Culture 5 min read

Liber Primus Redux: Solving the Cicada 3301 Puzzle

TheDigitalArtist | Pixabay.com

TheDigitalArtist | Pixabay.com

On January 4th, 2012, a mysterious message was posted to a 4Chan forum calling for “highly intelligent individuals” to solve a complex series of cryptogram puzzles.

Why are these Cryptogram Puzzles so Appealing?

Cicada 3301 has often been referred to as “the most elaborate and mysterious puzzle of the internet age” and has been listed as one of the “top 5 eeriest, unsolved mysteries of the internet” by The Washington Post.

Part of the Internet’s obsession with Cicada 3301 comes from its massive scale.

Throughout the “testing”, multiple clues have required participants to travel to various places across the globe before moving on to the next clue. These clue locations have included the following cities:

  • Annapolis, Maryland, US
  • Chino, California, US
  • Columbus, Georgia, US
  • Dallas, Texas, US
  • Erskineville, Australia
  • Fayetteville, Arkansas, US
  • Flushing, New York, US
  • Granada, Spain
  • Greenville, Texas, US
  • Haleiwa, Hawaii, US
  • Little Rock, Arkansas, US
  • Los Angeles, California, US
  • Miami, Florida, US
  • Moscow, Russia
  • New Orleans, Louisiana, US
  • Okinawa, Japan
  • Paris, France
  • Portland, Oregon, US
  • Seattle, Washington, US
  • Lincoln, Nebraska, US
  • Seoul, South Korea
  • Warsaw, Poland
  • Mexico City, Mexico

Moreover, the clues themselves have spanned a wide range of media formats including the Internet, telephone, original music, bootable Linux CDs, digital images, physical paper signs, and pages of unpublished cryptic books (including the notorious Liber Primus).

In addition to using many varying techniques to encrypt, encode, or hide data, these clues also have referenced cryptographic, mathematical, technological literary, artistic, and philosophical sources including:

  • Agrippa (A Book of the Dead), a poem by William Gibson
  • The Ancient of Days, a design by William Blake
  • Anglo-Saxon Rune alphabet
  • Johann Sebastian Bach
  • Cuneiform
  • C. Escher
  • Francisco Goya
  • Gödel, Escher, Bach, a book by Douglas Hofstadter
  • Kōans
  • Liber AL vel Legis by Aleister Crowley
  • The Lady of Shalott, a painting by John William Waterhouse
  • The Mabinogion, a series of pre-Christian Welsh manuscripts
  • Mayan Numerology
  • The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, a book by William Blake
  • Nebuchadnezzar, a design by William Blake
  • Newton, a design by William Blake
  • Self-Reliance by Ralph Waldo Emerson
  • Song of Liberty, a poem by William Blake
  • Collective consciousness and collective intelligence
  • Ego death
  • Esotericism
  • Gematria
  • Carl Jung
  • Kabbalah and Hermetic Qabalah
  • Søren Kierkegaard
  • Friedrich Nietzsche
  • Grigori Rasputin
  • Jean-Paul Sartre
  • Robert Anton Wilson
  • Zen Buddhism
  • Atbash cipher
  • Book ciphers
  • Caesar cipher
  • Diffie–Hellman key exchange
  • Factorization
  • General number field sieve
  • Kurt Gödel and his incompleteness theorems
  • GNU Privacy Guard (GnuPG or GPG)
  • Francis Heylighen
  • GNU/Linux
  • Magic squares
  • Number theory
  • Prime numbers
  • Pretty Good Privacy
  • RSA Encryption Algorithm
  • Self-reference
  • Shamir’s Secret Sharing Scheme
  • Steganography in digital images, text, and network protocols
  • Strange Loops
  • The Onion Router (Tor)
  • Transposition ciphers
  • The Vigenère Cipher

What was the Goal of the Cicada 3301 Puzzle?

Since 2012, it has been widely speculated as to who Cicada 3301 is and what their ultimate goals are.

Many have speculated that the puzzles are a recruitment tool for the NSA, CIA, MI6, underground Masonic societies, or cyber mercenary groups. Still, others view the Cicada 3301 puzzle as a type of AR game, though, no company or individual has taken credit or tried to monetize it.

If the goal of Cicada 3301 was tied to a specific governmental program, it wouldn’t appear on such a global scale. According to the UK Metro News, “government intelligence agencies have recruited code-breakers through similar puzzles in the past. But Nigel Smart, professor of cryptology at the University of Bristol, doesn’t think this is the case here. ‘I have no idea who would be recruiting via that means,’ he said. ‘Probably not a government because it was non-geographic. GCHQ and the US government run similar challenges but would always aim it at UK or US people respectively’”.

If the goal was for entertainment or gaming purposes, no profits are being made, but it may just be for enjoyment (either by creator actively participating or by watching others struggle to achieve meaning from the meaningless).

If the goal was social or ideological, members of 3301 sought to collect highly intelligent members potentially capable of:

  1. Governmental influence for an ideological cause
  2. Construction of a society uniquely reliant on futurism/intellectualism/collectivism.

In essence – a human embodiment of the elements we typically ascribe to technology and a possible appeal to techno-anarchists.

Could Anonymous have Written 3301?

As someone who used to be heavily active on 4chan from about 2004 to 2008, I can certainly say that this is something the community is/was capable of. Cicada 3301 was formed around the same time as the “Anon” ideology came to a crescendo (before the formation of the official hacker group “Anonymous”).

In fact, since its inception 4Chan members who identify as “Anon” have largely maintained an overarching ideology / political stance that is incredibly similar to the Cicadian tenants. 3301 may have been another way to both expand and improve Anon’s fledgling community of hackers.

This theory seems to be supported by the account of Marcus Wanner, one of the only persons to publicly announce their successful completion on the Cicada 3301 puzzle.

Ultimately, it seems that this puzzle group holds many of the selfsame principles Anonymous holds near and dear. However, Cicada 3301 has not advocated illegal activities or hacking in any way. Ultimately, they appear to be a group “exclusively dedicated to researching and developing techniques and technology to aid in the ideas they advocate which are liberty, transparency, and security through technology”.

Read More: 10 of the Weirdest Cryptocurrencies on the Market

First AI Web Content Optimization Platform Just for Writers

Found this article interesting?

Let Edgy Universe know how much you appreciate this article by clicking the heart icon and by sharing this article on social media.


Profile Image

Edgy Universe

EDGY is an SEO incubator, forecaster, and support center for deep learning, technological advancement, and enterprise-level end-to-end search programs.

Comments (2)
Most Recent most recent
You
  1. Profile Image
    S M August 03 at 12:28 am GMT

    Hi guys !
    The group is waiting for the Cicada 3301 clues to your latest puzzles. The path to the final solution of the problem passes through the book Liber Primus. I found a key that lies in one of the decrypted pages. 
    The first 10 dares that will send 0.5 btc to the address 1Jjq5421YmvpjvNhq2BZq6f3szsKLfRpfr will get the page number. Good luck

  2. Profile Image
    MAD VOICE September 14 at 11:36 am GMT

    The rimean hypothesis

1
share Scroll to top

Link Copied Successfully

Sign in

Sign in to access your personalized homepage, follow authors and topics you love, and clap for stories that matter to you.

Sign in with Google Sign in with Facebook

By using our site you agree to our privacy policy.