There are very few mysteries, if any, that stay mysterious forever or at least a very long time. Cicada is one such mystery that has managed to confuse even the most knowledgeable individuals, remaining mysterious for 8 years running, since it’s first appearance in 2012. The group behind Cicada goes by the name 3301 … so who exactly is this 3301?
On January 4th 2012, a group calling itself 3301 posted a mysterious message on the web: “Hello, we are looking for highly intelligent individuals. To find them, we have devised attached…”
The “hidden message” led to a long series of other riddles, phone numbers, sites buried in the the Deep web, GPS coordinates to actual locations all around the globe where posters containing more information and clues could be found. Solving the Cicada puzzle required knowledge of computer programming, cryptography, history, art and literature. Cicada is a series of puzzles which get updated upon completion of each puzzle. For many years people have asked the question who is 3301? and many people in turn have attempted to answer the question with educated assumptions and opinions, none of which have been confirmed to be true or false. It isn’t clear who exactly is behind Cicada so I’ll just go ahead and make my own speculation here.
I first got interested in Cicada back in 2018 when I saw a Youtube video about it. I never actually participated but I read a lot about Cicada and kind of wondered who’s behind it since it seemed to be super complex, I wondered what kind of thinking had to go into creating something like that. Cicada to me appeared to be some sort of a recruiting tool for maybe a government organization such as the NSA or something… I thought this because other tech companies have done something similar for recruitment, but the more I learned about Cicada , the intention seems to change. According to Marcus wanner -“3301 is a hierarchical-organization” he was one of the few that were contacted and assigned on a project that was based on privacy, internet security and anonymity but says he ended up being the only one who actually wrote any code on the project, he tried reaching out to have his work reviewed but nobody responded.
In my opinion, I don’t think 3301 is a government organization or a corporate company because if they were, they’d probably brag about it. I think they are a a hacker group, albeit a hyper-sophisticated one. It’s very impressive how they have managed to remain anonymous for such a long time after creating such hype around Cicada. The last puzzle has led most people to believe it is unsolvable, that whoever 3301 is, the goal was mainly to teach these “highly intelligent individuals” skills to protect themselves online, to connect them for the grater good. The recent puzzle is based on the Liber Primus, a 58 pages long book written in Runes… only 2 of these pages have been decrypted today, 4 years later.
Whether or not this puzzle will be solved… 3301 remains a mystery, forever… or will they?
Top comments (1)
The puzzle is still being solved near 6-7 years later after the last completed puzzle, ther s a solver group on discord and in irc ex. freenode, marcus wanner is in the irc mostly, nox populi is mostly in the discord.