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Cicada 3301: the mystery keeping cryptologists awake at night
Keith Martin, 2014. The Conversation, 1 January 2014.
A professor of information security at Royal Holloway assesses the puzzles: they need hands-on internet skills (file formats, networking, anonymity services), general knowledge and only Crypto 101 ciphers and comfort with prime numbers; he lists the theories (intelligence recruitment, a technology company, a secret society, a game).
What it's used for here
The named cryptographer's assessment of what the puzzles test.
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theconversation.com · fetched 29 Oct 2026
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Cite it
Martin, K. (2014). Cicada 3301: the mystery keeping cryptologists awake at night. The Conversation, 1 January 2014. https://doi.org/10.64628/AA.dpukmvtmf
@misc{martin2014conversation,
author = {Martin, Keith},
title = {Cicada 3301: the mystery keeping cryptologists awake at night},
howpublished = {The Conversation, 1 January 2014},
year = {2014},
doi = {10.64628/AA.dpukmvtmf},
url = {https://theconversation.com/cicada-3301-the-mystery-keeping-cryptologists-awake-at-night-21407}
}TY - ELEC TI - Cicada 3301: the mystery keeping cryptologists awake at night AU - Martin, Keith PY - 2014 JO - The Conversation, 1 January 2014 DO - 10.64628/AA.dpukmvtmf UR - https://theconversation.com/cicada-3301-the-mystery-keeping-cryptologists-awake-at-night-21407 ER -
Martin, Keith. “Cicada 3301: the mystery keeping cryptologists awake at night.” The Conversation, 1 January 2014 (2014). https://doi.org/10.64628/AA.dpukmvtmf.