back to article GCHQ’s Xmas puzzle proves uncrackable

GCHQ’s Christmas puzzle has stumped the nation. The multi-stage cryptographic challenge was released in the GCHQ Christmas card and later published on the agency’s website. The first stage of the challenge involved completing a grid-shading puzzle to unveil a QR (Quick Response) code. This only led onto more and more …

  1. A K Stiles
    Black Helicopters

    or maybe...

    .. nobody was actively daft enough to complete the puzzle online and alert the powers that be to their intellectual existence?

    Or maybe they were, but now they have a nice new job / padded room / surprisingly emigrated to the middle of a wilderness to start a new life away from society?

    1. frank ly

      Re: or maybe...

      The Patrician used to pay very careful attention to anyone who scored well in the Ankh Morpork Times crossword puzzle, for that reason. He sometimes went so far as to 'persuade' the compiler to put certain clues/solutions in to see if any spies allowed their pride to overcome their caution.

      1. veti Silver badge

        Re: or maybe...

        Back in WW2, Bletchley Park cryptoanalysts were recruited from people who were remarkably good at the Times crossword puzzle.

        Unless you're aware of evidence to the contrary, I find it vastly implausible that anyone has been or would have been "disappeared" as a result of completing this puzzle. Offered a job, more likely. But most likely, it was just too hard.

        1. Vic

          Re: or maybe...

          But most likely, it was just too hard.

          Or, more likely, it was too hard for those that bothered to attempt it.

          This was a GCHQ recruitment drive, primarily. Take a look at their recruiting site to see what they offer as salary. Now ask yourself how many people of the calibre they seem to want are going to work for that money...

          Vic.

    2. martinusher Silver badge

      Re: or maybe...

      I know Cheltenham is somewhat in the sticks but I didn't know it was quite that far out. (Or maybe GCHQ is a portal to another dimension? It certainly looks it from the air, its just missing a glowing red eye at its center.)

  2. Warm Braw

    Devoid of cant

    I'm sure they did their level best, but unfortunately were not devoid of "can't"...

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    A lack of data prevented us....

    Not being able to see what everyone else was doing in trying to solve the puzzle was the problem. We needed cameras in their living rooms, bedrooms, bathrooms in order to watch them try to solve it, all their google searches, all the emails they sent and recieved, we just didn't have enough data. GCHQ just didn't play fair, they should have left the backdoor open so we could have gone in and rumaged through their systems looking for the answer. Of course we would have ignored anything else we found out wihile we were in there if it wasn't relevant to solving the puzzle. I don't understand why they are so secrative, it's not as if they have anything to hide... do they?

  4. wyatt
    Devil

    I cracked it.. but I'm not going to tell you the answer..!

    (yeah right, didn't even get it was a QR code)

  5. Locky

    Brucie Bonus

    Or perhaps too many people have seen Mercury Rising, and the probability of Bruce Willis popping round to protect you is slim at best

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    QR code?

    "puzzle to unveil a QR (Quick Response) code"

    So is owning a smartphone a job requirement for GCHQ then? I'd have thought people who didn't own one so they couldn't be so easily tracked or have their personal data compromised would be more suitable for a job there.

    1. Tom Wood

      Re: QR code?

      There are online "scanners" that work from webcams or uploaded images. You could have reproduced the QR code in MS Paint or similar if you really didn't have a way of photographing it.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: QR code?

        What... you needed to use a machine to decode it? Pfft!

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: QR code?

      You can decode a QR code by manually creating a bitmap, and piping that though open source decoder library.

      I wrote a QR encoder, and it was more gnarly than you'd imagine. There are many processing steps in creating the information redundancy. Even worse because I needed it to produce a near optimal vector representation.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: QR code?

        "I wrote a QR encoder, and it was more gnarly than you'd imagine. "

        Probably still a lot easier than a decoder which requires a basic image processor as its front end to seperate the QR code out of the scene plus get the alignment and relative size before it can be normalised and passed through to the actual data decoder. Or at least I assume thats how it works. If anyone knows different...

      2. DanDanDan

        Re: QR code?

        Encoding is much harder than decoding though for a QR code. It *could* be done manually if you didn't have a smartphone or computer...

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: QR code?

          "Encoding is much harder than decoding though for a QR code. It *could* be done manually if you didn't have a smartphone or computer..."

          I'm pretty sure that finding a viable QR code in a picture is somewhat harder than encoding the information which is just a bit pattern, albeit a complex one. Decoding a 2D barcode using a laser scanner is a damn site harder than creating it in the first place.

          1. This post has been deleted by its author

          2. DanDanDan

            Re: QR code?

            "I'm pretty sure that finding a viable QR code in a picture is somewhat harder than encoding the information which is just a bit pattern, albeit a complex one."

            There's a website that explains how you can do it. You don't need to build a laser scanner or anything else physical. Just apply the mathematics and run through the operations. You might need an ascii table, depending on how good you are at subtracting 96.

            http://blog.qartis.com/decoding-small-qr-codes-by-hand/

    3. Primus Secundus Tertius

      Re: QR code?

      I did get as far as the QR code. Then on my PC I used a QR reader program I found via Google, which does seem to read other QR codes. But it would not recognise the GCHQ one.

      I was given an Android tablet as a Xmas prezzie, but have not worked out how to read QR codes with it, using just the standard apps it came with. I can photograph them, but not decipher them.

      1. allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

        Re: QR code?

        @1st 2nd 3rd: there's an app for that... easiest way is via the playstore, lots of 'free' ones. Mind the level of dataslurp the app wants you to agree to, though...

  7. Dave 126 Silver badge

    uncracked =/= uncrackable

    1. Dave 126 Silver badge

      Wasn't there are certain Starfleet captain who solved an unsolvable computer-based puzzle?

      1. allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

        "Wasn't there are certain Starfleet captain who solved an unsolvable computer-based puzzle?"

        Okay, I'll bite *sigh* (1) ... not a puzzle, the simulation of a lose-lose-scenario which was more of a test to build a psychological profile than anything else. JTK refused to be in a situation without any real options, so he rigged the test by hacking the simulation computer and tweaking it's program.

        (1) "Sometimes it isn't easy being me." - DNA

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    The final message is an exposé by a whistleblower.

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Motivation was low due to lack of viable reward

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      I think they were hoping for a brilliantly gifted but retarded kid to solve it, like in that boring film with Bruce Willis.

    2. Reventador

      I don't think the rewards look too bad personally. It's UK government so people choose to look for mildly (or not) abusive responses to it but in the end it's employment, reasonable starting salary and a way of getting successfully 'introduced' without being a cocky-degree-enabled-GoggleBook-wanabee.

      Of course this is coming from an unemployed-close-to-40-year-old-degree-disabled-zero-corporate-experience-likelyneverbee that only got to the third puzzle level. If it is a recruitment drive, please GCHQ, can you offer an opportunity to hack Experian and Equifax's crazy background check systems without serious consequences so I can be considered too.

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    The puzzle winner is...

    the resourceful individual who struck up a friendship with one of the puzzle devisers, and then used the knowledge gained to enter their house under cover of darkness, rifled through the contents of their paperbasket, and took notes from the carelessly discarded printed pages.

    And next week he(or she) starts in his(or her) new job at .....MI5

  11. phil dude
    Joke

    puzzles...

    I like puzzles like the next computer literate, amateur maths type guy.

    But I felt I was back in school, looking at one of those pointless IQ tests they use to probe us with, when they saw we couldn't be bothered to do the dreary stuff (i.e. non-maths and science), that they (the school) needed to justify their existence (and exam grade rankings).

    The first test, was computationally very simple. And just like when I was 8, I skipped to the last problem on the board. I will not reveal what I found because they spoiled the fun, and said they didn't want the answer.

    Oh, and I didn't have any glue either.

    Carry on...

    P.

    1. allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

      Re: puzzles...

      Now I am puzzled - how would glue be any help in solving the GCHQ crypto challenge?

      "This is glue - strong stuff." - Elwood Blues

  12. Bota

    Harder still..

    Cracking their legalese that justifies them sniffing everyones' knickers.

  13. 45RPM Silver badge

    Yup. I suspect that the people with the intellectual wherewithal to break the code have better things to do with their time. Solving the mysteries of the universe, for example, trying to cure cancer, designing the next Raspberry Pi…

  14. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Charity?

    Hmm, NSPCC. Doubtless picked completely at random, but nice that Somebody's Thinking of The Children.

    1. 2460 Something
      Childcatcher

      Re: Charity?

      Made me laugh, but you needed the correct icon.

  15. Seanie Ryan

    the answer

    was easy..... 42

    1. Herby

      Re: the answer

      I was going to say something like that, but you beat me to it!

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