Australian Signals Directorate coin code cracked by 14yo in 'just over an hour'
abc.net.auIt's funny to see a coin like this minted considering the Australian government's position on encryption and privacy (well, not just Australia - pretty much any other Commonwealth country too).
Nah it makes perfect sense, normalizing encryption that 14 year olds can break in an hour is totally in line with Australian government policy.
This would be funny if it wouldn’t actually be sad.
laughs in NSA
When you live here you soon realize the politicians and those who bask in the limelight aren't the ones in charge.
Who is?
Usually such a comment is a reference to a certain American media mogul who has tried to swing several recent elections and found themselves largely preaching to the choir with a very much reduced audience. But their miss rate is now exceedingly high: 2022 federal miss. 2022 SA miss. 2020 Qld miss. 2019 federal hit. 2018 Vic miss.
In fact, the people in charge in Australia are basically the voters. It upsets some people that Australian voters behaved basically the same as voters in every other democratic country in the post-1970s inflation and post-cold war liberal periods.
American media mogul?
Murdoch is from Australia.
He was born in Australia, but in 1985 he surrendered his Australian citizenship in order to meet the legal requirements to become the owner of a US television network.
So, he is not (anymore) an Australian.
I once put forth an 'Everlasting Australian How-To-Vote Card':
"Find out who Murdoch wants you to vote for, then vote the opposite way."
He is also a US citizen. That means he took an oath to uphold the US constitution with a straight face.
Mostly the people who go to elite schools - Oxford/cambridge etc, that's the training ground, for better or worse, children of old money, and those of new money, with a polite sprinkle of everyman. It's not a permanent group though, some enter, some leave over time, money is the driver though, and the desire to be in control.
A loud representation that you can see in action are the children of trump, even with all their obvious faults they have access to multi billion dollar deals that few average people see. Murdoch et al is their propaganda arm, if you have an agenda you'd like to be in the public sphere and have lots of money, then you can use these to move public opinion in that direction.
> "So we're hoping to meet him soon ... to recruit him."
At 15 he should be leading the team.
It wasn't super difficult, and was quite fun. I'm not a cryptography person and have zero knowledge of ciphers or anything like this, but a friend and I saw it and thought it'd be fun to give it a shot. We shared ideas but pretty much solved each puzzle ourselves in different ways (which was interesting to see in itself).
The hidden 5th puzzle was both the hardest to get going on (due to no hints compared to the others), while also being among the easiest once you figured out what it actually was.
I did a little write-up here if anyone's interested: http://senwerks.com/hacktheplanet/Solving-the-Australian-Sig...
They really would like for us not to think its being solved by a 14 y.o. the same morning is a debacle. But it is.
> There's a challenge out there to see who can correctly break all the layers, and, would you believe it, yesterday the coin was launched at 8:45am; we put up our web form and said, 'Hey, if you think you've got the answers, fill in the form'," she said.
It’s just a game for them to popularize code breaking and do some youth recruiting.
They spent a lot of taxed money on the stunt. To have it solved the same day means almost everybody they might have engaged with it has already lost interest.
What? Its not some impossible hard code, its just a fin little exercise to get attention. It wasn’t intended to be unbreakable or take more than an hour to figure out by people interested in cryptography, the news is just that a particular 14y old was enthusiastic and also ready at the mark to speed run it.
Your attitude is equivalent to complaining about a newspaper sudoku being solved by someone early in the day, because “now no one wants to solve it and the paper wasted all that money making it”.
You really cannot perceive the difference between a few square inches on a newspaper page and a custom-minted coin?
They clearly hoped it would take at least weeks for a full solution, so they could have multiple press events. Or if not, they should have; incompetent either way.
Have you actually tried it? If ASD thinks this would take a week to crack Australia as a nation is in trouble.
Custom minted coins is not that uncommon in Australia. There's been over 100 of them.
> It’s just a game for them to popularize code breaking
Do they really want to do that - considering these talented people might use their code breaking skills against the government? ;-)
These codes are really just little puzzles, modern cryptography has no weaknesses of the kind these codes have.
There are even sites that teach you about bad modern cryptography, like cryptohack [0] but in general the kind of skills you learn there won't be useful either unless you happen to find a piece of software that rolled their own crypto and did something really dumb (which does happen, occasionally, see the Sony PS3 hack where they used a not-so-random value for crypto, which made it broken)
No doubt it's an excellent strategy to identity where any future/potential opposition may come from.
As Sun Tzu says in The Art of War:
"If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.
What if you know the enemy, but not yourself?
You will spend $750B per year on a military that hasn't won a war in generations.
Or just never won a high intensity war alone.
I'll answer that with an examiner's question:
Please provide a T-F truth table to show that the proposition is false.
Clue: you already have the answer and Sun Tzu has provided three-quarters of it
:-)
It's not like it's a hard code. It's pretty easy to break.
It's just fun. They're not using this encryption to hide anything important. Frankly this sort of encryption solving is a bit of a dead art. Mostly the code breaking is either data engineers making the crackers more efficient, or those people looking at weaknesses of particular implementations or protocols.
Breaking custom encryption is dead in any country smaller than say, the UK or maybe Canada.
Debacle? :) It is a puzzle made to entertain and popularise the institution. People solving it is the goal.
Your comment reminds me of this XKCD: https://xkcd.com/932/
That comic is spot on. Though I would say, as a developer, I would think "Someone at the CIA accidentally took down their own website briefly today"
It's getting headlines, it's exactly what they wanted. Kudos to the Australians on this one!
It is getting headlines exactly today, and never again. The goal was not to get it solved; they already knew the solution. The goal was to get a lot of people working on it. Now we know a motivated 14-y.o. can solve it in a few minutes, so it does not merit attention. "Plonk", as we used to say before endless September.
> She also revealed today that there was a fifth level of encryption on the coin which no one had broken yet.
Now, how believable is that?
The fifth level was a binary puzzle hidden in the colouration of the writing. Darker/lighter letters were 1's and 0's. The second part of the 5th level was that the other ring of writing had 3 "colours", which were the dots, dashes, and spaces in a morse code string.
The only reason the fifth level was "hidden" was that there wasn't obvious hints/clues pointing to it like the first 4, where each specifically hinted at how to solve the next.
I completely believe that she said that.
It is mostly believable that there is a fifth level.
It is likely that they haven't received a correct solution at the time of the announcement yet.
Which part are you doubting?
"And believe it or not, a boy, 14 years old in Tasmania, was the first person in just over an hour to get *all four* layers right."
Cue Maxwell Smart: "would you believe 5 layers?"
I doubted the fact that there really was a fifth level. It seems like exactly what someone would make up on the spot in an embarrasing situation like this.
Why would they be embarrassed? It's a PR piece, not meant to be actually secure against cryptanalysis.
embarrassing? they seemed delighted
That's called spin.
Reminds me of the Kryptos sculpture installed at CIA HQ - the last passage still hasn't been solved yet: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kryptos
Maybe there is no solution they just trying to mess with us
ASD - 75th Anniversary Commemorative Coin : https://www.asd.gov.au/75th-anniversary/events/2022-09-01-75...
70th Anniversary of ASIO – Marked with New 50-Cent Coin by Royal Australian Mint : https://www.ramint.gov.au/publications/70th-anniversary-asio...
It's important to always remember that such advertising is actually soft propaganda.
In the early days the Government essentially didn't want the citizenry to know that ASIO and ASD existed but if it did learn of their existence then it was important to keep discussion about them at the bottom of the political agenda.
That's long past and now the citizenry has some basic knowledge about how these agencys operate and that the work they do can at best be described as both 'unsavory' and secretive. That is, even if they're essential, they don't have the best of images.
That's where soft propaganda becomes essential and now steps in, that is it's time to create a 'warm and comfortable' feeling about them in the public's eye.
Coins have always had value, authority and presence not to mention ubiquity, it's why the head of the reigning sovereign is always on them.
To provide these 'questionable' agencies a better image what could be better than to associate them with all that solid authoritative suff?
Right, you've got the picture.
In fact the linguist and politial philosopher Noam Chomsky wrote a book about it called Manufacturing Consent:
Hat's off to whoever came up with the idea of materialized cryptocoin clickbait. Well done!
So the first three layers can be solved with pen and paper, and for the fourth you might need a computer.
Do we still consider that encryption in this day and age? I know it technically is , but..
It's a fun little contest/PR thing/recruiting tool! (Maybe the headline should reflect that, @Dang?)
It's not like the PM is sitting there with a coin in hand, trying to decipher reports from the Australian Defence Forces....
In Australia soon that's the only encryption you'll be allowed.
Flip a coin, Heads or [REDACTED]?
How do you learn this stuff? When I turned 14, I could not imagine even making a successful website, that could withstand hackers and DDoS.
Probably an aboriginal Australian /j Seriously, 14yo' parents must be teachers or hackers of a sort.
Just like the porn filter the Australian government tried to implement...
... or maybe they were 15 at the time, can't remember
I live in the UK but have family in Australia - I can imagine there’s no privacy there either but I was wondering what the law is?
In the UK it’s one month of all our private communications thanks to the Investigatory Powers Act 2016.
What is it in Australia?
2 years data retention
> The Telecommunications (Interception and Access) Act 1979 requires telecommunications companies to retain a particular set of telecommunications data for at least 2 years.
That looks like metadata (see https://www.homeaffairs.gov.au/nat-security/files/dataset.pd..., PDF warning). Which is still private, but doesn't include your private calls and messages.
How long do they keep private calls and messages?
> How long do they keep private calls and messages?
7-10 years, in practice. 2 years, in requirement. [0]
[0] https://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_Depart...
Hrm that link doesn't seem to be relevant:
> … is not defined in the TIA Act but is generally understood to refer to information about a communication that is not the content or substance of a communication.
I'm asking asking about content.
> The Act requires CSPs to preserve stored communications at the request of certain domestic agencies, or the Australian Federal Police acting on behalf of certain foreign countries, in advance of a warrant to access the information being issued.
> ...
> There are two types of preservation notices—domestic (‘which cover stored communications that might relate either to a contravention of certain Australian laws or to security’) and foreign (‘which cover stored communications that might relate to a contravention of certain foreign laws’).
> In turn, there are two types of domestic preservation notices—historic (‘which cover stored communications held by the carrier on a particular day’) and ongoing (‘which cover stored communications held by the carrier in a particular 30-day period’).
> A foreign preservation notice only covers stored communications held by the carrier on a particular day. The Ombudsman and the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security will have oversight in relation to preservation notices.
They don't.
Preservation notices are incredibly rare, and no drag net requirements exist in Australia. CSPs are free to store such things, but generaly don't - beyond required metadata.
Edward Snowden's revelations included the detail that back in 2008, the then-DSD sought to /give away/ bulk data on australian citizens to foreign spy agencies.
https://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/business-spectator...
In response to the revelations of this attack on Australian democracy, launched by an agency tasked to defend it, australia's attorney general focused on declaring Mr Snowden a traitor.
Australia has been blatantly violating the privacy of its citizens increasingly over the last 2 decades. Its surveillance legislation is unrivaled in developed countries except for perhaps the UK.
Weird, that's about the same amount of time it's been since they steamrolled all of their guns in the street.
Sigh, I see this pop up so I should really just copy and paste one of my other answers, but.
Australians supported handing in our guns after Port Arthur, Australians that want to engage in firearm use for sport, hunting, antique collection or pest control can all still do so within appropriate circumstances that the public overwhelmingly support.
Low hanging fruit, moronic, pro-gun sentiment only shows how little you understand about the country you are talking about.
(Not an endorsement for the Aus 3-Letters spying, which is a different issue.)
To back you up:
I visited Australia while on deployment and the process to go hunting, including the temporary firearms permit and training required, was rather more simple than I’d been led to believe. Getting permission through my CO was harder.
Weird, somehow the United States is mysteriously lacking in armed protest and pushback of their corporation's and government's surveillance, even post-Snowden's reveals of that exact thing against their own citizens.
That’s right, because if I had a gun I’d be taking it to parliament to demand that they stop [something]! And [something] would surely be different as a result!
They did no such thing. Australians own more guns than ever. They had a buyback program, and people used it to turn old guns into new ones.
> They did no such thing
You folks aren't actually going to make me dig up and link video of the guns being steamrolled, are you?
You can pull it up. It doesn't change that it was an empty political stunt, that most guns were not in the buyback, that people simply took the buyback money to buy new guns (which you can check at the time by massive gun profits selling guns to Australians), or, as I pointed out above, that there are more guns now than before Port Authur [1].
So go ahead and post the video. Then read the rest of the story.
[1] https://australiainstitute.org.au/post/australia-more-guns-n...
If this is how they treat their own citizens, I'm honestly scared what they think is okay to do to a foreigner.
Simply look up the indefinite detention of refugees here to get an idea.
It's amazing how such sickening conduct can just fly in modern democratic societies.
> those who crack the codes could discover "some wonderful, uplifting messages".
Let’s hope that one of them was, “Australia should be a republic”
"Let’s hope that one of them was, “Australia should be a republic”"
Not that far from where I live at the intersection of two busy roads there used to be a tall concrete Besser block wall with spray-painted graffiti scrawled on it in large black lettering which read:
"The Australian people are bloody-minded sheep."
The truly remarkable thing about the graffiti was that in over 20 years no one covered it up or spray-painted over it. (And it would have been easy as there was a bus stop right nearby with easy pedestrian access.)
The wall has gone now as it has made way for apartments (I had always meant to photograph it but had never gotten around to doing so). :(
Two observations: that no one had bothered to tamper with the message or paint over it (and, say, the Council could easily have, it being on a public thoroughfare and that removing graffiti was a policy) says something rather profound in that amongst the population there's a general acceptance of the fact.
Second, the Australian electorate is remarkably politically conservative. With the exception of a few minor instances, it has never done anything radical and that's essentially been the case right back to federation in 1901 (that was when Australia became an independent state after Britain gave it its Independence).
Thus, as a nation, Australia has always kowtowed to Britain and after WWII it has done so with the US.
When a law is enacted in Australia one can bet top dollar that it's already been enacted in Britain or more latterly the US (but to a lesser extent). Originality doesn't exist in Australia's political DNA.
That's why Australia is part of the Five Eyes agreement, without Britain and the US it'd behave like a lost child at a country fair.
Trouble is everyone knows it, especially so the Chinese who've essentially enslaved the country economically.
I've actually thought that some of the recent legislation, specifically the metadata retention and anti-encryption, has been the five-eyes using Australia's democratic populace of "bloody-minded sheep" as a testing ground and/or precedent for implementing the same privacy invasive legislation in the other countries that may be less 'compliant' without said precedent.
My thought has been even more pessimistic than that. Why even pass your own legislation when your intelligence agencies can just get Australia to extract that info for you.
You don't need to actually backdoor the targets device, just the platform they use. Who cares about jurisdiction as long as your friends are willing to hand over data in the interest of international security.
No need to be pessimistic. This actually happens, as documented in the Prism leak.
Right, one can't but helped to have noticed how remarkably quickly that legislation passed.
...And it did so without a squawk!
Edit, it sort of proves my point, doesn't it?
From the standpoint of someone who did not agree with that legislation or the subsequent follow on changes that pulled on even more… and several less internationally noticed little legal things… We squawked, as loudly as we could, but it made no difference, because they went and did it anyway. So it wasn’t even a strangled squawk, but a completely ignored squawk.
It really doesn’t help that we have very few constitutional rights with which to push back with as any sort of “inalienable” baseline.
And having the opposition at the time barely raise a whimper also strangles whatever squawk a minority in the public may raise.
> "The Australian people are bloody-minded sheep."
> The truly remarkable thing about the graffiti was that in over 20 years no one covered it up or spray-painted over it. (And it would have been easy as there was a bus stop right nearby with easy pedestrian access.)
Everybody who saw it probably thought "yeh, it's a fair cop, mate".
Likely so.
Australia has to “kowtow” to whoever is the dominant naval power. Once Britain, now the US, perhaps in the next 100 years it will be China.
In the next 100yrs the north polar ice will melt enough that China can go around the top to it's trading partners. The strait of Malacca next to Malaysia will stop being as critically important as it is now to China's oil imports.
It's likely the SEA region will cool off, the action will move up north and all those subs we bought will go from AUKUS to AWKWARD.
Aus just needs to cut costs and forward into quality (koalaity?) manufacturing and science. Or we could just keep ripping up the ground like a bulldozer on a bender and hope China doesn't tank the iron ore price.
If the sea level rises by the projected 1.3m by 2100, what routes exactly would open up?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strait_of_Malacca#/media/File:...
I know it's kind of rude just to leave you with a link, sorry.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ISHHe1Hu6d4
Skim this video, it shows slowly and clearly the potential change of routes.
Oh, I didn't read your post properly. For some reason I thought you were talking about routes opening due to sea level rising.
The northern sea route is not given the same scrutiny as the strait in that video though. Clearly if western allies were blockading China's sea trade at choke points, the sea route has some fairly obvious problems.
It's the defensible inland routes which will be the most important. To that end, the push to expand NATO into Ukraine almost could not have gone better for China if they had orchestrated it.
Unfortunately, that's my current thinking.
Reckon if we got into the Tardis and went there it'd take a research effort to recognize that we were actually in the same country!
> Trouble is everyone knows it, especially so the Chinese who've essentially enslaved the country economically.
I think of it as a chinese mining province. The long period of growth was merely the long period of Chinese growth. And that growth was good for the country, but also terrible: the "dutch disease" of high commodity prices gutted manufacturing and other businesses.
And de-incentivised governments to really think about what the nation needed, as middle class homeowners continued to see their net worth rise, thus "what, me worry?"
> The truly remarkable thing about the graffiti was that in over 20 years no one covered it up or spray-painted over it. (And it would have been easy as there was a bus stop right nearby with easy pedestrian access.)
To do that it would've had to have said "Remove this grafitti immediately, sheep!"
Hey, y'all have preference voting, and the US is still in the 19th century on that one.
Be sure to drink your Ovaltine.
You've been watching too many 1950s/'60s TV ads. Wash your mouth out. ;-)
I don't know much about Aussie politics, but is there more to becoming a republic than removing The Queen from her largely ceremonial role? I'm guessing the Governor-General she appoints would become democratically elected instead, but what other differences would there be?
That's the roadblock: there has to be a way to appoint the governor-general-replacement (aka president?) and no-one can quite agree on what that should be.
Let's not even think about maybe tweaking the powers of the role, or even codifying that any exercise of those powers should be transparently reported to the electorate (as per a recent/current scandal).
The fact that the political class controls the process of defining all these rules, and no-one trusts the political class to do what's right for the country (vs. right for them and/or their backers), means we're stuck with the current system, which is at least a more-or-less known quantity.
Its probably "fuck off we're full" in an attempt to self select for government agencies.
You got a lot of open space in the middle of your country. How about visas abound, but you have to go live in the NT.
It's already a done thing.
https://immi.homeaffairs.gov.au/visas/working-in-australia/r...
"Be sure to drink your Ovaltine"
