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ICFP Contest Releases Codex

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the but-not-the-decodex dept.

howie writes "The ICFP Programming Contest begins on Friday and organizers have released the first part of the contest, the "codex". Contest organizers haven't (yet) given any details, but there's been lots of speculation on the discussion list -- the file contains some suggestive strings like "i love bees" and "MKULTRA". The organizers promise more information by noon (ET) on Friday."

4 of 38 comments (clear)

  1. My Speculation is They're All Blogs by eldavojohn · · Score: 3, Interesting
    Ok ok, so I've only looked at this thing for five minutes in Textpad but there are some very interesting clips of readable text in the file. Early on they say:
    ignoti et quasi occulti
    Which I believe is a latin phrase for something like "unknown and partly hidden." It's also the motto for Societas Eruditorum in Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon book.

    Next:
    Evan Chan was murdered
    It's a reference to a game centered around the film A.I. and refers to a society called the Cloudmakers.

    Next:
    evalso dark the con of man
    The phrase "so dark the con of man" is actually a religious blog.

    A funny thing about the first three phrases I picked out is that they are all blogs online if you google them. Is this a coincidence or are all of the phrases here blogs? They seem to refer to direct blog entries, perhaps the html or text from these blog entries can be used as a hash encryption for the "junk" binary loaded in between each of the entries.

    Again, this is just speculation. MKULTRA refers to the CIA's mind control program in response to rumors of the Soviet, Chinese and North Korean programs of the smae nature ... not sure how that would tie in.

    Perhaps the purpose is to develop a blog scanning program that will accurately identify blogs and retrieve information and try to figure out a way to crack this document? It's very large so I am guessing automation would be necessary as opposed to human googling by hand.
    --
    My work here is dung.
    1. Re:My Speculation is They're All Blogs by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

      There's also an image in there. To view it:
      - Open the file in your favourite text editor (that doesn't mess up binaries), like emacs
      - Search for GIF and delete everything that appears before it
      - Save with a .gif extension

      Voila! instant mysterious picture!

  2. Interesting things I've found by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    using "strings"... I've only found interesting strings at the beginning and end of the file.

    Beginning of file:

    ignoti et quasi occulti
    welldonedaed si luap
    5Evan Chan was murdered
    fnord
    tsarogy
    apply
    MKULTRA
    abracadabra
    evalso dark the con of man
    __VFD__
    h__CBV__
    dustsolomon
    GIF89a@
    |%equo
    rakoczi
    novus ordo seclorum
    telluric
    o,5:>n
    plbndetibh u ou rvcofalt ea
    templar
    tycon mismatch
    apply
    5raimundus
    societas_eruditorum

    End of file:

    1lambda
    anbaric
    Tga'G
    abulafiabad wolf
    lambda
    roswell
    area51
    i love bees
    __42__
    lullus
    surmount
    currents

    1. Re:Interesting things I've found by SQLGuru · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Dude, check this out.....

      After MKULTRA and before abracadabra......using Notepad (the best programming tool ever?)

      Basically, take that chunk of text and put carriage returns after every 64th character. A pattern that matches the GIF image appears using text. [I tried including it, but of course filters killed that idea]

      BTW, the text looks more like a GBV than a CBV.

      Layne