Posted by
emmett
on from the okay-now-where's-my-bond-girl dept.
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.
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
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.
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.
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
by
kuro5hin
·
· Score: 2
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!
by
Seth+Scali
·
· Score: 2
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
by
elkinsd
·
· Score: 2
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:Slashdot sooo boring !
by
a2800276
·
· Score: 2
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 !
by
a2800276
·
· Score: 2
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:If you like slave labour, go for it.
by
aibrahim
·
· Score: 2
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.
--
Don't post innacurate information If you do, I swear by my pretty floral bonnet I will end you.
Re:Here's one - if anyone's interested
by
aibrahim
·
· Score: 2
Sorry, typo
should be
WELL DONE! NOW APPLY FOR A JOB!
--
Don't post innacurate information If you do, I swear by my pretty floral bonnet I will end you.
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.
--
--
--
There is no premature anti-fascism. -Ernest Hemingway
Re:Here's one - if anyone's interested
by
Kintanon
·
· Score: 2
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!'
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.
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.
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!"
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.)
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?
by
generic
·
· Score: 3
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.
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.
-- Ungh
Summary - The Collected Slashdot Wisdom Solution
by
Seth+Finkelstein
·
· Score: 4
Here's a summary of The Collected Slashdot Wisdom:
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
by
RuntimeError
·
· Score: 4
We are looking for suitable commited and hardworking candidates for the post of James Bond, 007.
Minimum Qualifications
Ability to bed three women during one assignment - Preference for Big Breasted Blonde Bimbos an advantage.
Ability get out of seemingly deadly but ludicrously simple situations.
Accept the existence of Cold war, KGB and the Soviet Empire.
Slashdot Mirror
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'!!!
Well they have to hire people somewhere. And I guess Oxford was not producing enough people for them.
Erlang Developer and podcaster
According to some so called "experts" on this mornings breakfast TV, the last few words are:
"Now Apply For A Job"...
Matt. Want XML + Apache + Stylesheets? Get AxKit.
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.)
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
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
-- "It's a sad day for American capitalism when a man can't fly a midget on a kite over Central Park" - Jim Moran
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 ;)
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
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? :)
It's in a comment at the top of the source.
"Moderation is good, in theory."
-Larry Wall
There is no K5 cabal.
I am not the real rusty.
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
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!
Another ..
http://www.gchq.gov.uk/apply/index.html.
Upper frame. Mouse over on the GHCQ logo: "AJOB!"
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."
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
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
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.
Don't post innacurate information
If you do, I swear by my pretty floral bonnet I will end you.
Sorry, typo
should be
WELL DONE! NOW APPLY FOR A JOB!
Don't post innacurate information
If you do, I swear by my pretty floral bonnet I will end you.
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.
--
--
There is no premature anti-fascism. -Ernest Hemingway
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
Check out JoshJitsu.info for Brazilian Ji
Umm, yeah 5 sets of 5....
I can't find the place where everyone keeps saying the found 'welld'...
Kintanon
Check out JoshJitsu.info for Brazilian Ji
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.
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.
Strong data typing is for those with weak minds.
They are trying to be slashdotted, to be able to test Echelon 45.23 beta
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.
does anyone else think web based recruiting for spy agencies is funny? I think I need coffee.
You Fond it now apply for a job!
Joke? Laugh? Hello? Maybe next time I should include some more smilies. How about this:
;p
Blah blah blah... 'colour' instead of 'color' blah blah blah...
Better? =)
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.
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...
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
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
Bad: Building on how I ended the example "good" point above
Just my thoughts on the matter.
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.
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.
Microsoft aggravates my tourettes syndrome.
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.....
The secret of success is honesty and fair dealing. If you can fake those, you've got it made. (Marx)
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.
Ungh
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!"
Minimum Qualifications
Dress Code: Tuxedo
Please email your application to m@mi5.mil.uk