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Australian Signals Directorate coin code cracked by 14yo in 'just over an hour'
- Trouble_007 4y agoASD - 75th Anniversary Commemorative Coin : https://www.asd.gov.au/75th-anniversary/events/2022-09-01-75th-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-marked-new-50c-coin-royal-australian-mint https://www.ramint.gov.au/publications/70th-anniversary-asio...
- hilbert42 4y agoIt'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 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent
- claudiawerner 4y agoIt'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 4y agoNah it makes perfect sense, normalizing encryption that 14 year olds can break in an hour is totally in line with Australian government policy.
- bilekas 4y ago> "So we're hoping to meet him soon ... to recruit him." At 15 he should be leading the team.
- hilbert42 4y agoWhen you live here you soon realize the politicians and those who bask in the limelight aren't the ones in charge.
- paulryanrogers 4y agoWho is?
- nirimda 4y agoUsually 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.
- teddyh 4y ago> 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?
- scrlk 4y agoReminds me of the Kryptos sculpture installed at CIA HQ - the last passage still hasn't been solved yet: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kryptos https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kryptos
- killingtime74 4y agoMaybe there is no solution they just trying to mess with us
- krisoft 4y agoI 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?
- ncmncm 4y agoThey 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.
- true_religion 4y ago> 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 4y ago> 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? ;-)
- mpeg 4y agoThese 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/ https://cryptohack.org/
- hilbert42 4y agoNo 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.
- nailer 4y agoI 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?
- 96llort 4y ago
- jodrellblank 4y agohttps://www.gov.uk/types-of-british-nationality/british-citizenship https://www.gov.uk/types-of-british-nationality/british-citi...
- 96llort 4y ago
- nailer 4y agoIf you're comparing to the US: the US has the Fourth Amendment, and your government ignores that too.
- adventured 4y agoYou'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 4y ago> which some government agents rarely violate We've seen from the Snowden revelations that ignoring the fourth amendment is widespread.
- usrusr 4y agoHat's off to whoever came up with the idea of materialized cryptocoin clickbait. Well done!
- gumby 4y ago> those who crack the codes could discover "some wonderful, uplifting messages". Let’s hope that one of them was, “Australia should be a republic”
- bongobingo1 4y agoIts probably "fuck off we're full" in an attempt to self select for government agencies.
- googlryas 4y agoYou 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.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- femto 4y agoIt's already a done thing. https://immi.homeaffairs.gov.au/visas/working-in-australia/regional-migration https://immi.homeaffairs.gov.au/visas/working-in-australia/r...
- djbusby 4y agoBe sure to drink your Ovaltine.
- hilbert42 4y agoYou've been watching too many 1950s/'60s TV ads. Wash your mouth out. ;-)
- hilbert42 4y ago"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.
- Aeolun 4y agoSo 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 4y agoIn Australia soon that's the only encryption you'll be allowed.
- BitwiseFool 4y agoFlip a coin, Heads or [REDACTED]?
- mattkrause 4y agoIt'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....
- sen 4y agoIt 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-Signals-Directorate-cryptography-challenge-coin.html http://senwerks.com/hacktheplanet/Solving-the-Australian-Sig...
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- mrtweetyhack 4y ago
- alfiedotwtf 4y agoJust like the porn filter the Australian government tried to implement... ... or maybe they were 15 at the time, can't remember
- dumbworld 4y ago
- mikotodomo 4y agoHow do you learn this stuff? When I turned 14, I could not imagine even making a successful website, that could withstand hackers and DDoS.
- frozencell 4y agoProbably an aboriginal Australian /j Seriously, 14yo' parents must be teachers or hackers of a sort.
- justatdotin 4y agoEdward 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/asd-offered-to-share-data-of-australian-citizens-with-partners-report--/news-story/7354d1962abfb866131bc350c5dd292f 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.
- bitcharmer 4y agoIt's amazing how such sickening conduct can just fly in modern democratic societies.
- usednet 4y agoAustralia 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 4y agoWeird, that's about the same amount of time it's been since they steamrolled all of their guns in the street.
- jen729w 4y agoThat’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 4y ago[deleted]
- palmetieri2000 4y agoSigh, 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.)