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Amazon.com Hosting Crypto-Contest
vic20 pointed us over to Amazon's crypto contest/promotional item. Crack the message, and you can get signed editions of books like Cryptonomicon, Applied Cryptography, The Code Book, and Between Silk and Cyanide as well as LEGO Mindstorms. They'll be giving more hints as the contest goes on, with a deadline of 11:59 PM PST Oct. 29.
I changed to to do a frequency count for each number mod 26:
./freq 1 5-426
$
038-097-34-64-242-335-51-377-183-168
038-097-34-64-380-330-115-289-273-189-56
068-486-42-23-87-434-10-468-151-345-150-494-376-4
038-549-53-15-1-193-121-29-109-66-28-160-106
047-111-70-99-24-21-25-12-53-22-56-8
results -------
Number of 0 is 2
Number of 1 is 4
Number of 2 is 2
Number of 3 is 3
Number of 4 is 3
Number of 5 is 1
Number of 7 is 3
Number of 8 is 4
Number of 9 is 1
Number of 10 is 2
Number of 11 is 2
Number of 12 is 8
Number of 13 is 2
Number of 14 is 1
Number of 15 is 1
Number of 16 is 3
Number of 17 is 1
Number of 18 is 4
Number of 19 is 2
Number of 20 is 1
Number of 21 is 4
Number of 22 is 1
Number of 23 is 2
Number of 24 is 1
Number of 25 is 3
Still doesn't look promising...
Quite obvious: to comply with the language laws, they'd have to encrypt the french translation as well :)
How about revealing a ciphertext, plaintext and the algorithm and having people try to crack the key? Or at least some plaintext and ciphertext pairs, along with a larger message that is to be cracked without specifying anything about the algorithm.
;)
By the way, the message reveals who really shot JFK. It's produced by a one time pad.
(Extra marks for those who get this. :)
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)
Crypt-analysis? *blink* I know halloween is getting close, but even so... :)
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)
At first glance anyway. :)
- 415-426
That was the first thing I thought of.
$ temp.pl
038-097-34-64-242-335-51-377-183-168
038-097-34-64-380-330-115-289-273-189-56
068-486-42-23-87-434-10-468-151-345-150-494-376
038-549-53-15-1-193-121-29-109-66-28-160-106
047-111-70-99-24-21-25-12-53-22-56-8
results -------
Number of 038 is 3
Number of 047 is 1
Number of 068 is 1
Number of 097 is 2
Number of 1 is 1
Number of 10 is 1
Number of 106 is 1
Number of 109 is 1
Number of 111 is 1
Number of 115 is 1
Number of 12 is 1
Number of 121 is 1
Number of 15 is 1
Number of 150 is 1
Number of 151 is 1
Number of 160 is 1
Number of 168 is 1
Number of 183 is 1
Number of 189 is 1
Number of 193 is 1
Number of 21 is 1
Number of 22 is 1
Number of 23 is 1
Number of 24 is 1
Number of 242 is 1
Number of 25 is 1
Number of 273 is 1
Number of 28 is 1
Number of 289 is 1
Number of 29 is 1
Number of 330 is 1
Number of 335 is 1
Number of 34 is 2
Number of 345 is 1
Number of 376 is 1
Number of 377 is 1
Number of 380 is 1
Number of 415 is 1
Number of 42 is 1
Number of 426 is 1
Number of 434 is 1
Number of 468 is 1
Number of 486 is 1
Number of 494 is 1
Number of 51 is 1
Number of 53 is 2
Number of 549 is 1
Number of 56 is 2
Number of 64 is 2
Number of 66 is 1
Number of 70 is 1
Number of 8 is 1
Number of 87 is 1
Number of 99 is 1
A silly little script, but will post it anyway.
#!/usr/local/bin/perl
while ()
{
foreach (split(/-/,$_))
{
chomp;
$count{$_}++;
}
}
print "results ------- \n";
foreach (sort(keys(%count)))
{
print "Number of $_ is $count{$_}\n";
}
-- perl -e'print pack"H*","6e656d6f406d38792e6f7267"'
Remember that most assumptions are candidates for being wrong :-)
:-(
To make a good cipher like this, you would usually make a misleading code. Not that I've got any better ideas...
BTW, why should _always_ such things be restricted to the U.S. and Canada?
/* Steinar */
(This comment is of course GPLed.)
Money dun said:
*chuckle* It's funny you mention that...I thought the same thing, m'self. (Then again, I've been reminiscing on that anyways; Jean Shephard, who wrote the book that "A Christmas Story" was based off of ["In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash"], passed away a few days ago.) Thinking of Little Ralphie and the Little Orphan Annie decoder pin :3
Oddly, that one movie was responsible more than anything (short of my grandpa's old radio) for me getting into old-time radio MP3s... :)
Seriously, though...(ObSlashdot) I've been farting about with the idea of maybe making a little decoder proggie based off the Captain Midnight and Radio Orphan Annie decoder pins. (There are at least three models of the latter and two of the former, with different key setups. I unfortunately haven't yet been able to find a good picture from the 1940 model of the Radio Orphan Annie decoder pin (the last year they did them, if memory serves) to get the code-key for that...shame, too, because I wanted to see what the radio program decoded to and if it really DID decode to "Be sure to drink your Ovaltine". :) I figure it should only be a little more difficult to implement than ROT13 :) and preferably menu-selectable as to what code key you're using (yes, this is meant for OTR buffs who want to decode along :).
ObSlashdot the Second: over on one of the OTR sites (which I can't seem to place at the moment) there is actually a discussion on substitution cyphers and other forms of cyphers in relation to the Captain Midnight/Radio Orphan Annie decoder pins :) If it can be found again, it'd prolly be useful for ideas as to how to solve the cypher for the Cryptonomicon copy.
Dumb Useless Trivia: Both Captain Midnight (in the early-to-late 40's) and Radio Orphan Annie (in the mid-30's to early-40's) were sponsored by Ovaltine. Probably not incidentially, both were sponsored by Ovaltine at the same time they had the decoder pins going (Ovaltine switched to Captain Midnight in the 40's, figuring kids liked Indy Jones-esque pilots rather than little girls with auburn locks to hock chocolate malt mix). The code spoken in the Radio Orphan Annie segment in "A Christmas Story" might not be what Ralphie wrote down (I need to watch it again to make sure...gods help me, I've damn near got the entire movie memorised to the point I can recite lines from it before they happen :). Radio Orphan Annie really WAS largely an Ovaltine advert (I've got a Real Audio recording of a show from 1938-ish, the show was all of fifteen minutes long, and fully seven of it was an advert for Ovaltine), so that much is right (yes, I HAD to check to see if it really was that bad...you all think commercials are bad NOW...some of the 1940's kid's shows WERE in all essence infomercials). There's at least another movie based off "In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash" ("Ollie Hopnoodle's Haven of Bliss", which at least in the mid 90's sometimes showed on the Disney Channel, and is depicted as showing Ralphie and co when Ralphie is around twelve-ish). Yes, there really were such things as Red Ryder BB Guns, there really was a radio promotion, and yes, I'm proud to say they are still being manufactured (I've seen the actual things at Wal-Marts before, and yes, they really ARE branded as Red Ryder air rifles :).
And finally...I can sympathise with Ralphie on the Ovaltine bit. My folks, instead of buying Quik, bought Ovaltine because it was supposedly "healthier". They still did sillybuggers with the caps up to 1979-ish (with stickers free in a can of Ovaltine)...as far as I know they are STILL doing crap with the lids and/or for sendoffs. (I seriously doubt that most Americans drink Ovaltine that much anymore; at least not kids, because there's prepackaged chocolate milk and Quik and other chocolate-drink mixes. They still sell the stuff, though...) Oddly, though...I am maybe one of three Americans who has never drank Tang. Sunny Delight, yes. Tang, no. I expect some day I shall be caged in a museum as an example of the last natural-born American citizen who has never drank Tang (to hear folks talk, it must be the official childhood "health-drink" the same way Ovaltine was in the 40's, and that apparently if you have never drank the Orange Stuff That Is Product Of NASA Engineering as a kid you were either an immigrant, raised by wolves, or both). :) At least AFAIK Tang hasn't done sillybuggers with the caps yet though :)
-Windigo The Feral (NYAR!)
Given any list of numbers, it is trivially easy to come up with an algorithm that turns these numbers into whatever message you want. What if I just say that the message is "I am the walrus, koo koo ka choo" and show my algorithm. Do I win the prize?
JET Program: see Japan, meet intere
This msg is encoded using our on-click(tm) patented encoding scheme.
This encoding is subject to US and international Patent laws.
Unauthorized decrypting of this encoding would result in our revoking of your onclick membership
Happy Onclicking.
--
If Amazon expects people who don't have their high ASCII characters memorized in octal to win, they aren't going to have their final answers encoded in ASCII or UTF8 or anything of the sort. If they map characters to numbers, it will be 1-26.
Gates' Law: Every 18 months, the speed of software halves.
That's the beale cyphers you're talking about. There are three sections, saying where it was buried, what it was, and who it belonged to. To date, only the second has been solved, and it was based on the declaration of independence in the same way as this cyper. It is thought that the other two sections are based on similar documents or the same document in different ways. (Or they could be a hoax)
A couple of URL's I found for it are:
http://einste in.et.tudelft.nl/~arlet/puzzles/sol.cgi/cryptolog
http://tre asurehunt.miningco.com/hobbies/pastimes/treasureh
They are also mentioned in the sci.crypt FAQ
--
Exigo spamos et dona ferentes
D R I N K
M O R E
O L V A L T I N E
Right Here!- 98-2/sld008.htm
.12 .06 - .09 .04 .015 - .028 .01
http://theory.stanford.edu/people/jcm/cs099j/mk
For those of you too lazy to cut and paste, the run down is:
E ~=
TAOINSHR ~=
DL ~=
CUMWFGYPB ~=
VKJXQZ ~=
Kintanon
Check out JoshJitsu.info for Brazilian Ji
Yes, that is cause, 0 denotes (i believe) caps. So the first letter of every sentence is captilized?
So why would the second letter of the first 2 sentences be capitalized? Unless the first letter is I and the second letter is the beginning of a proper name? But that is assuming thant 0 denotes capitalization and that they use proper syntax for capitalization of names.
Kintanon
Check out JoshJitsu.info for Brazilian Ji
Just wanted to point out a couple things for those who might not have noticed. ;)
038-097-34-64 = ASIN for Cryptonomicon
068-486-42-23 = ASIN for Between Silk and Cyanide
etc, etc
No other hints on the other numbers
-rob
Here at Amazon.com, we like to think of cryptography as a good, wholesome activity,
providing hours of fun for the whole family.
I almost blew milk out of my nose!
Come on Ma! Lets go crack some codes!
Is it just me our did this phrase strike anyone else as funny?
I wear pants.
What will the NSA say when they find out that _foreigners_ can crack the good ole American code? Or even win a signed copy of Cryptonomicon?? What is this country coming to?
(also, first post correct grammar first)
Can your IM do this?
I put my solution on a web page. (I want to see if I can get SlashDotted ). However, I recommend that you verify the answer. It seems to have worked out, and all of the answers are grammatically correct, but I may have messed up.
The spoiler
Have fun! And let me know if I made any mistakes.
Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.
And finaly, after weeks and weeks of work and toil, the final message was finaly deciphered, and it read: 'Drink more Ovaltine'
I just get the feeling that the message at Amazon will read 'All hail Bezos'. :)
242: this
335: is
51: (a
377: truly
183: strange
168: deception.
380: funky
330: protagonists
115: are
289: destined
273: to
189: want
56: appendices)
More in a few minutes!
Sorry, the offer is open only to residents of the United States and Canada, excluding Quebec.
Why isn't this contest open to international customers?
Unfortunately, we are unable to offer this contest to residents outside the United States and Canada due to the complexity and variety of international legal requirements. We hope you understand that we are subject to certain legal limitations.
*Sigh*
When will the U.S. stop being in a continuous state of national emergency (dating back to the years of the big depression, no kidding)?
Here it is folks - please pardon the ugly perl code :-)
.= shift (@book); /g; /g; /g; ,/,/g; /g;
First, the answers:
ISBN: 0380973464, remaining contest text 242 335 51 377 183 168
this is (a truly strange deception.
ISBN: 0380973464, remaining contest text 380 330 115 289 273 189 56
funky protagonists are destined to want appendices)
ISBN: 0684864223, remaining contest text 87 434 10 468 151 345 150 494 376 415 426
he had great Marks for the easiest execution. of enemy) explosions
ISBN: 0385495315, remaining contest text 1 193 121 29 109 66 28 160 106
People need the bestselling conflict, in the information age
ISBN: 0471117099, remaining contest text 24 21 25 12 53 22 56 8
the suitable specialist offers steps for secure Source
------------
Now, the code:
------------
#!/usr/local/bin/perl
# Cynthia Brown 19 Oct 1999
# Contest strings saved to file contest.txt
$contest = "contest.txt";
open (CONTEST, $contest) || die $contest;
@contest = ;
close CONTEST;
# These are Amazon's pages of the various contest prize books saved to disk
@reviews = ("applied.txt", "between.txt", "codebook.txt", "cryptonomicon.txt");
foreach $line (@contest) {
@line = split ('-', $line);
$isbn = shift (@line) . shift (@line) . shift (@line) . shift (@line);
printf ("\n\nISBN: $isbn, remaining contest text @line");
foreach $book (@reviews) {
system ("grep \'ISBN: $isbn\' $book >/dev/null\n");
if ($? == 0) {
open (BOOK, $book) || die $book;
@book = ;
close BOOK;
# Move down to the start of the reviews
while (@book[0] ne " Reviews\n") {
shift (@book);
}
shift (@book); shift (@book);
printf ("@book[0]\n");
# Lose trailing \n and merge into 1 big honking string
chop (@book);
$foo = "";
while (scalar (@book) > 0) {
$foo
}
# Lose multiple spaces, etc.
$foo =~ s/--*/
$foo =~ s/__*/
$foo =~ s/\//
$foo =~ s/
$foo =~ s/ */
$foo = substr ($foo, 1, length($foo)-1);
# printf ("$foo\n");
# Get the words based on the offsets
@foo = split ('\s', $foo);
foreach $offset (@line) {
$bar = @foo[$offset - 1];
printf ("$bar ");
}
printf ("\n\n");
}
}
}
==================================
neophase
==================================
neophase
Hey if you already can crack then why would you need a book on Cryptography? signed, give me a break. Legos on the otherhand are a score.
Its karma, Kramer.
...but darn, I'm just too lazy to act upon it.
./ has developed it this far, I might as well carry out the explination...
./ users recognizing these digits as asin numbers, the rest of it falls into place.
They're right...it doesn't require any difficult math skills, except for counting.
I wouldn't have gotten this myself, but seeing how the rest of
Taking a look at the first two lines:
038-097-34-64-242-335-51-377-183-168
038-097-34-64-380-330-115-289-273-189-56
Notice, first of all, the first four numbers repeat themselves. Second of all, see how only the first number is a three digit number with only two significant digits (a zero before two digits), while the other numbers don't begin with a 0. I was suspicious about this, and with the
There's a famous cryptogrophy code out there, I forget the name of it, but the story is this: someone discovered it (it came in three pieces), and supposedly cracked the second piece, which explained the first and third pieces of the code would tell him where some rich treasure was. The second piece of the code was coded by using numerical values standing for the number of letters into a document, in this case the document (he claimed he discovered) was the US Constitution (so, the 10th letter in "We the people of the United States..." would be 'l').
Since no numberical values repeat outside of the ASIN values, I believe it's logical to conclude that it's not a letter assigned to a number (this being emphasized by the clue Amazon left us saying that it requires no difficult math skills).
Since we have concluded that the first four numbers correspond to the ASIN values of books, it's logical to conclude that each line corresponds to something from that book, and this is supported by Amazon repeating the digits "038-097-34-64" in the first and second line, rather than just sticking in a whole string of numbers after it calls the ASIN value. Also, it's fair to believe (but might be false) that each line corresponds to a word rather than looking for an ending or spacing character.
And from here on, I believe the solution lies in grabbing the books from the shelf. So, whoever is the fastest and most determined at this can do one of two things:
1) Count characters into the book from the beginning corresponding to the numbers in the code after the ASIN value, but I think this is unrealistic because of all the prologues, copyrights, etc. and the annoyance of counting in the first place, or
2) Think the characters correspond to specific pages, and try and figure out what common character to use on each page (first character, last, etc.)
I know this is quite lengthy, but for anyone who's less lazy than I am and doesn't mind running histerically through Barnes and Noble or some library searching for these books, I think this is the sollution for a bunch of free books.
I think these fall under the category of the 'special math skills' that Amazon says you don't need. Dumb it down a tad. This contest is supposed to be winnable by people who get stumped by crossword puzzles in the USA Today, not by some paranoid lunatic that uses Ordo Novus Seclorum to read his e-mail and encrypts his grocery list so that no one will find out that he's buying stinky cheese and miniature vegatables.
(Wow! Look at the margins on miniature vegatables!)
For those who don't like random drawing/contest - you can bid for Signed copies of Cryptonomicon... Signed by Neal Stephenson or even Linus Torvalds.
:)
-Note: I'm not selling either.
Joseph Elwell.
Or at least I believe its the solution.
As someone pointed out, the first 4 groupings is the ISBN of the book. If you pull up the book in Amazon, each has a review by Amazon. The numbers are word offsets. The key thing to figure out is what they consider a word... I just did a preliminary scan through and came up with the following, if someone spends some time, they can undoubtably get it right...
Resonates from 918 tech to Alan
all ties brilliant coffers an sinks in
sent explains department cut and to men forget zoo would than
People need the bestselling conflict in the Information Age
The suitable specialist offers steps for secure source
As you can see, its not perfect. I was using Word, cutting text then using word count to get position. Things like hypenated words were screwing me up. But the last two sentences seem to well fitted to be chance.
if your asking why im posting this, well, this is some scam contest they are running for two weeks, with a "random drawing" at the end. Yeah right. Ive spent about as much time as I want to on it, Id be curious to the final solution once whoever it is puzzles it...
What Amazon has done is to give people the cypher-text and challenged them to recover the plain-text.
This is why crytanalysis is SOOO interesting. This is more of a "real-world" scenario. You get some stuff and have to find out how it was encrypted and what it says.
Amazon's challenge is much more difficult than the RSA challenges. RSA tells you what encryption algorythm is used and what the beginning of the plain-text message is.... all that's left is key-recovery. Here people will have to think about how to attack the problem first, then try breaking the code.
HINT: Presuming that Amazon's message is in English, and is most likely a cypher (be it block, substitution, output feedback) with standard math knowedge necessary, I can offer the following assumptions for all the budding crypoanalysts on
It is most likely a subtitution cypher
It is somewhat likely that these are not added modulus anything. (Due to the high range of values)
A good starting point would be to compare the recurring numbers within the cyphertext with common letters in the English language.
Most of all: Have fun...At least you don't do this for $$
The message is "this message is not yet here."
--
As has been pointed out, 0380973464 is the ISDN for Cryptonomicon, so
- 415-426
038-097-34-64-242-335-51-377-183-168
---ISDN------ C R Y P T O
038-097-34-64-380-330-115-289-273-189-56
---ISDN------ N O M I C O N
and further on,
068-486-42-23-87-434-10-468-151-345-150-494-376
---ISDN------ T H E C O D E B O O K
Kaa
Kaa
Kaa's Law: In any sufficiently large group of people most are idiots.
038-097-34-64-242-335-51-377-183-1681 5-426
Cryptonomicon
This is a truly strange deception
038-097-34-64-380-330-115-289-273-189-56
Cryptonomicon
funky protagonists are destined to want appendices
068-486-42-23-87-434-10-468-151-345-150-494-376-4
Between Silk and Cyanide : A Codemaker's War 1941-1945
He had great marks for the easiest execution of enemy explosions
038-549-53-15-1-193-121-29-109-66-28-160-106
The Code Book : The Evolution of Secrecy from Mary, Queen of Scots to Quantum Cryptography
People need the bestselling conflict in the information age
047-111-70-99-24-21-25-12-53-22-56-8
Applied Cryptography : Protocols, Algorithms, and Source Code in C
The suitable specialist offers steps for secure source
Well, not that I'm a crypto expert, but let's see how quickly a brute force decipher could take...
Okay, I obviously have to make a few assumptions. First off, I assume each number between dashes is a single alphanumeric. And since I said alphanumeric, you know I mean A-Z and 0-9.
There are 61 alphanumerics in this message. HOWEVER, I believe we can safely assume that each line is a phrase on its own. If so, we can solve each separately. The breakdown is 10, 11, 15, 13, and 12 (yes, that adds to 61).
So, we have 36^n combinations for each line (n being the # of alphanumerics in each line).
Sum(36^n for all n) = approx(2.1249 * 10^23)
Let's say that it takes 1 millisecond to calculate a single permutation. (I have *no* idea whether that is a fair estimate - I'm definitely no expert in cryptography).
This would make worst case time for solving the code would be 7.011 * 10^12 years. Of course, this doesn't rule out the possibility that there are multiple valid solutions (ie. the code interpreted differently still results in a valid English statement) and other such weird phenomena. I would guess the best chance to cracking this thing, at first, would be to find the weights of each of the numbers between the dashes, and compare that to the English alphabet's weight. At least, that might get you an E or something. I'll let someone who knows what he's talking about comment on that.
You should never take life too seriously - You'll never get out of it alive.