[HN Gopher] Australian Signals Directorate coin code cracked by ...
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Australian Signals Directorate coin code cracked by 14yo in 'just
over an hour'
Author : psychstudio
Score : 164 points
Date : 2022-09-02 09:57 UTC (13 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.abc.net.au)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.abc.net.au)
| dumbworld wrote:
| teddyh wrote:
| > _She also revealed today that there was a fifth level of
| encryption on the coin which no one had broken yet._
|
| Now, how believable is that?
| sen wrote:
| The fifth level was a binary puzzle hidden in the colouration
| of the writing. Darker/lighter letters were 1's and 0's. The
| second part of the 5th level was that the other ring of writing
| had 3 "colours", which were the dots, dashes, and spaces in a
| morse code string.
|
| The only reason the fifth level was "hidden" was that there
| wasn't obvious hints/clues pointing to it like the first 4,
| where each specifically hinted at how to solve the next.
| scrlk wrote:
| Reminds me of the Kryptos sculpture installed at CIA HQ - the
| last passage still hasn't been solved yet:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kryptos
| killingtime74 wrote:
| Maybe there is no solution they just trying to mess with us
| krisoft wrote:
| I completely believe that she said that.
|
| It is mostly believable that there is a fifth level.
|
| It is likely that they haven't received a correct solution at
| the time of the announcement yet.
|
| Which part are you doubting?
| teddyh wrote:
| I doubted the fact that there really was a fifth level. It
| seems like exactly what someone would make up on the spot in
| an embarrasing situation like this.
| permo-w wrote:
| embarrassing? they seemed delighted
| McDyver wrote:
| "And believe it or not, a boy, 14 years old in Tasmania, was
| the first person in just over an hour to get * _all four*_
| layers right. "
|
| Cue Maxwell Smart: "would you believe 5 layers?"
| jgrahamc wrote:
| https://blog.jgc.org/2011/12/back-channel-confirms-that-im-r...
| Aeolun wrote:
| So the first three layers can be solved with pen and paper, and
| for the fourth you _might_ need a computer.
|
| Do we still consider that encryption in this day and age? I know
| it technically is , but..
| thrown_22 wrote:
| In Australia soon that's the only encryption you'll be allowed.
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| Flip a coin, Heads or [REDACTED]?
| mattkrause wrote:
| It's a fun little contest/PR thing/recruiting tool! (Maybe the
| headline should reflect that, @Dang?)
|
| It's not like the PM is sitting there with a coin in hand,
| trying to decipher reports from the Australian Defence
| Forces....
| Trouble_007 wrote:
| ASD - 75th Anniversary Commemorative Coin :
| https://www.asd.gov.au/75th-anniversary/events/2022-09-01-75...
|
| 70th Anniversary of ASIO - Marked with New 50-Cent Coin by Royal
| Australian Mint : https://www.ramint.gov.au/publications/70th-
| anniversary-asio...
| hilbert42 wrote:
| It's important to always remember that such advertising is
| actually _soft_ propaganda.
|
| In the early days the Government essentially didn't want the
| citizenry to know that ASIO and ASD existed but if it did learn
| of their existence then it was important to keep discussion
| about them at the bottom of the political agenda.
|
| That's long past and now the citizenry has some basic knowledge
| about how these agencys operate and that the work they do can
| at best be described as both 'unsavory' and secretive. That is,
| even if they're essential, they don't have the best of images.
|
| That's where _soft_ propaganda becomes essential and now steps
| in, that is it 's time to create a 'warm and comfortable'
| feeling about them in the public's eye.
|
| Coins have always had value, authority and presence not to
| mention ubiquity, it's why the head of the reigning sovereign
| is always on them.
|
| To provide these 'questionable' agencies a better image what
| could be better than to associate them with all that solid
| authoritative suff?
|
| Right, you've got the picture.
|
| In fact the linguist and politial philosopher Noam Chomsky
| wrote a book about it called _Manufacturing Consent:_
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent
| nailer wrote:
| I live in the UK but have family in Australia - I can imagine
| there's no privacy there either but I was wondering what the law
| is?
|
| In the UK it's one month of all our private communications thanks
| to the Investigatory Powers Act 2016.
|
| What is it in Australia?
| Yeahsureok wrote:
| 2 years data retention
| nailer wrote:
| > The Telecommunications (Interception and Access) Act 1979
| requires telecommunications companies to retain a particular
| set of telecommunications data for at least 2 years.
|
| That looks like metadata (see
| https://www.homeaffairs.gov.au/nat-
| security/files/dataset.pd..., PDF warning). Which is still
| private, but doesn't include your private calls and messages.
|
| How long do they keep private calls and messages?
| shakna wrote:
| > How long do they keep private calls and messages?
|
| 7-10 years, in practice. 2 years, in requirement. [0]
|
| [0] https://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_D
| epart...
| nailer wrote:
| Hrm that link doesn't seem to be relevant:
|
| > ... is not defined in the TIA Act but is generally
| understood to refer to information about a communication
| that is not the content or substance of a communication.
|
| I'm asking asking about content.
| 96llort wrote:
| nailer wrote:
| If you're comparing to the US: the US has the Fourth
| Amendment, and your government ignores that too.
| adventured wrote:
| You're pretending it doesn't exist at all, when in fact the
| Fourth Amendment provides enormous, common protection -
| which some government agents rarely violate (leading you to
| claim the "government" ignores it entirely, which is
| false).
|
| The Fouth Amendment is not only still fully valid, it
| continues to hold up extraordinarily well when it comes to
| protecting you in a court of law.
| nailer wrote:
| > which some government agents rarely violate
|
| We've seen from the Snowden revelations that ignoring the
| fourth amendment is widespread.
| jodrellblank wrote:
| https://www.gov.uk/types-of-british-nationality/british-
| citi...
| 96llort wrote:
| sen wrote:
| It wasn't super difficult, and was quite fun. I'm not a
| cryptography person and have zero knowledge of ciphers or
| anything like this, but a friend and I saw it and thought it'd be
| fun to give it a shot. We shared ideas but pretty much solved
| each puzzle ourselves in different ways (which was interesting to
| see in itself).
|
| The hidden 5th puzzle was both the hardest to get going on (due
| to no hints compared to the others), while also being among the
| easiest once you figured out what it actually was.
|
| I did a little write-up here if anyone's interested:
| http://senwerks.com/hacktheplanet/Solving-the-Australian-Sig...
| [deleted]
| claudiawerner wrote:
| It's funny to see a coin like this minted considering the
| Australian government's position on encryption and privacy (well,
| not just Australia - pretty much any other Commonwealth country
| too).
| TOMDM wrote:
| Nah it makes perfect sense, normalizing encryption that 14 year
| olds can break in an hour is totally in line with Australian
| government policy.
| sgjohnson wrote:
| This would be funny if it wouldn't actually be sad.
| webdoodle wrote:
| laughs in NSA
| hilbert42 wrote:
| When you live here you soon realize the politicians and those
| who bask in the limelight aren't the ones in charge.
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| Who is?
| nirimda wrote:
| Usually such a comment is a reference to a certain American
| media mogul who has tried to swing several recent elections
| and found themselves largely preaching to the choir with a
| very much reduced audience. But their miss rate is now
| exceedingly high: 2022 federal miss. 2022 SA miss. 2020 Qld
| miss. 2019 federal hit. 2018 Vic miss.
|
| In fact, the people in charge in Australia are basically
| the voters. It upsets some people that Australian voters
| behaved basically the same as voters in every other
| democratic country in the post-1970s inflation and post-
| cold war liberal periods.
| idontpost wrote:
| American media mogul?
|
| Murdoch is from Australia.
| simonblack wrote:
| I once put forth an 'Everlasting Australian How-To-Vote
| Card':
|
| "Find out who Murdoch wants you to vote for, then vote
| the opposite way."
| sriram_sun wrote:
| He is also a US citizen. That means he took an oath to
| uphold the US constitution with a straight face.
| __d wrote:
| He was born in Australia, but in 1985 he surrendered his
| Australian citizenship in order to meet the legal
| requirements to become the owner of a US television
| network.
|
| So, he is not (anymore) an Australian.
| bilekas wrote:
| > "So we're hoping to meet him soon ... to recruit him."
|
| At 15 he should be leading the team.
| mikotodomo wrote:
| How do you learn this stuff? When I turned 14, I could not
| imagine even making a successful website, that could withstand
| hackers and DDoS.
| ncmncm wrote:
| They really would like for us not to think its being solved by a
| 14 y.o. the same morning is a debacle. But it is.
| anothernewdude wrote:
| It's just fun. They're not using this encryption to hide
| anything important. Frankly this sort of encryption solving is
| a bit of a dead art. Mostly the code breaking is either data
| engineers making the crackers more efficient, or those people
| looking at weaknesses of particular implementations or
| protocols.
|
| Breaking custom encryption is dead in any country smaller than
| say, the UK or maybe Canada.
| jgrahamc wrote:
| It's not like it's a hard code. It's pretty easy to break.
| krisoft wrote:
| Debacle? :) It is a puzzle made to entertain and popularise the
| institution. People solving it is the goal.
|
| Your comment reminds me of this XKCD: https://xkcd.com/932/
| jonny_eh wrote:
| It's getting headlines, it's exactly what they wanted. Kudos
| to the Australians on this one!
| ncmncm wrote:
| It is getting headlines exactly today, and never again. The
| goal was not to get it solved; they already knew the
| solution. The goal was to get a lot of people working on
| it. Now we know a motivated 14-y.o. can solve it in a few
| minutes, so it does not merit attention. "Plonk", as we
| used to say before endless September.
| gonzo41 wrote:
| That comic is spot on. Though I would say, as a developer, I
| would think "Someone at the CIA accidentally took down their
| own website briefly today"
| true_religion wrote:
| > There's a challenge out there to see who can correctly break
| all the layers, and, would you believe it, yesterday the coin
| was launched at 8:45am; we put up our web form and said, 'Hey,
| if you think you've got the answers, fill in the form'," she
| said.
|
| It's just a game for them to popularize code breaking and do
| some youth recruiting.
| q-big wrote:
| > It's just a game for them to popularize code breaking
|
| Do they really want to do that - considering these talented
| people might use their code breaking skills _against_ the
| government? ;-)
| hilbert42 wrote:
| No doubt it's an excellent strategy to identity where any
| future/potential opposition may come from.
|
| As Sun Tzu says in _The Art of War:
|
| "If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear
| the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but
| not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also
| suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor
| yourself, you will succumb in every battle._
| soogwoog wrote:
| What if you know the enemy, but not yourself?
| hilbert42 wrote:
| I'll answer that with an examiner's question:
|
| _Please provide a T-F truth table to show that the
| proposition is false._
|
| Clue: you already have the answer and Sun Tzu has
| provided three-quarters of it
|
| :-)
| jessaustin wrote:
| You will spend $750B per year on a military that hasn't
| won a war in generations.
| mpeg wrote:
| These codes are really just little puzzles, modern
| cryptography has no weaknesses of the kind these codes
| have.
|
| There are even sites that teach you about bad modern
| cryptography, like cryptohack [0] but in general the kind
| of skills you learn there won't be useful either unless you
| happen to find a piece of software that rolled their own
| crypto and did something really dumb (which does happen,
| occasionally, see the Sony PS3 hack where they used a not-
| so-random value for crypto, which made it broken)
|
| [0]: https://cryptohack.org/
| ncmncm wrote:
| They spent a lot of taxed money on the stunt. To have it
| solved the same day means almost everybody they might have
| engaged with it has already lost interest.
| gumby wrote:
| > those who crack the codes could discover "some wonderful,
| uplifting messages".
|
| Let's hope that one of them was, "Australia should be a republic"
| djbusby wrote:
| Be sure to drink your Ovaltine.
| hilbert42 wrote:
| _You 've been watching too many 1950s/'60s TV ads. Wash your
| mouth out. ;-)_
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| I don't know much about Aussie politics, but is there more to
| becoming a republic than removing The Queen from her largely
| ceremonial role? I'm guessing the Governor-General she appoints
| would become democratically elected instead, but what other
| differences would there be?
| bongobingo1 wrote:
| Its probably "fuck off we're full" in an attempt to self select
| for government agencies.
| googlryas wrote:
| You got a lot of open space in the middle of your country.
| How about visas abound, but you have to go live in the NT.
| hilbert42 wrote:
| _" Let's hope that one of them was, "Australia should be a
| republic""_
|
| Not that far from where I live at the intersection of two busy
| roads there used to be a tall concrete Besser block wall with
| spray-painted graffiti scrawled on it in large black lettering
| which read:
|
| _" The Australian people are bloody-minded sheep."_
|
| The truly remarkable thing about the graffiti was that in over
| 20 years no one covered it up or spray-painted over it. (And it
| would have been easy as there was a bus stop right nearby with
| easy pedestrian access.)
|
| The wall has gone now as it has made way for apartments (I had
| always meant to photograph it but had never gotten around to
| doing so). :(
|
| Two observations: that no one had bothered to tamper with the
| message or paint over it (and, say, the Council could easily
| have, it being on a public thoroughfare and that removing
| graffiti was a policy) says something rather profound in that
| amongst the population there's a general acceptance of the
| fact.
|
| Second, the Australian electorate is remarkably politically
| conservative. With the exception of a few minor instances, it
| has never done anything radical and that's essentially been the
| case right back to federation in 1901 (that was when Australia
| became an independent state after Britain gave it its
| Independence).
|
| Thus, as a nation, Australia has always kowtowed to Britain and
| after WWII it has done so with the US.
|
| When a law is enacted in Australia one can bet top dollar that
| it's already been enacted in Britain or more latterly the US
| (but to a lesser extent). _Originality_ doesn 't exist in
| Australia's political DNA.
|
| That's why Australia is part of the _Five Eyes_ agreement,
| without Britain and the US it 'd behave like a lost child at a
| country fair.
|
| Trouble is everyone knows it, especially so the Chinese who've
| essentially enslaved the country economically.
| gumby wrote:
| > Trouble is everyone knows it, especially so the Chinese
| who've essentially enslaved the country economically.
|
| I think of it as a chinese mining province. The long period
| of growth was merely the long period of _Chinese_ growth. And
| that growth was good for the country, but also terrible: the
| "dutch disease" of high commodity prices gutted manufacturing
| and other businesses.
|
| And de-incentivised governments to really think about what
| the nation needed, as middle class homeowners continued to
| see their net worth rise, thus "what, me worry?"
| nickdothutton wrote:
| Australia has to "kowtow" to whoever is the dominant naval
| power. Once Britain, now the US, perhaps in the next 100
| years it will be China.
| hilbert42 wrote:
| Unfortunately, that's my current thinking.
|
| Reckon if we got into the _Tardis_ and went there it 'd
| take a research effort to recognize that we were actually
| in the same country!
| barrysteve wrote:
| In the next 100yrs the north polar ice will melt enough
| that China can go around the top to it's trading partners.
| The strait of Malacca next to Malaysia will stop being as
| critically important as it is now to China's oil imports.
|
| It's likely the SEA region will cool off, the action will
| move up north and all those subs we bought will go from
| AUKUS to AWKWARD.
|
| Aus just needs to cut costs and forward into quality
| (koalaity?) manufacturing and science. Or we could just
| keep ripping up the ground like a bulldozer on a bender and
| hope China doesn't tank the iron ore price.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| > The truly remarkable thing about the graffiti was that in
| over 20 years no one covered it up or spray-painted over it.
| (And it would have been easy as there was a bus stop right
| nearby with easy pedestrian access.)
|
| To do that it would've had to have said "Remove this grafitti
| immediately, sheep!"
| bitwize wrote:
| > "The Australian people are bloody-minded sheep."
|
| > The truly remarkable thing about the graffiti was that in
| over 20 years no one covered it up or spray-painted over it.
| (And it would have been easy as there was a bus stop right
| nearby with easy pedestrian access.)
|
| Everybody who saw it probably thought "yeh, it's a fair cop,
| mate".
| hilbert42 wrote:
| Likely so.
| BLKNSLVR wrote:
| I've actually thought that some of the recent legislation,
| specifically the metadata retention and anti-encryption, has
| been the five-eyes using Australia's democratic populace of
| "bloody-minded sheep" as a testing ground and/or precedent
| for implementing the same privacy invasive legislation in the
| other countries that may be less 'compliant' without said
| precedent.
| hilbert42 wrote:
| Right, one can't but helped to have noticed how remarkably
| quickly that legislation passed.
|
| ...And it did so without a squawk!
|
| _Edit, it sort of proves my point, doesn 't it?_
| techdragon wrote:
| From the standpoint of someone who did not agree with
| that legislation or the subsequent follow on changes that
| pulled on even more... and several less internationally
| noticed little legal things... We squawked, as loudly as
| we could, but it made no difference, because they went
| and did it anyway. So it wasn't even a strangled squawk,
| but a completely ignored squawk.
|
| It really doesn't help that we have very few
| constitutional rights with which to push back with as any
| sort of "inalienable" baseline.
| BLKNSLVR wrote:
| And having the opposition at the time barely raise a
| whimper also strangles whatever squawk a minority in the
| public may raise.
| TOMDM wrote:
| My thought has been even more pessimistic than that. Why
| even pass your own legislation when your intelligence
| agencies can just get Australia to extract that info for
| you.
|
| You don't need to actually backdoor the targets device,
| just the platform they use. Who cares about jurisdiction as
| long as your friends are willing to hand over data in the
| interest of international security.
| unethical_ban wrote:
| Hey, y'all have preference voting, and the US is still in the
| 19th century on that one.
| russh wrote:
| "Be sure to drink your Ovaltine"
| alfiedotwtf wrote:
| Just like the porn filter the Australian government tried to
| implement...
|
| ... or maybe they were 15 at the time, can't remember
| justatdotin wrote:
| Edward Snowden's revelations included the detail that back in
| 2008, the then-DSD sought to /give away/ bulk data on australian
| citizens to foreign spy agencies.
|
| https://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/business-spectator...
|
| In response to the revelations of this attack on Australian
| democracy, launched by an agency tasked to defend it, australia's
| attorney general focused on declaring Mr Snowden a traitor.
| usednet wrote:
| Australia has been blatantly violating the privacy of its
| citizens increasingly over the last 2 decades. Its surveillance
| legislation is unrivaled in developed countries except for
| perhaps the UK.
| aaaaaaaaata wrote:
| Weird, that's about the same amount of time it's been since
| they steamrolled all of their guns in the street.
| majormajor wrote:
| Weird, somehow the United States is mysteriously lacking in
| armed protest and pushback of _their_ corporation 's and
| government's surveillance, even post-Snowden's reveals of
| that exact thing against their own citizens.
| palmetieri2000 wrote:
| Sigh, I see this pop up so I should really just copy and
| paste one of my other answers, but.
|
| Australians supported handing in our guns after Port
| Arthur, Australians that want to engage in firearm use for
| sport, hunting, antique collection or pest control can all
| still do so within appropriate circumstances that the
| public overwhelmingly support.
|
| Low hanging fruit, moronic, pro-gun sentiment only shows
| how little you understand about the country you are talking
| about.
|
| (Not an endorsement for the Aus 3-Letters spying, which is
| a different issue.)
| ChrisLomont wrote:
| They did no such thing. Australians own more guns than
| ever. They had a buyback program, and people used it to
| turn old guns into new ones.
| jen729w wrote:
| That's right, because if I had a gun I'd be taking it to
| parliament to demand that they stop [something]! And
| [something] would surely be different as a result!
| [deleted]
| bitcharmer wrote:
| It's amazing how such sickening conduct can just fly in modern
| democratic societies.
| usrusr wrote:
| Hat's off to whoever came up with the idea of materialized
| cryptocoin clickbait. Well done!
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(page generated 2022-09-02 23:01 UTC)