Complete the quest “Observation versus Freedom” and capture the trophies.

The unofficial name of the quest "Epoch of Numbers"

Dedicated to science, which values ​​privacy, and the movement of encryption.

If you like logic puzzles / quests / CTF / forensic, then the article is published just for you!

I prepared an interesting event for you: a quest on the topic “information security. Within the framework of the proposed plot and beyond this article, all potential quest participants will have a little adventure, after which the Best of you will receive encouraging prizes.

• Paper signed diploma / certificate, digitally protected (sent to anywhere in the world + mail track number).
• Trophy: my private subkey am29f010b (imprint - 8820 0CD0 63DF 20D1 75B0 4B38 FB5A 4FFD 6DC1 D671). Initially I wanted to add a trophy in the form of a usb-mouse with a wire cut off its tail , but it would have made some sense if the finalist himself broke into the house and had a snack on the wire, taking his trophy with him. Therefore, while the usb mouse remains with me.
• Finance in the amount of 2048r. With each subsequent week since the publication of the quest “The Age of Circuits” quest, the financial reward for successfully completing the competition will decrease by two to the minimum level of 1p until the only finalist appears. For example, if the Best of the Best successfully completes the competition after 8 days from the date of publication of this article / position, then it will receive 1024 rubles. etc. Consider that you are under time pressure, and as Dr. Wortrop liked to say - “Move, Will Henry! Get moving!"

About quest

The “Era of Figures”, as he wrote above, is dedicated to the movement of cipher cards. These are groups of talented people from around the globe who are interested in encryption / policy and privacy protection several divisions higher than for other techies in the IT fields. Thanks to encryption, we are civilians, today we have digital currency, OpenPGP; GnuPG; available encryption algorithms without legal prosecution in a widely distributed open system; and other similar crypto pieces.
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Today, the struggle (perhaps not as stumpy as in the post-war years, but no less bitter) for civil rights has been going on more publicly and openly for decades. And this is due, among other things, to some personalities from the 90s; Wikileaks (Assange, who is also a encryption, if someone thought he was some kind of journalist); Del Snowden and front. to people. And in the 90s, ciphermels with steel nerves challenged the entire nation personally and even won cases in the courts, distributing electronic encryption technologies to the masses (through paper!), Which were tightly regulated by the US state at that time and identified with the sale of weapons and ammunition.

What did cryptographs consider their manifesto / bible a few decades ago?

• “The most important means of protecting privacy is encryption. Encryption means a desire for privacy. But to encrypt with weak cryptography means not too much desire for privacy. ”
• "Shifropanki love the practice: they know how to attack and defend the system, and they are not very worried about private opinions about their software, which they wrote."
• “Shifropanks believed that the technologies of the past did not allow ensuring confidentiality at the proper level, and electronic technologies are capable of this (PGP). They meant the technologies of the past: curtains; whisper in the ear; closed doors; secret signs; pure field and darkness. " In fact, only in the last few years (since 2016) in PGP / GPG, public disclosure has given quite unpleasant vulnerabilities (at least 3), stored for decades, in crypto-resistant algorithms-based technologies. As for the encryption algorithms themselves, so far with them everything is in order - they are well tested by time.
• “Shifropanki understood that terrorists and other rabble would use the crypt, but they always believed that confidentiality was above all of this, and villains would always find private / anonymous schemes for their mission (I think Durovs honor these ideas today).” The list of ideas on the subject of cryptography development is considerable and interesting; you can find such a cyber-monument as the “mailing list of cypropanks of the 90s” on the network.

However, today's modern conditions seem tougher to me. Corporations collude / are associated with the government, “everyone” has money or power, and citizens voluntarily share their confidentiality with “monsters of numbers”, not always controlling the situation in their own way.
In the West, overseas civilians suffered a crushing defeat: with the return to 2018 of Section 702, government offices are allowed to spy on the whole world, and to share the “loot” between agencies without a warrant, as well as go to court and lie on “any such” matter.

In response to the “revival of section 702” (international practice of glancing at the West, and taking mirror measures) in Russia, the embossing of citizens' rights is well under way, but in a somewhat different way, the grasshopper. You can meet the restriction of the state in commercial activities.

"Project Spring"; empowerment of Roskomnadzor; SORM / 3; lawsuits against VPN / Telegram, etc ... Dvizhuha in the "political circles" pursue an ancient goal: to win back their positions that politicians "missed" in the past, laying a bunch of backdoors into these same anti-constitutional legislation today.

Yesterday's events: Findface office (closed product for government and business) and talented cyberpunks from Searchface (product for users), whose service was immediately covered. Tried to intimidate with judicial threats and forced to worsening actions. Or exercises in endless attempts by the government to take control of the cryptocurrency. Example, criminal prosecution of the Perm programmer (the creator of the VPN). And all sorts of open examples of the struggle between good and evil with loot in the public domain are many.

Digital waves in a society force not only shipropank, but also science fiction writers, who, as always, are ahead of their time, shooting in their works.

The man stopped thinking about the fact that his whole life can be viewed on the scanner screen. Name, marital status, place of residence, place of work, bank and account number, moving around the world and much more. "Balalaika" recorded everything that happened during the last forty-eight hours, at one time it was explained with safety requirements . And any policeman, any person appointed by the authorities could look into your life, find out with whom you are sleeping, eating for dinner, what was the subject of a business meeting. It was rumored that they could connect to your “balalaika” without your desire, turn you into a walking video camera. The authorities, of course, denied everything, paid for the speeches of the experts, proved that the personal chip was completely protected from unauthorized access and the law on privacy was not violated. Society was forced to believe. Everything remains as it is.

V. Panov - Moscow Club 2005

Nick sat in front of a huge, full-length window and admired a beautiful view, lazily clicking on the links and moving from one page to another. He had just woken up, washed, and was not so much in a good, rather in a complacent mood.

Yesterday, he spent most of the evening negotiating with the customer, the owner of a small online store that needed a bot capable of notifying on orders about ICQ. The order was, in fact, simple and cheap, but the owner, an exceptionally meticulous man, asked one hundred million five hundred thousand questions, trying to figure out Nick's qualifications and make sure that he could do the job correctly.

In general, nothing unusual - without a reputation and a good portfolio, there is no way to live now ... but there were too many questions.

In the end, they managed to come to a common denominator, and this morning the customer had to transfer an advance.

Waiting for the money Nick rummaged through the sites. His attention was attracted by an article on one of the hacker forums, with a catchy headline - “Anonymity is no more.”

Curious, he clicked on the headline, opening the article.

What he read changed a lot, including his mood.

The author of the article claimed that now it is possible to calculate any anonymus, on the basis of some miracle program written either by the Saudis, or by the order of the Saudis. This program, repeatedly refined by various craftsmen, could collect and store information about all those who were interested in it and who needed to be found.

“Imagine, for example, the following ...” - the author of the article wrote. - “You have never indicated any personal data on the network.

Online there is no your phone, postal and real addresses, your photos, nothing. And yet there is information about you. These are your habits, your slang, your damn, emoticons. Every morning you start by opening three or four main sites, from which you primarily get information - these, incidentally, are also your habits. You leave comments in topics that interest you, and although you are logged in under different names, the program tracks your interests and creates a certain image that gives you a name, say 1001100011011011. Now you can change IP, moving from place to place or using anonymous proxies, you can rub cookies or even change the computer, but you are already in the database. And even if over time your habits begin to change and your morning will not begin with Tape.ru, but with Porno.com, the program will record the changes and will know where you are and for whom, I apologize, jerk off. And with the program it will know the one who controls it - the Saudis, the Syndicate, the feds from the administration of "K" ... but anyone. So, ladies and gentlemen, there is no longer anonymity. She died about six months ago, or so, when an unknown programmer (by the way, rumor has it that he is Russian) executed an order from the secret services from Riyadh ... "

The article had a lot more. Examples from life were cited, references were made to the collectors of information from Syndicate D and similar associations of information traders.

The author, naturally, was trolled - or, to put it mildly, his article was skeptical. Almost all readers perceived the article as nonsense, having no basis.
Except Nick. He just realized that the existence of such a program is quite real. You can write anything, any program - everything depends only on the resources that are available, and of desire.

A. Chubaryan Hackers Basic 2011.

Today, as well as “then”, “Era of Figures” is full of abbreviations and impenetrable codes, for passing by the townsfolk, except for the most cynical, suspicious, terrorist, fantastic and of course politno-touched minds.

The quest is designed to identify the Best or the Best in the competition "Epoch of Tsify", no more. The competition is an incentive for novice experts in the field of information security, contributes to the progressive development of combat skills and stimulates critical thinking, and also reflects the author's high spirits, during which digital tasks were created that formed a single logical chain.

It is not forbidden to discuss and share "thoughts" about the quest, but remember that the winner / finalist will be only one person: the one who first reaches the finish line and puts here (or me in the mail) signed by the secret screen with my key.

Conditions for the winner:
Lay out the signed finalist screen ( signature + screen ) key fingerprint 8820 0CD0 63DF 20D1 75B0 4B38 FB5A 4FFD 6DC1 D671.

In the quest itself laid additional spurs to solve problems: tips tucked, both in the open and closed. Quest author himself, nezaezzhenny and completely passable! A level higher than the “ Temple of the 7_Pantheons ”, and some of the tasks are “real forzics”. During the development of tasks for the quest, something had to be purchased, in some places I found a bug (I confirmed it, I confirmed it), and even had to “replay the system”, to all this I also discovered a vulnerability in one pop software. I hope you will get intellectual and moral pleasure by getting to the bright finale (several areas and even more tools are involved).

If you are at an impasse, or you think that you see a clear mistake in the quest “Epoch of the Numeral”, then I will answer for earlier: “There are no errors, the quest has passed several times.” "Look for answers in the subject line (in this article)."

The Epoch of the Numbers contest itself (as far as passing) is unlimited , you can visit it when you deign (for example, after 10 years), that is, the idea is automated and does not require my intervention, but still something depends on the Internet .

The article contains public keys for checking the integrity of files and protecting data from information manipulation:

C1B6 077F 1412 3104 46AC 3794 5A45 0EEE 1949 A73C; 8820 0CD0 63DF 20D1 75B0 4B38 FB5A 4FFD 6DC1 D671. 

At the finish you will find my contact information,

I invite you to your forensic-party as Sherlock Holmes. Good luck!

Date: March 6, 2019

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