. Compare job6.gif (dated 17th Dec.) & job6_old.gif (dated 27th of Oct.)

Re:A Better Guess

[Anonymous Coward]

The OHE-H is on the same page that they discuss what a linguist does here. You'll notice that the text for the Linguist heading is in italics. Look at the source code and then look at the ALT tag for the image above it.

Okay, I'm missing something here... Those are H's, not N's!

What have I missed?

AC.

when I read the Benefit section.

[Anonymous Coward]

look at those words.benefit your fellow citizens and you benefit too. yup,if I spy on the bf of the girl I love ,it benefit but it violate everyone's freedom,humanright,just like me remember the Princess ,yes,is this the benefit of QCHQ? destroy others' life with the name from "National benefit"? or the famouse National enemy just like the US sued the chinese scientest in LA? or the sky worldwide spy network hold by US NSA,UK,AU and NZ? damn

Re:When I read the Benefit section. (Flamebait?)

[Anonymous Coward]

With grammar and spelling like that, I think we can safely assume you're not British. In that case, thankfully, you won't be able to work there anyway.

Cymru Am Byth

Re:Not a PPK

[Anonymous Coward]

The don't use the Aston Martin either (going by the recent James Bond movies as well.) They use that BMW M Roadster, which, in my opinion, is not all that great. The should have stuck with the Aston Martin, or at least gone to a car with more power (i.e.: A Shelby modified Dodge Viper.)

Re:If you like slave labour, go for it.

[Anonymous Coward]

dammit, I mispelled "testament". I hate it when that happens.

another one...

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.gchq.gov.uk/apply/index.html mouseover the gchq logo reveals AJOB!

Re:???

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you mean MI6, MI5 is responsible for internal security.

Re:Careers...

[Anonymous Coward]

It's our language, we'll do what the hell we like with it. Bloody colonists.

well the message I get is

[Anonymous Coward]

Server Temporarily Unavailable

which is an anagram of "Irretrievable unmoral slave pay"

I don't think I'll be working for this bunch

that's gay

[Anonymous Coward]

i actually started looking around and found the same results that you guys did.. and i thought there might have been some sort of real challenge.. oOOoohh.

Re:uh

[Anonymous Coward]

they all deserved to be hacked for thier stooopid publicity stunts...what a waste of tax dollars, or pounds in this case...

umm

[Anonymous Coward]

was this supposed to be hard? its "apply to get a job" if this makes me a spy..... i no longer think james bond is so cool

Might as well give you guys this

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.gchq.gov.uk/images/benefittext.gif

Re:Here's one - if anyone's interested

[Anonymous Coward]

umm, no.
I don't think the solution is:
"You Fond it now apply for a job!"

decoded message

[Anonymous Coward]

welld one!n owapp lyfor ajob! um, so that's well done! now apply for a job! wow, that was neat-o

Re:Here's one - if anyone's interested

[Anonymous Coward]

Two points to note:

1) These people are spies... what will keep them bound to using ASCII? It might be EBDIC or some random "other" format that they could be using.

2) This message IS in ASCII, because when translated using it it makes the entire sentence read correctly.

I'm just trying to keep all things in perspective :-)

Re:The German secret service challanges too

[Anonymous Coward]

I think that is a challenge/response authentication system, not a web-game.

American Tit

[Anonymous Coward]

That is how colour is spelled in Britain, and Canada, and pretty much everywhere other than the US of A.

Re:POSITION VACANCY : James Bond

[Anonymous Coward]

Good idea, and we already have a Q (Or several Q's. lpq, mailq....)
Head of department will have to be X.

Re:Sic

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually by my reading of it you have to be British and have no other second nationality and your parents must have good ties with the UK and be from somewhere in the Commonwealth or the US. Spouses etc have to have the same sorts of ties to the UK as well.

Superspy!

[Anonymous Coward]

the secret message is "i like to pour hot grits down my pants." thank you.

Re:The Troll Bill of Rights

[Anonymous Coward]

you suck. you troll. moderate to oblivion.

GCHQ? In the UK?

[Anonymous Coward]

What? the UK has a Geek Compound Headquarters also?

Re:Complete Solution for Dummies (second half)

[Anonymous Coward]

- This is binary ASCII for LYFOR - Now click on Apply - Hover over GCHQ logo in top right hand corner - It says: AJOB! - Put it all together and respace it to get: - "WELL DONE - NOW APPLY FOR A JOB!" - Sorry, I had not realised I was not the first to post this, but I figured I might as well finish what I had started! - It took me ages to solve initially, because I was looking at the text-only pages, which only have two words in (one of which is incomplete).

Re:uh

[Anonymous Coward]

Inept but not totally ignorant, eh? My mate Dodgy the Dec Engineer once had to fix one of their machines. After about forty minutes of security checking, they finally let him into the machine room, which is constructed as a Faraday cage. He Does Things to a sick VAX for a while, then his pager goes off...

Re:fucking dick, im your moderator

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh, do you even speak english?

Careers...

[Anonymous Coward]

ARGH! A *linguist* is NOT a translator damnit! Jeez these guys DO live in their own, separate world...

Re:Careers...

[Medieval]

What if you're a cunning linguist?

fuck i love that movie!!!!!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

the last starrighter :)

Jimmy Bond

[Anonymous Coward]

If Woody Allen can do it, so can you.

Buck up, little soldier.

Re:Vetting

[Anonymous Coward]

does making a shit bomb count as terrorism? 1) poo in a bag 2) pick a dumb neighbour 3) light the bag and knock 4) run into bushes and hide 5) try not to laugh too loud when the owner tries to stamp out the fire

um

[Anonymous Coward]

anyone can work for them: if they wanna spy on their own country. you don't become a spy and go to russia or something, you're in russia and you contact them or they contact you.

Re:Pay scales....?

[Anonymous Coward]

Two words...
Expense Account
Spying has its privleges. :-)

Re:POSITION VACANCY : James Bond

[Anonymous Coward]

Does anyone have a picture of Bill Gates as Blofeld (sp?) or any other Bond villian?

Re:Pay scales....?

[Anonymous Coward]

Real low here. Try doubling it :-)

Re: finally a 1st poster not using anonymous

[Anonymous Coward]

Good to see that there is freedom to innovate left
now that Microsoft's is being taken away.

Re:Here's one - if anyone's interested

[Anonymous Coward]

Argh! Please remember to use spoiler space, rot13 or similar methods when posting puzzle solutions.

The Troll Bill of Rights

[Anonymous Coward]

The Troll Bill of Rights Trolls | Posted by AC on 2000-01-13 23:23:12
from the moderate this!dept.
Trollmastah writes: The following text is a transcription of the first 10 amendments of the Slashdot Bill of Rights for Trolls in their original form.

Amendment I
Slashdot shall make no moderation rule respecting an establishment of flamebait, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of first posts, or of the thread; or the right of the trolls peaceably to assemble, and to flame the Moderators for a redress of grievances.
Amendment II
A well moderated flame, being necessary to the security of a free Slashdot, the right of the trolls to keep and bear accounts, shall not be infringed.
Amendment III
No AC shall, in time of post be caught flaming a troll in any thread, without the consent of the Llama, nor in time of off-topic, but in a manner to be prescribed by all that is foolish and trivial.
Amendment IV
The right of the trolls to be secure in their flames, redundant posts, naked, and Petrified rants, against unreasonable moderation and flames, shall not be violated, and no "Troll you suck" comments shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by first post oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the thread to be slammed, and the troll or comments to be flamed.
Amendment V
No troll shall be held to answer for an off topic, or otherwise unintelligible post, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Postmastah Jury; nor shall any troll be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of post or comment; nor shall be compelled in any moderation case to be a witness against himself or herself, nor be deprived of karma, liberty, or account, without due process of law.
Amendment VI
In all threaded Jon Katz prosecutions, the accused, Jon the most trollish of us all, shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public flame, by a completely partial jury of the Slashdot community wherein the flame shall have been committed, which thread shall have been previously ascertained by moderation, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the rant; to be confronted with the naked and petrified posts against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining lame flamebait responses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of all the IANAL crowd for his defense.
Amendment VII
In threads slammed by common meta moderation, where the value in controversy shall exceed -1 karma, the right of trial by posters shall be preserved, and no fact tried by a poster, shall be otherwise reexamined by any karma whore in any thread of the Slashdot site, than according to the rules of moderation.
Amendment VIII
Excessive flame shall not be required, nor excessive moderation imposed, nor cruel and unusual posts inflicted.
Amendment IX
The enumeration in the rules of moderation, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage firsts' posted by the trolls.
Amendment X
The powers not delegated to the trolls by MEEPT, nor prohibited by them to the posts, are reserved to the posts respectively, or to the trolls.

I found the code a while ago.......here it is...

[Anonymous Coward]

It took me 4hrs...not most of the info is hidden in the html source code 1) Job Mathematicians section: "" = WELLD 2) Job Tech section: "--- .-- .- .--. .--." = OWAPP 3) Tech Section/Networking: "01001100 01011001 01000110 01001111 01010010 " =76,89,70,79,82=L,Y,F,O,R 4) found on linguist page.......next to

img src="../images/salary.gif": "OHE - H" -- change Hs to and Ns (see later) 5) Found an unspecified image - in http://www.gchq.gov.uk/images/ajob.gif : AJOB! LYFOR OWAPP WELLD "ONE - N" AJOB! just a rearrangement: WELL DONE - NOW APPLY FOR A JOB! Please dont distribute this too much...... Cnl.Pepper (aint got a /. account yet....too lazy :) )

Complete Solution for Dummies

[Anonymous Coward]

Go to http://www.gchq.gov.uk - View with images - Careers - Careers - Mathematicians - View Frame Source (of main frame, bottom right) - Top says - Substitute 01=A,02=B,...,26=Z to get WELLD - BACK - Linguists - View Frame Source (of main frame, bottom right) - About two thirds down the page - IMG SRC="../images/salary.gif" ALT="OHE - H" - Change the H's to N's to get ONE-N - BACK - Technology - "--- .-- .- .--. .--." is clearly displayed - This is morse code for OWAPP - BACK - BACK - BACK - About GCHQ - Technology - Change your preferences to always view with your colours (or View Frame Source yet again) - To the right of Networking is 01001100 01011001 01000110 01001111 01010010

Re:uh

[Anonymous Coward]

That would be tea!

Re:Misspellings...

[shogun]

Uh, that is the _correct_ spelling of colour. At least for anyone whose head of state is still the Queen of England anyway...

Re:Pay scales....?

[Dave Fiddes]

£24k for a graduate (that's with a Masters degree for my American viewers) is pretty good.

I wouldn't mind getting paid £24k and it's been a loooong time since I graduated.

Re:???

[martin]

Off topic I know, but hey Chris where are you now???


Martin

Re:A Better Guess

[Tomahawk]

Yep, that's it. Couldn't find the ONE,N myself. Very nicely done, though. Well hidden. I didn't spot the --- .-- .- .--. .--. for ages, and it was staring me in the face. And I was going to mail them to tell them to fix up their graphics.

View Source will help you get 2 of those 4. Can't find number 5 though.

Oh, and they made an error in the Text-only version of the page - the binary string, which is coloured the same as the background in the Graphics page, is coloured white. If you are not using IE, then your background will be grey, and the binary will just jump out at you.

Still wondering where the ONE,N is. If anyone finds it, please let me know.



T.

Re:A Better Guess

[Blakes 7]

The OHE-H is on the same page that they discuss what a linguist does here. You'll notice that the text for the Linguist heading is in italics. Look at the source code and then look at the ALT tag for the image above it.

BTW, how did you come up with WELLD? I'm guessing it has something to do with the weird mapping on one of the nav bars...

Re:A Better Guess

[Blakes 7]

The OHE-H is on the same page that they discuss what a linguist does here. You'll notice that the text for the Linguist heading is in italics. Look at the source code and then look at the ALT tag for the image above it.



BTW, how did you come up with WELLD? I'm guessing it has something to do with the weird mapping on one of the nav bars...

Yes, the pay sucks, by UK standards

[evilandi]

Yup, GCHQ salaries suck. Typical industry tech salaries outside London are 20-40k. Cheltenham, where I work and where GCHQ is based is about 70 miles outside London. Inside London salaries can double (but there's that little tiny drawback... living in LONDON SUCKS!).

GCHQ and other "public sector" areas usually pay 5k under industry rates. And don't increase by much, if my somewhat disillusioned drinking partner is anything to go by...

Wierd thing is that Cheltenham is quite a posh area with lots of financial industry jobs. Which makes me wonder just what GCHQ is doing to retain staff...

--

Re:Yes, the pay sucks, by UK standards

[leitchn]

I grew up in Gloucester (next to Cheltenham and GCHQ) and now live in London, and because London is so much more expensive, £24,000 in Gloucester is worth about £40,000 in London.

More Cheltenham links

[evilandi]

For anyone thinking of applying to GCHQ, here are some more links about the Cheltenham / Cotswolds area.

Cheltenham Borough Council
Gloucestershire County Council
Gloucestershire Tourist Board
Echo and Citizen local newspapers
Cotswolds Hyperguide
Alderton Parish Website

It's quite a nice area. The towns are human in scale but large enough for decent facilities, and the countryside is breathtaking. I like living here. If you need any more info (about the area, not about GCHQ), email me evilandi@cimmerii.demon.co.uk.

--

Re:Our spies are better than your spies!

[Zemran]

The rest may be fair comment but bringing up the Spice Girls is hitting below the belt.

Grunt Work

[AuSerpent]

Seems to me that this is a lot of grunt work for
next to no pay. The job isn't going out on cool
007 type tasks. It's sitting at a desk crunching
codes while you make a whopping £16-£24.

Combine the pay and the ease of finding WELLD
ONE!N OWAPP LYFOR AJOB! it doesn't quite seem
like a best-of-the-best type of job.

Re:Misspellings...

[Psiren]

Well, I got it, and I thought it was very amusing. Mind you, it's you who are spelling it wrong... ;)

"Sir, I'd stake my reputation on it."
"Kryten, you haven't got a reputation."

Re:POSITION VACANCY : A Brain

[Signal 11]

We have been looking for a suitable brain donor for some time and we believe we've found him! We'd like to take a moment to outline some of the reasons you might like to donate your brain:

• You'll post better on slashdot. -1, Redundant not for you? You'll like not having a brain then!
• No more sad jokes. Let's face it, your humor could use alittle work. With your donation of 1 brain you'll never have to worry about using tired cliches again.
• You'll still be more intelligent than the lobotomized flatworms that call tech support (they were a client of ours).
• And last, but not least, You get 50 free karma points with your donation!

Re:Pay scales....?

[SEE]

Pay range at the NSA for tech jobs is from $33,538 (£20,369) to $69,278 (£42,075), while at GCHQ it's from $26,707 (£16,221) to $56,791 (£34,492).

Re:Not a PPK

[Michel]

Whatever car they use, they should at least have the decency to utterly wreck it. It's tradition. :-)

No need for a CV

[malcb]

And of course the great thing is that you don't
even need to send them a CV / resume - after all
they know more about you than you know yourself.

Re:No need for a CV

[The Dodger]

Well, if that were the case, wouldn't they just give the people they want to hire a call? ;-)

D.

Re:Misspellings...

[markdel]

Colour is the correct spelling!, You americans like to drop letters out of words.

sorry for that

[rainman]

oooooooops. www.bnd.de doesn't belong not to the German secret service, but some strange network company (just checked with denic). The "real" bnd is to find at www.bundesnachrichtendienst.de (they have no challenge, but a photo of James Bond in action - otherwise not very flash).

The German secret service challanges too

[rainman]

The German Bundesnachrichtendienst has a challenge on its page as well. I guess they are so hopelessly useless that they try everything to attract people. Is this a trend?

Retaining Staff...

[The Dodger]

Well, being given an Aston Martin for a company car is rather tempting, don't you think?

In any case, haven't the Intelligence and Security Services been outsourcing a lot of stuff recently? All those IT services companies seem to be doing rather well... ;-)

D.
..is for Dastardly!

Don't be silly...

[The Dodger]

Assassination is handled by MI7, silly!

D
..is for Deadly.

Why IS it they throw in that 'U'?

[8Complex]

Say the word... Color. Color. Colour. Colour.

Damnit, Slashdot strips IMG tags!!

(From Dictionary.com)

Color
Colour

If you scroll down to the punctuation of the words, you'll see they're exactly the same...

I just don't hear that 'U' in there anywhere. To me that last section would be more like the 'ooh' sound in 'you' -er (the sound of the last budweiser frog).

- 8Complex

Re:Why IS it they throw in that 'U'?

[chrischow]

sth to do w/ french influence or sth

Re:Here's one - if anyone's interested

[generic]

Just highlight everything on the page with your mouse to see it. I used to do this for defaced sites to look for hidden hacker messages. I didnt think they would actually do this. :/

Images

[generic]

I wonder if they have encoded any of the words in the images themselves. I know images could be used to encrypt and hide messages in them. I think this would be more likely then useing the same foreground/background colors in html. =)

j/k.

Re:Images

[mauddib~]

Too bad 90% here can't see them, though... Lynx forever :)
BTW, you can however download seejpeg or aaview to view the images... well, maybe the last clue turns up when looked through aalib...

Re:Vetting

[Raven667]

Then again that might just be the qualities they are looking for.

Re:GIFS

[Raven667]

I was going to reply and say how silly that sounded but I think I'll reconsider. While we have already found most (all?) of the hidden code blocks that they announced on their page they might have set up a second contest that is _much_ harder to find. I say go ahead and look for steganographic encoding, the rest of us can work over the text blocks we already have (this code was broken and broadcast on a British TV news show already anyway). If you find something (ala Contact) let us know and we can bring all our guns to bear.

slash dotted spooks!

[dr_labrat]

Hah.... We appear to have ./ed GCHQ....

That's actually quite funny if you think about it...

Re:ummm...no

[arafel]

Like James Bond, you mean? ;-)

Umm......

[Roofus]

Euoropeans tend to spell things differently than Americans.

Colour
Defence, etc.

Us Americans.....

[Roofus]

....Are just more efficient :)

Re:Us Americans.....

[chrischow]

no u r just lazy and also bz bombing ppl

Even funnier

[asystole]

Even funnier is the box underneath that asks that if you ticked 'Yes' to any of the above, could you please provide details in the space below...

Sic

[wangi]

"be a spy"... more like be an geek, sitting in front of a boredom infested monitor.

Perhaps they should just reply with a free CD player for each completed application - it's more of a reason. Or a tenner...

And remember all you boredom craving USian geeks - you have to be UKian to work at GCHQ.

Re:Sic

[wangi]

Nope, you've got to be a British 'citizen', or you parents must be... See http://www.gchq.gov.uk/apply/national ity.html

Re:Sic

[jowtao]

you know i wouldn't mind sitting in front of a "boredom infested monitor" as long as it has a decent refresh rate... man this shit is horrible.

Re:Sic

[nlamsben]

and I quote... Note 2: For this purpose a person has "substantial ties" if: a. that person holds citizenship of a British Dependent Territory, is a British Overseas citizen, holds citizenship of the Commonwealth, holds the status of a British protected person, holds the status of a British National Overseas, holds EEA nationality, or citizenship of the United States of America and: b. has a demonstrable connection with the United Kingdom by way of family history or period of residence in, or other service to, the United Kingdom

Re:Sic

[blane.bramble]

And remember all you boredom craving USian geeks - you have to be UKian to work at GCHQ. Not true at all. Anyone can work for GCHQ, but if you are a foreign national you're background is going to be inspected more closely. I'm pretty sure there's a page on the site explaining foreigners can work there.

Re:Sic

[blane.bramble]

Actually the document says that one of your parents must be a british citizen, european citizen, commonwealth citizen or US citizen. A pretty wide net. Oh yes, and residence in the UK for 10 years is basically required. That's still a LOT of foreign people though!

so what we have until now

[stuper]

"23 05 12 12 04"
"--- .-- .- .--. .--."
"01001100 01011001 01000110 01001111 01010010"
"AJOB!"

one last one to go :)

Re:so what we have until now

[stuper]

a forgot to metion that
"23 05 12 12 04" is in a commentary in the source html of http://www.gchq.gov.uk/careers/job5.html)

Re:so what we have until now

[threaded]

Close but not quite right ...

Re:so what we have until now

[JimR]

Looks like we're missing number two. "ONE.N" suitably encoded somewhow.

Re:so what we have until now

[jaf]

Could be a comma as well: "WELL DONE, NOW APPLY FOR A JOB!" could even be a dot or a semicolon if you want to take it that far. :) I'm sure it's a matter of very little time until somebody finds the last bit. Someone should send them an email and complain that it wasn't any harder.. Of course, slashdot being almost pure raw collected brainpower, it was no match for us.. :)

Re:so what we have until now

[CptnHarlock]

It looks to me as:

WELL DONE NOW APPLY FOR A JOB!

Re:so what we have until now

[CptnHarlock]

Well put in an exclamation mark: WELL DONE! NOW APPLY FOR A JOB! This hat to be it.. now just find the missing part....

Re:so what we have until now

[RottenDeadite]

Why is it that I'm suddenly reminded of the old Ovaltine adds? You send off for the damned ring, and then, after an evening in front of the radio, all you get is "Drink More Ovaltine"

Not that I'm old enough to remember that sort of thing...

Anyway, this whole thing is so much like a gimmick that I'm dissapointed. One would think that a government agency would carry themselves with a little more self-respect, than to start up a publicity stunt as poor as this one.

News for Nerds? Really...

[Lars J]

I wonder - how much dough are you guys paid to direct the slashdot effect around like this? This story is not fit for print on Slashdot...

"Lateral thinkers"

[redd]

What use is a secret message when you could just crack their web server instead? :-)

working for GCHQ

[technoCon]

no, you don't get the walther PPK and the Aston Marton. In fact, you don't even get to order your martinis shaken, not stirred.

What you do get if you land a job with GCHQ is a lot more restrictions on your freedoms than if you took the equivalent gig at NSA. The Brits have the "official secrets act" which sorta sucks. Of course, the Brits don't have a 2nd amendment, either.

My (20 years ago) experience with the GCHQ guys were that they were all incredibly bright Oxbridge types. Back then, the tech opportunities in the States were much brighter than in England, so if you were the brightest kid at Harvard, you moved to Scottsdale, Arizona and started a software company whereas an equivalent brightest kid at Oxford or Cambridge took a job at GCHQ. Now, if you start a company in Arizona, you can do fun things like move it to Redmond, Washington, but if you take a gig at GCHQ, you're pretty much stuck in Cheltanham, UK.

Me, I preferred the sunny climes of western michigan, land of Lake Effect.

Re:uh

[Salgak1]

Certainly. I teach No Such Agency people, they're actually pretty good folks. Still, I'll bet NSA is going to one-up GCHQ on this. . .

But all the serious money comes from

[Chuck Chunder]

a)Selling information to the enemy
b)Selling information to your 'alies'.
c)Publishing a book with a couple of national secrets thrown in so you get free publicity from having your book banned in the U.K.

The 24k is just to tide you over until you get yourself sorted out.

Or perhaps "Allies"

[Chuck Chunder]

I wunder eef de abbility two spel is a prereckwisit?

No Walther

[Paul Wright]

I wonder if you automatically get an Aston Martin and a Walther PPK

More like a keyboard and a place to sit: they're responsible for the electronic and computational side of things, not the James Bond stuff. There are a fair few Cambridge CompSci's who've worked there (not me, I hasten to add).

Re:No Walther

[Stephen Williams]

[emmett]
I wonder if you automatically get an Aston Martin and a Walther PPK

[Paul Wright]
More like a keyboard and a place to sit: they're responsible for the electronic and computational side of things, not the James Bond stuff.

Now, if MI6 had a web site with a similar offer...

-Stephen

Re:Here's one - if anyone's interested

[Misha]

err... that's 26 letters. of course the spirit of the message is what you said. still you may need to look at a few more pages.

Re:hrm

[Muffhead]

Not 5 words, 5 groups of 5 characters each. Also those 25 letters might not be the final message. You'll probably have to do some work on them after finding them.

What a stupid way to embed a secret message

[swilly]

A real spy wouldn't use something as simple as this. A real spy would do something like encode it in a GIF file. For example, take every nth pixel and offset the RGB values a little. In a large, busy picture, a small change wouldn't be noticed by the naked eye, especially if you only allowed changes that were "close" to the original color of the pixel. For large messages, do this with a wav or avi. JPEG and MPEG probably wouldn't work because of lossy compression.

Not that I've thought about this or have any experience with it. Sure I work for a government contractor on a classified project, but... er... stop looking at me like that!

Something tells me I should post this one anonymously...

Re:Here's one - if anyone's interested

[Ranger Nik]

all hail the king!
it is great to have /. with all these people who just can't resist a challenge to their intellect. i can't resist, either, but lazyness usually gets the better of me... so thanks everybody for figuring it out!
i think the whole challenge is probably more descriptive of what secret services do than they intended it to be. basically, you have to look at every page, all the source code and all the pictures. the rest does not take above-average IQ (ASCII code and binary numbers - how much smarts does that take? oh, and morse code...).
to sum up your future job: you will be sorting through all these documents we got from all kinds of sources and try to extract useful information for us. all i can say is:
where is the walther PPK? where the aston martin? where the beautiful russian counter spies?

Re: finally a 1st poster not using anonymous

[Gr00ve]

1st posting anonymously is soooo 20th century :)

got it!!!

[rjreb]

it's "do i make you 'orny baby"

Slashdot sooo boring !

[Khalid]

This not ment to be a troll ! but what's going on, on Slashdot lately ? Is this a lack of actuality or just Slashdot Laziness and lack of inspiration. Franckly is this a story worth posting on Slashdot ? What does it brings concretly to Slashdot readers !? Same for the Matrix Story !? I have submitted what I honestly believe to be much worthy stories (well of course I am biaised) but I can't believe that from the 190 wanting to be ckecked by Slashdot I was told when I submitted my stories, those two last ones are the more interesting. I really refuse to believe that !

Re:Slashdot sooo boring !

[a2800276]

WAAAAAHHH! Mommy, they won't bring the stories I've submitted a story and they won't bring it. It's so boring, but I keep going there anyway to whine about it.
I think this is a pretty interesting thread, with the collective riddle-solving.
If this story doesn't interest you, go to the next one, if none of them interest you, go look at www.wide-open-beavers.com

Re:Slashdot sooo boring !

[a2800276]

WAAAAAHHH! Mommy, they won't bring the stories I've submitted. I'm bored! Play with me! It's so boring, but I keep going there anyway to whine about it.
I think this is a pretty interesting thread, with the collective riddle-solving going on.
If this story doesn't interest you, go to the next one, if none of them interest you, go look at www.wide-open-beavers.com

Re:Vetting

[blowdart]

Yes they are, I filled on in three weeks ago :)

Re:POSITION VACANCY : James Bond

[nhowie]

Dress Code: Tuxedo
Hmmmm ... I know a certain penguin that would be perfect for this.
--

Re:POSITION VACANCY : James Bond

[nhowie]

007h: licensed to kill -9
--

Re:Heh...

[PinkPanther]

Isn't that also how it happened in The Last Starfighter??

Can I say....

[lildogie]

Like, Shagadelic?

Re:Misspellings...

[mal3]

Acutally, the way I heard it was that colour was the proper english spelling in the begining. But whatever latin word it was based off of didn't have the U, which was apparently in the word due to french influence. So when webster put out his dictionary he left it out. So the English and the Americans are both right, just in different ways.

I know the tagline isn't proper latin.

Re:Vetting

[Mr_Ceebs]

on top of this the have a thing called positive vetting where they send people round to interview friends family and associates to make sure that you weren't lying, someone I know who had this happen because a member of his family was getting one of these jobs said that it was one of the most intimidating experiences that he'd ever had in his entire life.

A car???

[Mai Longdong]

Who needs an Aston Martin or a Walther PPK? I'd *much* rather just have "Pussy Galore"!

Shaguar!

[DrMaurer]

Ob Austin Powers:

Yeah baby, yeah.

I know it's stupid. But they're gonna moderate my mojo away! Crikies!


Dr. Evil: Austin Powers, I will put you on slashdot with a threshold of -1 so that you may see all the First posters with lasers attached to their foreheads.

No. 2: We couldn't get the first poster's sir.

Evil: What!?!

No. 2: We do have Petrified Natile Portman replicas.

Evil: Throw me a frickin' bone here! Do they at least have lasers on their foreheads.

No. 2: I'm sorry sir, but they are pretty, and viscious too.

Evil: Very well then.



bye

Re:If you like slave labour, go for it.

[Saraphale]

There is much, much more to initiative than looking through the HTML of various web pages, seeking encoded text.

There is much, much more to the intelligence business that flashes of initiative :) 90% of intelligence gathering is hard, but thorough slog through the available information sources. I think the test on their web site was quite well conceived, since it combines the investigative thoroughness required not to miss any clues, and the background and initiative to be able to spot the clues once you see them, and make sense of them.

Re:Not a PPK

[razzmataz]

I'm pretty sure it's a VP70. Back in the 80's Her Majesty's Secret Service changed standard firearms and dropped the PPK in favor of the VP70.

OK, I retract the bond thing

[razzmataz]

Perhaps I was wrong about what is used in the new Bond films, but the VP70 is what is used in real life.

Re:Not a PPK

[razzmataz]

Like the Lotus in "For Your Eyes Only"? That got wrecked pretty good. Glad my car doesn't have that kind of theft deterant.

Re:GCHQ is not for spy's

[ruhk]

GCHQ built Collossus at Bletchley Park during World War II. Collossus was the first programable computer, and indeed was destroyed at the end of WWII along with the plans. Since all of the activities at Bletchley were classified, no one could talk about their triumph, and thus an American project got the honors for years.

As to why Collossus was destroyed? Simply because the Brits didn't want anyone else using it to do ENCRYPTION. Bad job to create the machine that lets your enemies perform better encryption than you can break.

Re:Misspellings...

[gadders]

I feel I must apologise to all the English people that have tried to put you straight on the UK spelling of colour.

Recently the standards of irony-appreciation have dropped considerably in this country. I blame the government.

It would also appear that despite their stereotype, Americans can do irony after all.

Slashdot readers missed the point

[MobyDisk]

The humorous thing here is that we are all chumps. The purpose of this challenge was not to stump us, but to make us view the site.

Ofcourse, the counterpoint is that noone who solved the puzzle actually read any of the text for content. They were too busy clicking View source, view source, ooh, binary!

Truly sad...

Found one

[slacker_man]

I hate to say it, but I didn't find that to be too difficult... now, just 4 more to go.

Re:Slashdot like distributed.net?

[shockwaverider]

I think not.

If you want to get a baby in one months time you don't get nine women pregnant.

For slashdot to be considered a distributed net there should be FAR more collaboration than "First post" and "I got the answer first - and I'm determined to spoil it for everyone."

However - Nice concept tho.

Re:Misspellings...

[shockwaverider]

Yeah well,

Will someone teach that Morissette girl what it is then?

Got one of them.. *SPOILER*

[xemacs]

in the first section














... -and more important- tasks ...
one two three four five.. This one seems to be a good candidate
--
Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn

Re:Pay scales....?

[treat]

I think that's about 40,000 USD. Is that a low wage over there then? Here it is really fairly reasonable

It would be fabulous wealth to the "average" person in the US. But it's about what an entry-level sysadmin would make.

Re:GCHQ is not for spy's

[WhyteRabbyt]

Strictly speaking, there are several innacuracies in the above two posts...

GCHQ was not formed until 1946. The Government Code and Cipher School (GC&CS) preceded it in 1919. In 1939, it was GC&CS staff who moved to Bletchley Park.

The machine used to help with the daily task of decrypting Enigma-coded information was called bombe, and Alan Turing (as in Turing Machine) was one of the main architects of this system. If I remember correctly Enigma was decryptable 'by hand' but it took too long to be useful until this system was invented. Bombe was an electro-mechanical system to decrease the encryption time drastically. Alan Turin later committed suicide because of intolerance towards his homosexuality.

Colossus was not built or designed at Bletchley (actually at the Post Office Research Laboratories at Dollis Hill in North London), and appears to have been designed for a different cipher system ( Lorenz SZ42). Strangely, Ive seen several dates listed for the building of Colossus, including 1939, 1941 and 1945. Im not sure which is correct, although the information at this page is, I think, most accurate.

There's also some "more info on Bletchley Park.

Re:Pay scales....?

[horza]

How the hell did bond get all those cool tuxedoes and gamble so much.....

Company perks (from your tone, I guess in your job you would call it an 'expense account').

Did you check out the pay scales...? £24k per *annum*....


Christ.... No wonder the british empire is in the state it is.


Either that or they have been on a pay freeze since the sixties... In which case supervillans have the edge now then.....

Few points:

• You are not comparing like with like. On a direct conversion (ignoring cost of living, QoL, etc) even in the private sector the British earn considerable less than their American counterparts
  
• The public sector always earn less that their private sector counterparts. They trade direct income for large budgets, greater security, greater freedom and (paradoxically) responsibility. If you work in the academic world you can expect to earn even less! (otoh you can't get fired unless your rotten corpse accidentally falls out of its chair)
  
  

  Phillip.
  

Walther P99

[Quintin Stone]

It was indeed a Walther P99, though it often gets dropped in favor of the FN P90 submachinegun.

hrm

[David Ham]

5 sections of site. 5 words to find. so probably one per section of site. 5 letters in each. i guess i'll be looking for any words that seem out of place or misspelled. also, first characters in every other sentence, etc. interesting though. not that i'm joining gchq...
--
in a world of deceit, open your eyes

Re:hrm

[ataricore]

The message probably has something to do with the five sections on the side and the measurement line that slides when you go from one to the other. Notice that in each section only one line matches up????

NSA or CIA encryption sculpture

[sigmond]

I don't recall if it is the NSA or CIA but one of these organizations has a sculpture on the grounds that is covered with an encrypted message. I recall reading an article about it (probably linked to from /.) sometime last year. One of the employees had been working on a solution on his lunch hour for years.

ASIO tried this trick

[andrewmuck]

by using a self referential cross word on there site to keep all the crackers puzzling over the puzzle rather than hi-jacking their site.
Security thru distraction.

cya, Andrew...

Wizard Jape

[threaded]

Could someone stick the puzzles on the back of the NSA form up on the web so that we might now have a little fun seeing how quickly they can be done?

Re:Vetting

[threaded]

Alternatively did your Dad serve in Malaya (Vietnam for our American viewers) etc. etc. and how do you view his actions? I think the questions on the forms are pretty damn clever...

Re:Misspellings...

[Pennywise]

Colour IS the correct spelling. It's just that you Yanks can't spell :) Seriously, it's just the British spelling, no hints here.

Pretty sad

[CvD]

That's pretty sad... The article was posted on Slashdot and in less than an hour, the puzzle is already solved. I guess the Slashdot community has a bunch of clever people that could go work for GCHQ. Me thinks they're pretty desperate, aye? :)

Cheers!

Costyn.

Re:Here's one - if anyone's interested

[Mister Attack]

ok, I feel stupid. Disregard my previous post.

Re:Here's one - if anyone's interested

[Mister Attack]

ummm, no.

YOUFO
NDITN
OWAPP
LYFOR
AJOB!
25 characters.

Re:Misspellings...

[guran]

Oh no! you unleashed the huge flamebreathing Europe vs US dragon on /. again!
Run for your life, the moderators are closing in!

Re:GCHQ is not for spy's

[Chocky2]

It depends on how you define spying.

For the benefit of anyone overseas who might not be familiar with the British security and intel services...

GCHQ = Government Communication HeadQuarters, it is pretty much our equivalent of the NSA, belongs to the Foreign office

MI5 = Security Service, domestic activities only, they have no (few) teeth, closest US equiv would be FBI but 5 are only really involved in national security rather than crime. Belongs to the Home Office

MI6 = Secret Intelligence Service, foreign affairs only, these are the James Bond guys, equiv of the CIA, belongs to the Foreign and Colo^H^Hmmonwealth Office

Other folks you may hear about....

DERA = Defence Evaluation & Research Agency, our equivalent of DARPA, belongs to the Ministry of Defence

CID (Criminal Investigation Department), NCIS (National Criminal Intelligence Service) = branches of the police force

14IC (14 Intel Company) = Army unit, intelligence and infiltration specialist unit, originally founded for "hazardous duties in Northern Ireland" ie infiltrating terrorist groups. Sometimes refered to as "the thinking man's SAS".

Re:Misspellings...

[Harri]

They seem to be misspelling 'color' as 'colour' in SEVERAL places, as well as a few other words. That must be one of the clues, but I can't figure out what it means for the life of me.

I think it means that they are English. Over here that spelling is entirely correct. Probably not a clue ;)

Re:Pay scales....?

[Harri]

Did you check out the pay scales...? £24k per *annum*....

Christ.... No wonder the british empire is in the state it is.

I think that's about 40,000 USD. Is that a low wage over there then? Here it is really fairly reasonable. The average wage is about 15,000 UKP, I think, which is maybe 24,000 USD. I don't think the spies would complain too much.

FOUL!

[Troed]

According to a mail to a discussion list set up to talk about The Code Book challenge, a TV channel in the UK spelled out the hidden words in a national broadcast.

Really not that much of a challenge left ...

Original mail:

This list thinks it's got spoiler problems, but spare a thought for poor old GCHQ, who went to the trouble of setting up their website with five hidden words in it that when discovered give candidates an entree to a job at the establishment, but whose efforts were wasted this morning when the answer was spelled out verbatim on national T.V.

Beat that.

Futurem.

second contest

[dudifeuer]

I believe this is true. If you look at the logo close up, you will see another message something like this: r e c r u i t m e n t s : o : u n : h a r y Check it out. I also found on the intro page to have a message: "Then you will see our message!" is followed by: **time-out** when I looked at it under uuencoded scrutiny. hmmmmmmmmmmmm.

Re:uh

[ralmeida]

Well, here in Brazil they are making a public exam for a secret agent job. *sigh*

Re:Not a PPK

[Foul Smelling Pig]

Really? I thought it was a Walther P99. Then again, I haven't seen any of the newer Bond movies, apart from some trailer smeg...

Re:Not a PPK

[goodEvans]

A Shelby Modified Dodge Viper??!?? Looks like a fish, moves like a fish, steers like a cow.

Try an XKR if you don't want to end up looking like you've been testing JTO units on an Impala ;-)

What a spy needs

[shitface]

Well, I have watched numerous Bond movies (my email address bondowine@yahoo.com is a obvious knock-off). Sure Bond gets all the cool cars but they are not always austin martins. The only thing that is consistant in the Bond movies is that it is implied that he screws at least one gorgeous chick. A lot of people, myself included would take the job if nothing else for that one consistant thing. As for the secret message it is simply says "Bill Gates is God."

Re:Here's one - if anyone's interested

[jaf]

if it's not a comma or something.. Did someone positively find "ONE!N"?

Re:Heh...

[jallen02]

I did not think of that buy Yep, however I was thinking more like wargames tho :-).

Re:Misspellings...

[mauddib~]

I think you can't say for sure it is the word colour that changed into color in the States. What I heard lately was that not the American language but the english language has changed the most the past 200 years. Even more: the American language nowadays closely resembles the English spoken in England 200 years ago.
Probably there is a link to relative information about this, but I can't really find it :)

Re:Not a PPK

[Fiore2]

He also wears BRIONI suits :)

Sounds like an opportunity...

[n8dmt]

...to get that kid who lives in my basement to pull back from that hyper-networked super computer and maybe go out and get a job! Here, Kid! Solve this puzzle and maybe someone will offer you money for sitting in front of THEIR computers!

Re:ooh

[Strog]

What, no ham sandwiches? We need to get some of these Slashdotters on finding the hidden message. We have people that can find the hidden meaning in anything.

Re:Misspellings...

[luckykaa]

I think you can't say for sure it is the word colour that changed into color in the States.

Quite true, and I personally think we (i.e. the English) changed it. Although Both the English and the American versions of the language have eveolved quite substantially, especially in pronunciation. If you are really interested in the development of the American version of the English language, then I would recomend the book "Made in America" by Bill Bryson.

Re:Pay scale? - answer to this question (OT)

[Malk-a-mite]

Odd I just had this conversation with a friend...

Ever since the death of Bond's wife he has been living life in the fast lane so not to dwell on it.
So, every dime he makes, every time he knocks over a major supervillain and walks away with the suitcase full of cash, he spends on women, drink, and he own personal style.

But your right, in the world enconmy... Bond if definately not "rolling in it".

A little AC who finally got a nick.

H = N

[CptnHarlock]

In russian... (I swear - no joke!)

Re:If you like slave labour, go for it.

[Postmaster General]

Actually, I posted the comment after discussing it with coworkers. Everyone in my area thought it was elementary, and rightfully so.

I like Horsies.

[Gray_Wolf]

Well... If I could be a spy, then the world's already screwed. I'm sure Q wouldn't give me an exploding pen, or a pen that writes in in ink for that matter, cause I can make any common house hold item a dangerous object. For example, an exploding penguin on top of the telly that doesn't explode. Instead it changes the channel.

It's a dry martini, shaken and not stirred, but since I don't drink, I'll probably water the plants with it. Plus I haven't gotten any nookie in the past 8 years, so of course I won't qualify for health benefits. The dental plan is out of the question, and instead of an Aston Martin, I'll probably wind up with a second rate 1989 Volvo Station Wagon. Sure it's a lot less conspicuous, but how the hell am I supposed to pick up those really hot and busty female spies??? I'd have a better time getting it from Money Penny...

But as far as spying goes, I say this: I ORDERED A CHEESE BURGER!!

Thank you for your time,
A Temporarily insane,

Gray Wolf

Re:Vetting

[RegularFry]

I find it slightly more likely that they cross-check your answers to these questions with anything they can dig up from a police security check, whether technically a criminal record or not.

Has anyone else looked at their job listings?

[Hullga]

Oooo, I want to be a LAN technologist with a 4 year degree and at least 4 years in the industry I can earn between 25-40k US. Hahahaha, ooo, *inhale* hahaha. Right...

Vetting

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder if they're still doing those wonderful vetting forms these days. Some years ago, I applied for a job at Rolls Royce - not the car company, but the people who make jet engines.
Because this would have entailed writing control systems for military jets, I had to fill in a Ministry Of Defence vetting form. One of the questions was:-
Are you now or have you ever been a member of or involved in any organisation involved in the following activities:-
1. Sabotage yes/no
2. Espionage yes/no
3. Terrorism yes/no

Like anyone was ever going to tick 'yes'!!!

Re:uh

[Zachary Kessin]

Well they have to hire people somewhere. And I guess Oxford was not producing enough people for them.

And the words are...

[Matts]

According to some so called "experts" on this mornings breakfast TV, the last few words are:

"Now Apply For A Job"...

Possibly a second?

[jd]

In the history timeline, "robin Cook" is not correctly capitalised, in the last pop-up window. (Yes, that's possibly a typo, but you never know.)

Re:Misspellings...

[nstrug]

You're wrong. Noah Webster and his cronies thought that English spelling needed to be more logical. He was responsible for colour->color, centre->center, theatre->theater etc. Spelling reform was rampant in the 19th century and the American Philological Association came up with spellings that have since reverted back to the original British forms 'are->ar, definit->definite, gaurd->gard'. Some of their changes, such as catalogue->catalog have stuck in US spelling. This all culminated in the federally funded Simplified Spelling Board who used your tax dollars to come up with through->thru and others.

The spelling reform zeal eventually died out which is why some words remain unreformed, for example the British 'defence' was changed to 'defense', otensibly to make it more in line with the Latin root, defensere, although of course, it could easily have come from defendere, to support. However the reformers never got as far as the word 'fence' which also comes from defensere.

Mark Twain's comment on spelling reform should be the last word on the subject.

Nick

Re:Misspellings...

[linuxci]

Well as the language is called 'English' and that is the way we in England spell things I think it must be the right way then ;)

???

[LizardKing]

So the GCHQ is going all touchy-feely. Whatever next, Spys-R-Us with a nice line in assasination tools for the discerning would be spy? Although I suppose that's more MI5's department. Perhaps this is all part of the government's attempt to give state agencies a purpose in the new economically driven Britain.

Chris Wareham

Re:???

[LizardKing]

I think you mean MI6, MI5

You're probably right, although who knows whether MI5 doesn't resort to assasination at times? (That should get the conspuracy theorists going).

Chris Wareham

Site

[Signal 11]

I can tell you why they're gonna win the next cold war... they have a sexier website. Really, honestly now - how many of you geeks out there didn't consider a position because their website sucked? :)

Re:Here's one - if anyone's interested

[kuro5hin]

http://www.gchq.gov.uk/cereers/job5.html

It's in a comment at the top of the source.

"Moderation is good, in theory."
-Larry Wall

A Better Guess

[Umbro2]

I'm still missing one set of letters
My guess is:

Well Done, Now apply for a job!

WELLD "23 05 12 12 04"
ONE,N ???????????????
OWAPP "--- .-- .- .--. .--."
LYFOR "01001100 01011001 01000110 01001111 01010010"
AJOB! "Mouse rollover"

Matt

Wrong Wrong Wrong

[The Dodger]

He doesn't use a H&K in the films - he uses a Walther P99.

D.
..is for Dangerous!

Re:Here's one - if anyone's interested

[wangi]

And then on http://www.gchq.gov.uk/about/technolog y.html there's

01001100 01011001 01000110 01001111 01010010

In hidden text (due to colourmap madness i can see it). So that translates to LYFOR in ASCII.

Our spies are better than your spies!

[Seth Scali]

Okay, the answers are already posted. Morse code was a cute way of doing it, but I doubt the folks in charge of HR would say, "Dear God, he deciphered Morse code! We must hire this prodigy at all costs!" But then again, this is the same country that gave us the Spice Girls, so who knows?

One thing I have to admit, at least the NSA gives a *somewhat* more challenging "toy" to the people requesting job information. If you apply for their summer programs, they have a neat little challenge on the back, with four or five puzzles to solve. Each one tells you how to solve the next-- i.e., the first message (rot13) tells you that the next one is based on the faction 2/7 or something of the sort, which then tells you that the next one is a transposition cipher, etc.

Really, neither side has come up with an interesting problem for the public yet, but at least the American folks can keep us entertained for five minutes more. Come on, let's see the GCHQ come out with something better! We could have an arms race going in no time!

Re:Here's one - if anyone's interested

[elkinsd]

Another ..

http://www.gchq.gov.uk/apply/index.html.

Upper frame. Mouse over on the GHCQ logo: "AJOB!"

ooh

[Foogle]

I talked to the guys over there about this and they told me that if they hire anyone, they don't automatically get an Aston Martin... What the hell was emmett doing, getting my hopes up like that?? I had to call long distance!

Of course they do supply their agents with brand new BMWs and turkey-sandwiches that explode on contact with saliva... that's almost as good.

-----------

"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."

Re:If you like slave labour, go for it.

[aibrahim]

I really don't believe that any of the codes were difficult.

But they were all different. That's the key point of interest. How many people know BOTH Morse and binary/ASCII codes ? I don't know morse at all. (except for SOS) I didn't even recognize it at first. How many people would recognize the binary and be able to translate it to ASCII ? Not to mention finding it required a trick. The pool of people that would recognize both morse and binary encoded ASCII is small.

Although the "challenge" was simple it is the variety that makes it interesting at all. By picking different "encodings" they can see how flexible you are. This certainly doesn't prove you to be a master cryptanalyst.

It does mean you are observant, thorough and that you have "some" talent in the area of decoding. I expect that almost everyone here (/.) is a suitable candidate for these kinds of jobs.

Now go to work or school and ask yourself how many of those people could do it.

Re:Here's one - if anyone's interested

[aibrahim]

Sorry, typo

should be

WELL DONE! NOW APPLY FOR A JOB!

Re:uh

[twit]

turkey-sandwiches that explode on contact with saliva

Not if you like turkey *g*.

But seriously, the web is the perfect place to recruit for scientific/mathematical trades. No professional organization can be run entirely through cronyism (aka, the old school tie - and I know, I've benefitted from my old school tie. Cha Gheill!).

The other traditional recruitment base for intelligence work is the military, and it's not exactly well stocked with scientific and technical trades. And if they are - they're probably just that, tradesmen, rather than the professionals GCHQ neeeds.

It's possible to educate someone in a profession from the ground up with an apprenticeship and further education, if you have time and money. But that would mean that GCHQ ends up with both the successful and the responsibility for disposing with many more unsuccessful candidates (and hopefully not in a shallow grave). Putting the onus on the individual to get a suitable education and the private/public sector to provide it is quite a business advantage. If you hire someone who's credentialled and who does well in an interview, they may still be inept but at least they won't be totally ignorant.

--

Re:Here's one - if anyone's interested

[Kintanon]

I've counted it 3 times and I still get 25 characters...


Youfo
undit
nowap
plyfo
rajob!

Oh damn, I was leaving out the second P! LOL!!!
*slaps himself around*

Sorry about that guys, moderate my other post down as 'Just plain wrong!'

Kintanon

Re:Here's one - if anyone's interested

[Kintanon]

Umm, yeah 5 sets of 5....
I can't find the place where everyone keeps saying the found 'welld'...

Kintanon

ummm...no

[labiss]

I'm sorry but I just can't see myself a british spy...

"He's really clumsy, he keeps shooting himself in the foot, but he's the best man we've got!"

Not likely...

--
David

Smurf: the other blue meat.

17 15 411 4 j0k3!

[deefer]

1 f0013d |_| 411!!!
1 h4\/3 h4xx0r3d 7he 8r1715h g0v3rnm3n7!
4m 1 31337 4nd h4rdc0r3, 0r wh47???? 1 r00l u 411!!! @==--==@!!!!
7h3 8r1t15h 6ChQ ph33r m333333!!!!



Notes to secret squirrels everywhere - I'm kidding, OK?

Strong data typing is for those with weak minds.

It's just a test

[jquiroga]

They are trying to be slashdotted, to be able to test Echelon 45.23 beta

GCHQ is not for spy's

[cehf2]

GCHQ is basically the code breaking section. If you want to be a British spy you need to join MI6 or MI5 I can never remember which.

GCHQ was responsible for all the major code breaking in the second world war, including Enigma. They also built the first computer, but it was destroyed after the war, or at least kept secret so it would not fall into the hands of the enemy, probably at that time Russia.

uh

[TheCodeMaster]

does anyone else think web based recruiting for spy agencies is funny? I think I need coffee.

Re:Here's one - if anyone's interested

[c era]

ummm, no.

You Fond it now apply for a job!

Re:Misspellings...

[Latent IT]

Joke? Laugh? Hello? Maybe next time I should include some more smilies. How about this:

Blah blah blah... 'colour' instead of 'color' blah blah blah... ;p

Better? =)

Misspellings...

[Latent IT]

They seem to be misspelling 'color' as 'colour' in SEVERAL places, as well as a few other words. That must be one of the clues, but I can't figure out what it means for the life of me.

There is no sig.

Heh...

[jallen02]

I can see it now...

Random Hacker: "I finally cracked it!"
Men in black knock at your door.
ManInBlack1: "Sir im going to ask you to come with us"
Random Hacker: "It was only a game! Really!"


And so another hacker disappears...

If you like slave labour, go for it.

[Postmaster General]

A.
Like any tech job in the government, be prepared to get paid less than an equivalent job in the private sector.

In fact, seeing as how it's tax payer's money that would be used to pay for the government job, you would essentially be working for free, if you pay taxes (Paying yourself to work?! That's crazy!) :)

(I have to admit, that compared to what you get paid working as a student, the government wages would be fantastic.)

Also, I'm not sure how the British Government operates, but where I'm from the Government has set levels of pay, usually that are NOT based on the occupation, but rather they are based on the experience. Also, they *usually* do not hire external candidates for high-level/high-paying positions ... they *usually* recruit from within.

In all fairness though, I have seen some Government jobs where they would pay a bit higher than the set pay level. However, these situations usually only arrive because they have had an extremely difficult time finding an appropriate candidate.

B.
Now, this little scheme that GCHQ has cooked up looks to be one where they hope to get a person with adequate initiative to join their ranks. I see some good points and some bad points about their methods of finding candidates though.

Good: They are able to reach a large target demographic by using their website. Obviously, they are looking for people who have some type of computer skills. They can filter these people out by using their current technique. (Binary code, morse code, etc.) Anyone able to decode their little "surprises" should have the basic knowledge necessary for the job (which, seeing these little encoded snippets, isn't saying much ... no offense to those people that were feeling good about themselves for having decoded them all.)

Bad: Building on how I ended the example "good" point above ... Being able to decode a few elementary strings is far from impressive. It is also hardly a testimant to the initiative of whoever is able to successfully decode them. There is much, much more to initiative than looking through the HTML of various web pages, seeking encoded text. This is comparable to saying to a group of 6 year old children,

"I've placed several chocolate easter eggs around the house. Your job is to run around and find them. If you find them all, I'll let you ask me for a dollar. Good luck!"

Now, I admit that in this case the "easter eggs" are encoded (albeit, very rudimentally), so perhaps a better comparison would be if the chocolate easter eggs were made to resemble various household items (i.e.: Chocolate ashtray, with a picture of an easter egg stamped on the bottom, etc.)

Just my thoughts on the matter.

GIFS

[Signal 11]

It's likely hidden inside a .gif or .jpeg on the least-significant bit. Take each bit, put them in groups of 8 (usually) or 16 to form bytes. Then it's simply a matter of determining if it's noise or actual data. I will assume they made it fairly easy. Grab a mirroring utility, and a quick C program combined with linux' find utility should make this contest a snap. Assuming, of course, I'm right. =) If this was meant for the general public and not geeks, mirror the site and start a greppin' for html comment tags and ALT tags.

Slashdot like distributed.net?

[generic]

I wonder if slashdot can be used as like a 500,000 nerd clustered code breaking computer? Think about it 500,000 people with backgrounds in everything from math, programming, physics chemistry etc.. Have all of them look at one problem like a puzzle and report their findings on a forum.

Pay scales....?

[dr_labrat]

How the hell did bond get all those cool tuxedoes and gamble so much.....

Did you check out the pay scales...? £24k per *annum*....

Christ.... No wonder the british empire is in the state it is.

Either that or they have been on a pay freeze since the sixties... In which case supervillans have the edge now then.....

Here's one - if anyone's interested

[wangi]

http://www.gchq.gov.uk/careers/job6.html contains a passage of morse on the 2nd line:

--- .-- .- .--. .--.

That translates to OWAPP...

Re:Here's one - if anyone's interested

[aibrahim]

Easier to read if you view source.

That is how I found it.

Re:Here's one - if anyone's interested

[Kintanon]

The answer is 'You found it now apply for a job!'
Slashdot them.


Kintanon

Re:Here's one - if anyone's interested

[aibrahim]

WELLD
ONE!N
OWAPP
LYFOR
AJOB!

WELL DONE NOW! APPLY FOR A JOB!

Not a PPK

[razzmataz]

The British Secret Service doesn't use the PPK any more, they use the HK VP-70M. Seen a recent Bond movie lately? The pistol Bond now has is a VP-70M, not a PPK. But then again, this is a nitpick, and not relevant.

Summary - The Collected Slashdot Wisdom Solution

[Seth Finkelstein]

Here's a summary of The Collected Slashdot Wisdom:

Solution:

WELLD
ONE-N
OWAPP
LYFOR
AJOB!

http://www.gchq.gov.uk/careers/job5.html
Source comment on top, "23 05 12 12 04"
WELLD

http://www.gchq.gov.uk/careers/index.html
go to linguists
http://www.gchq.gov.uk/careers/jobs10.html
alt tag for "salary" is "OHE - H" (typo?)

http://www.gchq.gov.uk/careers/job6.html
graphic has Morse code:
http://www.gchq.gov.uk/images/job6.gif
Morse: dashdashdash dotdashdash dotdash dotdashdashdot dotdashdashdot
OWAPP

http://www.gchq.gov.uk/about/technology.html
hidden by coloring, easily seen by view-source
01001100 01011001 01000110 01001111 01010010
LYFOR

http://www.gchq.gov.uk/apply/index.html or
http://www.gchq.gov.uk/apply/gchq_top_bar.htm
mouse over logo, which is
http://www.gchq.gov.uk/images/ajob.gif
"AJOB!"

POSITION VACANCY : James Bond

[RuntimeError]

We are looking for suitable commited and hardworking candidates for the post of James Bond, 007.

Minimum Qualifications

1. Ability to bed three women during one assignment - Preference for Big Breasted Blonde Bimbos an advantage.
2. Ability get out of seemingly deadly but ludicrously simple situations.
3. Accept the existence of Cold war, KGB and the Soviet Empire.
4. Quick wit, but half will do (apologies to R)

   Dress Code: Tuxedo

   Please email your application to m@mi5.mil.uk