“Also, in a lot of cases, I felt that Cicada 3301 and me seem to have a very similar way of thinking. These coordinates pointed to 14 different locations from 5 different countries. The quest would ultimately return to the deepest layers of the digital world: the dark web.To understand how hard Cicada is, one only needs to look at the complexity of each clue that leads to successive parts of the puzzle–all which need to be completed in order to solve the Cicada mystery.From the first image that was posted, Eriksson used steganography software to extract a message encoded with a shift cipher, where each letter of the text actually corresponds to another letter. Corporations and governments have used similar recruitment techniques since at least World War II.In 2013, British Intelligence agency, GCHQ launched a recruitment program known as Can You Find itU.S. When it will end? “It really only takes one dedicated person to plan it all, but if I had to guess I would say it’s probably three to five with one of them being the main driving force. An enigmatic message on the internet from an unknown source named “3301” sends thousands searching to solve ever increasingly complicated puzzles for the past two years. This led to another series of codes which led to a GPS coordinate in the real world that contained yet another code attached to a piece of paper. What the locals found were physical posters with images of a cicada and a QR code.Eriksson scanned the QR code, which lead to another two images, inside of which were more hidden text, including text from what Eriksson found was the William Gibson poem However, by the time he arrived, Cicada 3301 had put up a message stating that they were disappointed in the groups of people that had formed to share parts of the puzzles they discovered without any one member completing all the steps along the way, as Eriksson had done.Had Eriksson seen the first image as soon as everyone else did, and having solved the Cicada 3301 puzzle on his own, he would today know what laid beyond the Tor site Cicada had set up.“It was quite disappointing,” Eriksson says. While these obscure references and clues seem disconnected at first glance, they are anything but. Puzzlers are still working on solving the Cicada 3301 Liber Primus ("First Book" in Latin), a book of encrypted runes.

The most popular assumption, however, is a government intelligence agency like the CIA, NSA, and MI6 that may be trying to recruit talented cryptoanalysts like Eriksson–something Eriksson doesn’t think is likely.“It is actually quite common for intelligence agencies and similar organizations to use non-traditional forms of recruitment, but in those cases they usually announce it officially rather than hiding their identity.

The Cicada 3301 puzzle was a topic of interest on sites like Reddit and 4chan, people were already talking about it not just on the internet but it was now a part of the discussion in the physical world too. It has been called "the most elaborate and mysterious puzzle of the internet age"The stated purpose of the puzzles each year has been to recruit "highly intelligent individuals", although the ultimate purpose remains unknown.The first puzzle, of 2012, has been solved by Marcus Wanner.The Cicada 3301 clues have spanned many different communication media, including the In July 2015, a group calling themselves "3301" claimed to have hacked As the group has gained notoriety and public attention, many have asserted that the puzzles are an introduction to Others have claimed that the Cicada 3301 puzzles are a modern and technological equivalent to the enlightenment journey within The organization is the subject of an upcoming film entitled There were two pieces of music accompanying the Cicada clues. We look forward to meeting the few who will make it all the way through. CICADA 3301 Liber Primus Sacred BOOK; What Happened Part 1 (2012) How the solved pages of the Liber Primus were solved; What Happened Liber Primus (Post 2014) What Happened Part 1 (2013) Blog posts. Participants and spectators were raising numerous questions now, what was the overall purpose of this puzzle? Find it, and it will lead you on the road to finding us. There is a message hidden in the image. Eriksson noticed that several posts by a user using a pseudonym seemed to consist of encoded text. To find them, we have devised a test. The coordinates led to telephone poles in countries around the world, including in Spain, Russia, America, France, Japan, and Poland. Claiming to seek “highly intelligent individuals,” the Cicada 3301 puzzle challenged visitors to find a secret message hidden in the image that accompanied it. To find out, we talked to the man who solved it.When it showed up on January 4, 2012 the mysterious image contained a simple message in white text on a black background:“Hello. Marcus Wanner told Rolling Stone that he solved the Cicada 3301 puzzle of 2012 with a group of internet acquaintances via a private chat room. “Logical and analytical reasoning has always come naturally for me,” Eriksson says. Good luck.”And so began the hunt to solve the mysterious Cicada 3301 puzzle, one that recurs each year and has left cryptoanalysts and hackers scratching their heads.“I stumbled upon it on one of the image boards the first image was posted to in 2012,” says Eriksson, a 34-year-old cryptosecurity researcher and developer from Sweden. Lurker69/ghfghfhg; Lurker69/london troll; BrotherBox/Adopting the wiki; Lurker69/Cicada wikia logo; Doesshelikeido/Winds? The first step was to open the image file using a text editor and an appended string of readable text could be found.