Crack the Code In US Cyber Command's Logo 380
Dan writes "According to Wired: 'The US military's new Cyber Command is headquartered at Ft. Meade, Maryland, one of the military's most secretive and secure facilities. Its mission is largely opaque, even inside the armed forces. But the there's another mystery surrounding the emerging unit. It's embedded in the Cyber Command logo. On the logo's inner gold ring is a code: 9ec4c12949a4f31474f299058ce2b22a.'"
Re:md5? (Score:1, Interesting)
Why not use a reverse lookup?
http://md5.noisette.ch/?hash=9ec4c12949a4f31474f299058ce2b22a
Please, US Cyber Command, give us something more challenging...
Re:md5? (Score:3, Interesting)
No they don't. It was trivial. Perhaps I should say: The First part was trivial.
Don't tell me I am the only one that noticed how oddly worded that is? I mean, if you are just going to md5 something, why word it so poorly? Why the double meaning of 'domains'?
Maybe I am reading too much into it, but my experience show that this would be typical double meaning often used by covert operations.
Re:md5? (Score:4, Interesting)
There's always kryptos [google.com]; part 4 has yet to be decoded. Have fun.
Re:md5? (Score:5, Interesting)
It's pretty sad that someone had to write a whole story surrounding the mystery behind this md5 hash sum, when it is plainly written in black and white on wiki, hence your link.
There's a whole school of modern journalism built around ignoring easily accessible answers to relatively trivial questions. If you've followed any of the recent economic debates you'll find that it's full of "but they never say anything about what they mean by XYZ" claims regarding their opposition, only to have the opposition respond with links to where they explain clearly what they mean by XYZ.
I used to think that the Web would make it harder for people to play this sort of stupid Straw Person type of argument, either postively--by imputing to your opponent an argument they are not making--or negatively--by ignoring explanations and justifications your opponent has clearly made. I thought the Web would improve human communication and engagement in argument. But what it has done is simply reveal the depths to which stupid people will dive to preserve their faith-based beliefs against any and all opposition.
I'm pretty sure that almost all the argument on the Web is one big game of "let's pretend we don't know anything because the world is more 'provocative' and 'exciting' that way."
It is increasingly clear that the average person lives their life entirely within the epistemological limits of Humpty Dumpty, to whom words meant what he wanted them to, and nothing else. In the present case, "mystery" apparently means "something that I can't be bothered to google."
Re:md5? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Silly government! (Score:3, Interesting)
Don't they know MD5 is deprecated. They should be using SHA-1. Off to a disappointing start already...
Military group logos are not intended to be secure. They are intended to be easy to recognize quickly and to inspire group pride. So they are symbolic, transparent, sometimes ironic and/or making an in-joke (such as three spur gears meshed, an arrangement which could not possibly turn), and often using archaic elements as historical references.
MD5 is a cryptographic hash that, though now dated, was strong for its time, is commonly recognized, and if I recall correctly was the FIRST such hash function to achieve broad recognition for its use as a digest hash for detecting message tampering. Using an MD5 hash of the mission statement as an element of the logo is perfect form.
The logo will no doubt outlast any current hash, so using a more modern digest algorithm would just date it - and make it less historic.
Re:md5? (Score:2, Interesting)
because it was figured out long ago, check out the wikipedia article for "US Cyber Command"
Actually if you check the history on that article, it was put up just after the publication of TFA, on the 7th of July this year.