Ok, puzzle nerds, time to step up and show Uncle Sam your skilz

The Game Room
1

The military has established a new organization called Cyber Command, linked to the ultra-secretive NSA. Like any good military office, they have an escutcheon. And on that escutcheon, there is a code: “9ec4c12949a4f31474f299058ce2b22a”

It is said that the code somehow relates to the mission of Cyber Command. Get your puzzle solving boots on and let me know what it means. Because I have no clue, and I’ve tried EVERYTHING to figure it out. (Which means I googled it and nothing substantive came up. I surrender.)

2

I ran it through the Antikythera mechanism and then through the Enigma machine. So far the output consists of: 14 k of g in a f p d.

Is this any help?

In all seriousness, could you link a site with the escutcheon and such, in case there are additional clues?

3

Well, a 128-bit hex string smells like an MD5 hash, but I didn’t get any results from the standard MD5 dictionaries. So it’s not a common word or variation thereof.

That’s all I got.

4

Moved MPSIMS --> The Game Room

twicks, former puzzle professional, who doesn’t have a clue

5

Well, the only letters are e, c, a, f. Those form a cross under your left hand on a qwerty keyboard. Does that help at all?

ETA: Also, there’s lots of 9s and 2s, but no 6 and only one 0 and one 5, which occur together.

6

There’s a ‘b’ as well. It’s hexadecimal; the letters a through f represent ten through fifteen.

7

158 196 193 41 73 164 243 20 116 242 153 5 140 226 178 42

8

One source out there says the solution is “Poder Cybernetico” which would be Dog Latin for “Protect the Internet.” Dunno if I buy the guy’s explanation of how he got to “Poder Cybernetico” but it makes sense from a “mission statement” direction.

9

Link. It seems if you also submit your correct answer to Wired you can win a prize or two.

10

he got that from niconnect.com’s qr code. he found the site by googling 9ec4c12949a4f31474f299058ce2b22a.

11

It’s been solved. It’s a simple MD5 hash of the Cyber Command’s mission statement.



echo -n "USCYBERCOM plans, coordinates, integrates, synchronizes and conducts activities to: direct the operations and defense of specified Department of Defense information networks and; prepare to, and when directed, conduct full spectrum military cyberspace operations in order to enable actions in all domains, ensure US/Allied freedom of action in cyberspace and deny the same to our adversaries." | md5sum
9ec4c12949a4f31474f299058ce2b22a  -

Lame.

12

Man, I tried that, and a million variations on it, but the version of the mission statement I found had an Oxford comma after “synchronizes” and a hyphen between “full” and “spectrum”, so, naturally, its hash didn’t match.

Double lame.

13

I actually tried it too, but forgot to truncate the newline at the end of the statement.

14

It means “I wish Delta Force would stop stuffing us into lockers.”