| Welcome to the E22 Challenge. Below is a
link to a complete transcription of an E22 transmission, recorded at 2200GMT,
on August 14 1997, frequency 8024lsb. It features 34 five figure groups.
Nothing is known about the content of E22 traffic. Each transmission has,
so far, sent a variable number of five figure groups, and transmissions
have, so fa,r always been Lower Side Band. We qualify the details of this
stations activity with the words 'so far' because E22 is one of the new
Numbers Stations. Absolutely nothing is known about this station, it has
appeared three times, (it has been logged by Numbers Monitors three times)
during the second half of this year, on the same day (Wenesday) and
frequency (8024lsb), and time (2200GMT) with a repeat transmission on the
following day, at the same time and frequency. It has used two voices so
far, and the second ever logged transmission had errors in the cyphertext.
Your task is to use whatever crypanalytic attack you can to decrypt this message. This cryptographic challenge is more daunting than the RSA challenge, because nothing is known about the algorithm used to encipher E5 transmissions. We do not even know for sure who the transmitting party is. If it is possible to decrypt some if not all of this message, using a massively networked brute force attack, we may be able to discern something about what the E5 transmissions really are, and who is responsible for them. Use whatever crypanalytic attack you can to decrypt this message. If you require more plaintext examples, sorry there arent any! N.B. All email concerning this challenge must be PGP encrypted. All claims to the prize must be accompanied by a full written description of how the crack was executed, along with any software that was used to achieve the crack. It must be demonstrated that the crack is a genuine mathematical soultion, since we do not have the original plaintext in our posession. The Prize for the first person to email us a deciphered text along with the method employed in the crack will be an ancient Gold Roman coin. The Judges decision is final. |