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Crack the Code In US Cyber Command's Logo
Dan writes "According to Wired: 'The US military's new Cyber Command is headquartered at Ft. Meade, Maryland, one of the military's most secretive and secure facilities. Its mission is largely opaque, even inside the armed forces. But the there's another mystery surrounding the emerging unit. It's embedded in the Cyber Command logo. On the logo's inner gold ring is a code: 9ec4c12949a4f31474f299058ce2b22a.'"
Looks like it is the same length as an MD5 sum...
Palm trees and 8
Don't ... forget to... drink... your ovaltine?!?! a lousy commercial!?
Obviously.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
The first reply in the Reddit thread already has the answer: http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/cmxm0/proggit_if_you_decode_this_i_will_love_you/
...its their public key. :)
Sony sues US Cyber Command for posting an AACS key (yes I know it's not).
News at 11..
It's (obviously) MD5 length. The results of a quick reverese MD5 lookup are as follows :
USCYBERCOM plans, coordinates, integrates, synchronizes and conducts activities to: direct the operations and defense of specified Department of Defense information networks and; prepare to, and when directed, conduct full spectrum military cyberspace operations in order to enable actions in all domains, ensure US/Allied freedom of action in cyberspace and deny the same to our adversaries.
However, as we all know, MD5 isn't 1-1. It could well just be a conincidence, or something completely different.
Windows in 6 Bytes (IA-32) : 90 90 90 90 CD 19
It's "All Your Base Are Belong To Us!"
Wait, too soon?
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
9ec4c12949a4f31474f299058ce2b22a?!!
That's the combination to my luggage!
Do daemons dream of electric sleep()?
"Help, I'm being held prisoner in a logo factory"
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
It's no secret. Somebody called their office and asked what it was. It's the mission statement.
I'm sure the conspiracy nuts will just say that's a convenient hash collision and that the real message is the date and time the Loch Ness Bigfoot Anti-Christ from Betelgeuse heads up the New World Order.
that's the US government's Windows Product Key
and the purpose of Cyber Command is to keep track of all software activation and licenses, and make sure no bonehead buys a region 2 dvd disk
the only reason Cyber Command's mission is opaque is that the government fears being sued by the BSA and MPAA because they installed windows xp on every government computer from a cd they bought in hong kong for $12, and they put an avi of "The Hangover" they got off of pirate bay on a network drive
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
The code is the md5 of their mission statement. Nothing too crazy.
Are you claiming their mission statement isn't crazy? Hmm, I wonder if you're part of the propaganda machine or a read herring? Let me see if I can find the answer encoded in their mission statement ...
Of course it says: Marblecake also the game
It's a Windows 95 key!
*DrugCheese rants*
It seems pretty obvious.
If you don't know : whose data not to touch : you must not value : your freedom very much : Burma Shave
Care killed the cat, but satisfaction brought it back.
Maybe it's their public key for sending them encrypted communication.
Be seeing you.
scott
Don't they know MD5 is deprecated. They should be using SHA-1. Off to a disappointing start already...
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
It's the rosetta stone, literally, it's the key. That number is the hash for 42.
Hi, I Boris. Hear fix bear, yes?
It says "COMSTOCK"
Think about it. What organization wouldn't be at least somewhat interested in trying to put their entire mission statement in their logo? Success. And appropriate for them to use a hash for it. Although their choice of hash was poor. You'd think they would have used a more modern hash that's considered more secure? But maybe they wanted to go with that because they weren't intending for it to be secure, just fit, and be appropriate.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
It's written in an obscure script on the inside of a golden ring?
Well, duh. Isn't it obvious?
"Three Rings for the Elven-kings under the sky,
Seven for the Dwarf-lords in their halls of stone,
Nine for Mortal Men doomed to die,
One for the Dark Lord on his dark throne
In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.
One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them,
One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them
In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie."
Quick! We need some midgets and an active volcano!
"This post contains words, known to the State of California to cause thought. Wash brain thoroughly after reading."
It's the key for the Eagle Eye bluray release.
I don't know why they would have that in their logo, seems kind of random to me.
Wait... is that a... a construction crane?? Whoah... looks like it's coming in this dir$@HHXxXXXX____
NO CARRIER
Cwm, fjord-bank glyphs vext quiz
The article suggests that it can be "decoded" which just goes to show how uninformed the Cyber Commands PR guy is. A hash is a one way function. Furthermore, by the function's nature an endless supply of inputs will hash into the string he offered.
Where you see the word cyber, there is an idiot nearby waiting to waste your money.
I scream. You scream. I assume that means we're both acquainted with the problem. We proceed.
It's the WEP key for their WiFi. Handy for all staff who forget easily.
-- Lattyware (www.lattyware.co.uk)
Kryptos is gibberish. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kryptos
photosMy Photostream
Is it wise to put the md5 hash of a mission statement that is likely to be subject to frequent change on a logo which should not?
"United States Cyber Command"
What do I win?
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
The proper logo for a Cybercommand that could do its job well would be a PHB skull wearing a military cap with the motto "Defending against all enemies foreign, domestic, and corporate."
What's more interesting is if you take the first letters of each word in their mission statement and parse them correctly, you get 'UPC is a cat' followed by a list of acronyms for all sorts of shadowy secret organizations and technologies...
upc is a cat dto ados dod in a pta wd cfs mco io tea ia de UA foa i cad tst oa
Darn, and here I was hoping it'd be something cool, like "Ha, made you look" or "The magic words are squeamish ossifrage" or something...
"Meine Ehre heißt Treue"
- This code was not "cracked" it was found on google.
- MD5 is deprecated.
- The word "cyberspace" is a science-fiction invention, ill-defined.
- "military cyberspace operations" ??? Yes instead of landing on Normandy Beach, hundreds of troops and equipment will emerge from cable modems.
- William Gibson would dedicate an entire chapter in a book to denigrating the cretins who thought that this was a suitable symbol.
...the binary value is much easier to decipher...
000101000111
010011110010
100110010000
010110001100
111000110000
000000000000
Until the skies turn blue...
Until the air of freedom strikes us...
echo -n "One ring to rule them all, one ring to find them, One ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them." | md5sum
21d0513ded71ba72e0857c6a82fe33a8 -
Have gnu, will travel.
It's like an elaborately decorated theater mask, used to convey emotions to people in the nosebleed seats at ancient ampatheaters. In this case, the decoration is meant to convey "we know a lot about cyber-security" to the American people, who have even a harder time knowing what's real versus what's security theater than did ancient observers listening to a line like "Et, tu, Brute?"
I use irony whenever I can, but my shirts are still wrinkled...
Holy crap, that's my locker combination! How did they get that? Now I'm gonna have to get a new lock. Damn-it!
no it's the chevron 9 dialing code!
I almost replied before I saw the GP's post explaining it, but was hesitant because I was wondering if you were trolling.
'googling it', in this instance, or looking it up on wiki is fairly logical because it will give you a well written description without us going through the effort of writing it ourselves.
I didn't realize it was essentially a random, unrecoverable number.
It's deliberate that you're not able to recover the original message from the MD5 sum, but 'random' is very much NOT true. It's used as data verification - a small change, even just a bit, in the message stream will result in a vastly different number. But feed it the same data, and you'll get the same number back, every time.
This allows you to verify things like messages and binaries haven't been altered from their original verified state.
I don't read AC A human right
This idea is ultra geeky cool.
I wish I had thought of it.
If I were God, wouldn't I protect my churches from acts of me?
When you run the numerical code in the US Cyber Command's logo through a standard two-pass RSA decryption, match it against known quantum fractal ciphers, look at it in a mirror while standing on your head, and de-converge your eyeballs to get the stereo effect, it reads as follows:
"A/S/L?"
But what could it possibly mean?
Bow-ties are cool.
USCYBERCOM plans, coordinates, integrates, synchronizes and conducts activities to: direct the operations and defense of specified Department of Defense information networks and; prepare to, and when directed, conduct full spectrum military cyberspace operations in order to enable actions in all domains, ensure US/Allied freedom of action in cyberspace and deny the same to our adversaries.
"Computers are a lot like Air Conditioners" "They both work great until you start opening Windows"
Every day new digital signatures (for example, SSL certificates) are issued using SHA-1. You can go to https://www.google.com/ right now and check the cert chain and see the signatures for the Thawte intermediate authority and www.google.com are secured by SHA-1 hashes.
So although SHA-1 has shown a few issues so far, it's not really properly deprecated yet. And if it were (is?) broken, virtually all SSL sites would be susceptible to man-in-the-middle attacks.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
Yes, I realize it's not the right length for a VIN.
Someone suggested WEP key... I thought everyone using WEP had memorized their key by now, since they've had to type the darn thing in so many times. Or do some people keep changing their WEP key?
All Your Base Are Belong To Us
"I believe in Karma. That means I can do bad things to people all day long and I assume they deserve it." : Dogbert
It's a misuse of the term 99% of the time it's employed. "Ccyber" was never meant to be used generically, and it is also intended to be used in fields well outside computing. Within computing, it expresses a fairly narrowly focused set of fields, mostly relating to decision systems, such as robotics and simulation.
But, so-called cyberwarfare is boondoggle anyhow. The fact that the rhetoric surrounding so easily flags as a boondoggle is, I guess a positive. Or it would be if the people making these decisions weren't still trying to program their goddamned VCR.
I scream. You scream. I assume that means we're both acquainted with the problem. We proceed.
quick find a collision for some text that makes them sound really dumb for not using a stronger hashing algorithm
I thought we were going for the 'leventy 'leventh time. SOMEONE has to do the 'leventh time, if we're ever going to reach 'leventy 'leventh!
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
however, the keyboard is octal, and you have 10 seconds to translate in your head and enter the key.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
Maybe they worded the public mission statement in such a fashion so that the MD5 actually has a collision with their still yet unknown private mission statement. Tin foil hat now off.
It's not EBCDIC (the U.S. Government's first official code).
I'm a Programmer. That's one level above Software Engineer and one level below Engineer.
Called US Strategic Command to get an understanding of the decision process to selecting MD5 as the crypto method for the logo. Was called backed by a Lt. Commander (same as a Major) who advised that it was just to ref. back to earlier crypto methods. Call US Strategic Command yourself: Media Relations: (402) 294-5659 or (402) 294-4130. Hmmm... Wonder if the military will send black helicopters and SUV's to my location... Oh Tor... hope you are doing what I think your supposed to do. If I get renditioned... can I go to somewhere...
>>>So it basically means that there is no limit.
C'mon. You mean to tell me I can take the collected works of Harry Potter and boil them down to a 128 bit MD5 number?
Trick question. Harry Potter hasn't written any works!
End Decode.
Begin cry.
1st off the mission statement is in corporate speak instead of a motto. The whole thing is just dumb. I must admit their new logo kicks butt compared to their old logo which was posted in CPU mag I read a while ago. I think that article was titled "Cyber-Terrorism: Fact or Fiction". As cool as the new logo is complete with MD5.... what the MD5 represents is seriously lame. Another mission statement? Seriously Maguire and passe'. A motto is definitely needed. Something like "All Your Base Are Belong to Us" is a recurring theme and one that does truly suit that organization. It's unprofessional but appropriate and does strike fear into any electronic enemy. Something of a professional equivalent is needed. I propose: "GATEKEEPERS". It's simple, professional, and somewhat mystic. When in defense; our branches of military are in effect supposed to be our "guardians". The same can be said for our electronic infrastructure. Offensive only when forced into defense. Block and punch.
This is very disappointing. Perhaps there's some hidden code in their mission statement? Maybe? Or maybe there's another super-secret message that has the same MD5SUM?? Something? :( This is worse than the time Santa told me the Easter Bunny didn't exist.
The code is just "US Cyber Command" encrypted.
Prove I'm wrong!
--
make install -not war
Once again the US Government asserts its commitment to Microsoft.
I think that it says a great deal about who our Government is in bed with when the md5 hash only gives this number (9ec4c12949a4f31474f299058ce2b22a) when the mission statement is encoded in the default Windows western character encoding and stored on a Windows machine.
You can't get this value hashing the mission statement and saving it on a Linux machine unless you spend some time jimmying the character encoding and carriage return style.