Level I Challenges

93 published challenges (in level I), sorted by:

Description
This challenge is a puzzle about a mysterious ciphertext, which is also protected by a clever disguise. Can you crack it?

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20 users have already solved this challenge, 36 are working on it.
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Description
The Syllabary cipher seems to be just another substitution cipher, but is it? Find out and solve its mystery!

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222 users have already solved this challenge, 34 are working on it.
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Description
The legendary Merkle-Hellman Knapsack cryptosystem is not suitable for hiking, but it is considered a pioneer of asymmetric cryptography. Can you crack the ciphertext?

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68 users have already solved this challenge, 11 are working on it.
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Description
This challenge is about one of the oldest polyalphabetic ciphers. Can you crack this centuries-old puzzle?

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137 users have already solved this challenge, 20 are working on it.
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Description
The Wheatstone Cryptograph is a simple device that resembles a clock with two hands. For each hand there is a ring of symbols. Are you able to decrypt the given ciphertext? Show details…Hide details…

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105 users have already solved this challenge, 8 are working on it.
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Description
This series deals with a grid — a basic tool cryptographers use to separate sequences of data into columns and rows. In this challenge you are given three grids where the first grid gives you hints to reveal the plaintext of the second grid. Are you able to find the right route?

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33 users have already solved this challenge, 5 are working on it.
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Description
This series deals with a grid — a basic tool cryptographers use to separate sequences of data into columns and rows. In this challenge you are given four grids where the first grid gives you hints to reveal the plaintext of the second grid. Are you able to find the right route?

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35 users have already solved this challenge, 3 are working on it.
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Description
This series deals with a grid — a basic tool cryptographers use to separate sequences of data into columns and rows. In this challenge you are given two grids where the first grid gives you hints to reveal the plaintext of the second grid. Are you able to find the right route?

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94 users have already solved this challenge, 20 are working on it.
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Description
Lattice-based cryptography schemes are relevant for current post-quantum cryptography research. This challenge series accompanies the basic theory from a chapter of the CrypTool Book called "LIGHTWEIGHT INTRODUCTION TO LATTICES". This part of the challenge series uses vectors to hide a famous quote in modern art. Can you reveal it?

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44 users have already solved this challenge, 4 are working on it.
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Description
Lattice-based cryptography schemes are relevant for current post-quantum cryptography research. This challenge series accompanies the basic theory from a chapter of the CrypTool Book called "LIGHTWEIGHT INTRODUCTION TO LATTICES". In this part of the challenge series we introduce systems of linear equations to find a hidden message in a picture.

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61 users have already solved this challenge, 5 are working on it.
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Description
This part of the challenge series is a warm-up with homophonic substitution. In a homophonic substitution cipher, there are more than one ciphertext symbol for each plaintext symbol. The key is a mapping.

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56 users have already solved this challenge, 7 are working on it.
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Description
Solving this challenge is not as hard as finding the needle in a haystack, isn't it?

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212 users have already solved this challenge, 39 are working on it.
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Description
Three messages were delivered — two encrypted, one in clear. Can you solve the puzzle?

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33 users have already solved this challenge, 42 are working on it.
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Description
The autokey cipher uses only a short keyword and the plaintext to encrypt messages. Are you able to break the given ciphertext?

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193 users have already solved this challenge, 14 are working on it.
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Description
What do you know about modular sequences? Work it out.

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83 users have already solved this challenge, 38 are working on it.
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Description
How many experience points does Thomas need to reach the 200th level of his new computer game?

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124 users have already solved this challenge, 20 are working on it.
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Description
Little Anna has forgotten how to decrypt her ciphertext. Can you come up to her pre-Christmas wish?

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508 users have already solved this challenge, 26 are working on it.
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Description
Are you able to crack the password of Radomil and find the missing 5 digits?

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124 users have already solved this challenge, 68 are working on it.
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Description
This series consists of five parts which are based on each other and that will be getting more and more complicated with each part. This part is the actual challenge and tells you the New Year's greeting of the author.

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44 users have already solved this challenge, 13 are working on it.
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Description
This series consists of five parts which are based on each other and that will be getting more and more complicated with each part. Part 4 contains a little New Year's greeting of the author and part 5 teaches us something about the weaknesses of this method. Part 3 adds another modification.

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47 users have already solved this challenge, 4 are working on it.
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Description
This series consists of five parts which are based on each other and that will be getting more and more complicated with each part. Part 4 contains a little New Year's greeting of the author and part 5 teaches us something about the weaknesses of this method. Part 2 modifies the encryption of part 1 a little bit.

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49 users have already solved this challenge, 3 are working on it.
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Description
This series consists of five parts which are based on each other and that will be getting more and more complicated with each part. Part 4 contains a little New Year's greeting of the author and part 5 teaches us something about the weaknesses of this method. Part 1 is the easiest part of this series.

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54 users have already solved this challenge, 19 are working on it.
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Description
Both images in this challenge seem to contain no information at all. Or do they trick us? Find the secret message.

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169 users have already solved this challenge, 25 are working on it.
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Description
The story of the simple bookseller Paul from Eisleben and his beloved from the near Castle Mansfeld will be continued: A second postcard has been found. Can you decipher the encrypted message?

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60 users have already solved this challenge, 1 is working on it.
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Description
The challenges for the simplified GRANIT cipher, a method that can be done manually, serve as an exercise and use an intentionally simplified version of GRANIT. Part 1 is a ciphertext-only challenge for which both permutation keys are known.

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52 users have already solved this challenge, 5 are working on it.
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Description
How are the numbers interconnected? Can you find the three missing numbers?

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415 users have already solved this challenge, 32 are working on it.
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Description
A friend of yours has given you the following text which contains only X and Y characters. He claims that this text contains a codeword. Can you find it?

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117 users have already solved this challenge, 52 are working on it.
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Description
How are the numbers linked? Can you find the two missing numbers?

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100 users have already solved this challenge, 39 are working on it.
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Description
How are the numbers linked? Can you find the two missing numbers?

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168 users have already solved this challenge, 21 are working on it.
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Description
This is the beginner's challenge in a series about M-138, a manual cipher of the US army which has been relatively save at the beginning of world war 2nd. Part 1 of the series is a ciphertext-only challenge whose key is largely known.

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230 users have already solved this challenge, 17 are working on it.
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Description
You can find a short encrypted note at the end of the novel "Die achte Offenbarung" by Karl Olsberg. Decrypt the secret message!

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103 users have already solved this challenge, 22 are working on it.
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Description
This challenge is based on the Heartbleed bug in OpenSSL discovered in April 2014. Attack a server which is specifically prepared to be vulnerable to the Heartbleed bug. Please note that it is necessary to solve Part 1 first. !!! We had to take off this challenge, as our firewall doesn't allow flawed servers any more -- even if this flaw was offered by will for training and within a sandbox. !!!

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60 users have already solved this challenge, 12 are working on it.
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The solution for this challenge was made public on May 17, 2022, 6:32 p.m., and thus it is no longer possible to get points for this challenge. However, you can still solve it and enter a solution for this challenge.

Description
This challenge is based on the Heartbleed Bug in OpenSSL discovered in April 2014. Attack a server provided by the group for Privacy and Compliance with the Research Institute Cyber Defence (CODE) at Bundeswehr University Munich, which is specifically prepared to be vulnerable to the Heartbleed bug. !!! We had to take off this challenge, as our firewall doesn't allow flawed servers any more -- even if this flaw was offered by will for training and within a sandbox. !!!

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90 users have already solved this challenge, 21 are working on it.
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The solution for this challenge was made public on May 17, 2022, 6:32 p.m., and thus it is no longer possible to get points for this challenge. However, you can still solve it and enter a solution for this challenge.

Description
In this part of this series of Enigma challenges, a plaintext message consisting of three letters which are repeated several times has been encrypted by the Enigma I. What are the first three letters of the plaintext?

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83 users have already solved this challenge, 10 are working on it.
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Description
In this part of this series of Enigma challenges, a plaintext message consisting of three letters which are repeated several times has been encrypted by the Enigma I. What was the setting of the Enigma rotors?

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80 users have already solved this challenge, 3 are working on it.
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Description
In this part of this series of Enigma challenges, a plaintext message consisting of two letters which are repeated several times has been encrypted by the Enigma I. What was the setting of the Enigma rotors?

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89 users have already solved this challenge, 3 are working on it.
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Description
In this part of this series of Enigma challenges, a plaintext message consisting of one letter which is repeated several times has been encrypted by the Enigma I. What was the setting of the Enigma rotors?

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88 users have already solved this challenge, 17 are working on it.
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Description
Two scatterbrained professors exchange messages that have been encrypted with the Trifid cipher. Unfortunately, one of them lost the second of three layers. Will he nevertheless be able to decrypt the message he received from his colleague?

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131 users have already solved this challenge, 9 are working on it.
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Description
In this part of this series of Enigma challenges, a plaintext message consisting of one letter which is repeated several times has been encrypted by the Enigma I. What is the letter we are looking for?

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183 users have already solved this challenge, 34 are working on it.
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Description
You find a note with strange characters and an unsolved Sudoku on your brother's desk. You are curious and would like to find out what your brother is working on. Can you decrypt the note using the Sudoku?

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109 users have already solved this challenge, 5 are working on it.
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Description
Sarah and Igor are exchange students. Sarah lives in Moscow while Igor is in Berlin. To keep their little secrets confidential, they encrypt their emails. Decrypt the message to find out what Sarah wrote this time.

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299 users have already solved this challenge, 33 are working on it.
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Description
Nils would like to go on a journey and has given you a note with information about his destination. The note is encrypted. Can you find out where he would like to go?

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181 users have already solved this challenge, 17 are working on it.
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Description
The seven dwarfs are missing. Snow White however finds a file, which contains useful information steganographically hidden. Help her to find the dwarfs.

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302 users have already solved this challenge, 86 are working on it.
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Description
The reserve hand procedure has been used as a replacement of the Enigma machine. Can you decrypt the given ciphertext?

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198 users have already solved this challenge, 11 are working on it.
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Description
The plaintext consists of English, French, German and Italian words. Can you identify the four sentences after you have solved the monoalphabetic substitution?

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82 users have already solved this challenge, 6 are working on it.
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Description
Can you break this cascading encryption that consists of a combination of substitution and transposition? The solution contains important information for the next parts.

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75 users have already solved this challenge, 2 are working on it.
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Description
Can you find the plaintext using 26 Engima ciphertexts that have been encrypted with different rotors and different initial settings?

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83 users have already solved this challenge, 4 are working on it.
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Description
In this challenge, only fragments of the grid used for a Playfair encryption are given. Are you able to reconstruct the matrix and decrypt the message?

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122 users have already solved this challenge, 7 are working on it.
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Description
This PDF file is supposed to contain a hidden codeword. Can you find it?

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868 users have already solved this challenge, 166 are working on it.
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Description
This postcard from Thessaloniki was written in German in 1897. The encrypted text can either be considered as message from the sailor Fritz to his wife at home, or as a note regarding spionage activities. Can you determine the codeword that was used to request secret information?

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51 users have already solved this challenge, 5 are working on it.
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Description
Can you decrypt the three military messages?

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71 users have already solved this challenge, 13 are working on it.
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Description
The Beaver Code is a transposition cipher. Apart from the solution of this challenge, can you find a formula for any given ciphertext length, which generates the permutation needed to decrypt the ciphertext?

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1228 users have already solved this challenge, 46 are working on it.
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Description
Can you decrypt the second part of the letter to the Templars as effortlessly as the first one?

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845 users have already solved this challenge, 14 are working on it.
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Description
After the Order of the Templar has become very powerful, enviers try to crush it. The knights receive an encrypted letter but the key does not arrive. Does this letter contain the warning that would have saved the knights from being arrested?

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1055 users have already solved this challenge, 45 are working on it.
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Description
Your friend sent you an audio file that contains only a strange melody. In the email, your friend writes that the file contains a message encoded by a variant of Morse code. Can you find out how you can hear the Morse code?

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Description
You are invited to a job interview for the job of a cryptographer. Can you pass the first selection round?

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234 users have already solved this challenge, 106 are working on it.
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Description
How are the numbers linked? Can you find the three missing numbers?

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108 users have already solved this challenge, 132 are working on it.
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Description
Can you find the link between these numbers?

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864 users have already solved this challenge, 27 are working on it.
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Description
You don't speak Spanish? No Problem! Try to decrypt a ciphertext in a foreign language without knowledge of that language.

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176 users have already solved this challenge, 22 are working on it.
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Description
This number sequence is cyclic. Can you find out the fifth and sixth number?

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Description
In order to decrypt the intercepted letter addressed to your neighbor, you need to find out which document has been used to encode the message with the book code.

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156 users have already solved this challenge, 27 are working on it.
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Description
Alice and Bob would like to agree upon a shared key. They use an Elliptic Curve Diffie-Hellman (ECDH) key-exchange protocol. Try to reproduce the steps that are necessary to calculate the key and to decrypt Bob's message.

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Description
Alice and Bob use the cipher as it had been described in part 3 of this challenge. Due to an error one message has been encrypted and sent twice. Does this help you to find out the shared key and enables you to decrypt a third message easily?

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Description
It is not difficult to break a monoalphabetic substitution but in this challenge an additional camouflage alphabet causes confusion.

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66 users have already solved this challenge, 8 are working on it.
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Description
With the help of 7 pairs of plaintext-ciphertext you have to find out how this factorization cipher works and then decrypt a ciphertext.

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519 users have already solved this challenge, 18 are working on it.
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Description
You intercepted two ENIGMA I messages. Both are dated from the same day. Use a Turing Bombe to find out the key of the day and decipher the solution.

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75 users have already solved this challenge, 2 are working on it.
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Description
A friend of yours sent you a file that seems to be empty. Was it just a mistake or is there a secret to reveal?

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63 users have already solved this challenge, 17 are working on it.
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Description
You need to reconstruct some fields of the grille to decrypt the message written on an old note.

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506 users have already solved this challenge, 42 are working on it.
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Description
Asterix and Obelix besiege Rome. They just happened to find an encrypted message but instead of the common Caesar Cipher the Romans used a new method. Can you decrypt the message?

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119 users have already solved this challenge, 4 are working on it.
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Description
Two girls want to communicate in a secret way using the „affine cipher“. Transform the encryption rule into the decryption rule and turn in the plaintext of the example.

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610 users have already solved this challenge, 12 are working on it.
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Description
In this challenge the rotational relationship between the Pigpen symbols are used to create a new cipher. In this part the well-known key squares are used as a warm up.

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158 users have already solved this challenge, 7 are working on it.
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Description
The Caesar Chiper is rather simple. But in this challenge it is used with a different alphabet and a modified way of shifting the letters.

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236 users have already solved this challenge, 62 are working on it.
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Description
A pair of plaintext and the corresponding ciphertext encrypted with the ADFGVX cipher ist given. Can you reveal the substitution and transposition key used in this example?

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127 users have already solved this challenge, 8 are working on it.
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Description
A small ciphertext encrypted with the ADFGVX cipher, which has been used during World War I, is given. Are you able to reveal the plaintext message?

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124 users have already solved this challenge, 18 are working on it.
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Description
This sequence is infinite, the first 9 numbers are given. What are the 10th and 11th number?

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2164 users have already solved this challenge, 490 are working on it.
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Description
A piece of music is given as mp3 file and in music notation. The notes represent a secret message, which was encrypted with two classic methods. In part 1 of this challenge you have to solve the first of these methods. Thereafter, you can set out to solve part 2 (which is in level 2).

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Description
By the time quantum computers exist, the actual signing algorithms are not secure anymore. Then one can switch e.g. to so-called "Unbalanced Oil and Vinegar" systems. It is your challenge to break a simplified version of such a system today already.

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101 users have already solved this challenge, 2 are working on it.
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Description
A friend sends you a cipher designed by him and asks you to discover the used key, using a given plaintext and the corresponding ciphertext.

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108 users have already solved this challenge, 7 are working on it.
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Description
In this challenge you shall break the Playfair encryption which was used by the British forces in the Crimean War and in World War I, among others.

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Description
In this challenge you shall break the Caesar encryption in its original form.

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Description
The Enigma is an electro-mechanical rotor machine used for encryption and decryption. One main part of the Enigma is changeable rotors. This challenge deals with the calculation of the key space.

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Description
The "Three Investigators" heard that it was possible to create truly unbreakable cipher texts if you linked a stream of true random numbers to the plaintext (one-time pad). However this random stream must be incalculable for outsiders. Do you think you can, nevertheless, decrypt an eavesdropped encrypted message from the "Three Investigators"?

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Description
This is part 2 of a 3-part challenge regarding the classical transposition. You can solve this challenge with pen and paper as well as with different software programs. To create the ciphertext the plaintext was first encrypted with a classical shift cipher. The result of this encryption was then further encrypted with a columnar transposition with a key length of less than 10 characters.

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Description
This is part 1 of a 3-part challenge regarding the classical transposition. You can solve this challenge with pen and paper as well as with adequate software programs (e.g. CrypTool 2). With this irregular columnar tranposition a key length greater than 10 was used.

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Description
Homophonic substitution using 5 ciphertext characters for a binary cleartext alphabet. This challenge can be solved with paper & pencil.

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Description
Homophonic substitution using 3 ciphertext characters for a binary cleartext alphabet. This challenge can be solved with paper & pencil.

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Description
The Caesar encryption, a very simple example of a monoalphabetic substitution.

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Description
In the late 1960s the so called Zodiac killer used a homophonic substitution encryption to encrypt letters to the police and the press. This challenge is inspired by the solved Zodiac-408 problem and the unsolved Zodiac-340 problem. Hint: Provide the codeword in capital letters.

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Description
This is a famous speech of a German soccer star - including a mistake. The codeword consists of 2 words, one after the other with no space. The first is the password used to encrypt the plaintext, and the second is the mistake in the decrypted text. (The plaintext is in German.)

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Description
This sequence is infinite, but you may recognize it after just 13 numbers. What is the 14th number? Please type in the numeric expression of the number.

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Description
In 1806, the young countess Julie finds a dress with an old enciphered letter in a pouch. It reveals a secret of one of Julie's ancestors. Can you break the cipher? The codeword for this challenge is the last word of the letter (all uppercase).

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Description
In September 1902, a book seller named Paul Winkler received a postcard in cipher. Sent from the nearby Mansfeld castle, it appears that a young lady wants to meet with Paul – secretly. Find the name of the young lady and submit it as the codeword for this challenge. Use only capital letters.

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Description
This challenge contains three messages encrypted with classical ciphers. You will need break each of the ciphers and take note of the three codewords. When you have all three codewords, submit them in the form "codeword1-codeword2-codeword3". Please note that the codewords are case sensitive and you have only 5 trials to find the correct solution. The MTC3 team wishes everybody much success and fun in finding the correct solution.

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