What appears to be the Interz0ne II Code Challenge has been released... ;)

SETI message to Interz0ne-II

] The Secret Of Psalm 46 was first presented on 23 March 2002
] at the Game Developers Conference in San Jose,
] California. It was accompanied by a digital video of a
] total solar eclipse, synchronized to a harpsichord
] recording of JS Bach's Art Of Fugue.

Brian Moriarty is a brilliantly-gifted speaker (and a heck of a game designer). This talk that he gave at GDC 2002 was a work of art. Inspiring, moving, and thought-provoking, and I will never forget it. I'm glad that a transcript is on the web, though I don't think that reading this can even come close to the "performance art" that was the talk itself.

I'm also meme-ing this because he spoke of some codes and messages hidden in music. If you're interested in cryptography, or conspiracies, or the history of the game industry, this is worth a read.

Brian Moriarty | Lectures | The Secret Of Psalm 46 (2002)

] "Selon CNN, qui évoque un documentaire
] d'Al-Jazeera, les terroristes auraient communiqué par
] chat internet avec un message codé, mais tout ce qu'il y
] a de plus anodin ; et point de stégano, ni de crypto.
] Voir également la conférence d'Elonka Dunin, experte
] ès-crypto et stégano, qui conclue elle aussi que les
] terroristes n'ont vraisemblablement pas utilisé de tels
] outils & méthodes."

This is from a French Information/Privacy site ("Pas de Libertés sans Vie Privées" == No Freedom Without Privacy) that has a page discussing steganography and the paranoia concerning the "porno-terroristes". The above quote is referring to the CNN article and my own presentation as sources, and stating that though terrorists did use codes, they probably didn't use elaborate digital steganographic techniques.

Regarding the site itself, there is an English-language page available which covers some basics about the group, but to actually follow the stego discussion, you'll need to use an online translator such as http://babelfish.altavista.com (unless of course you're fluent in French!). In a nutshell, think of it sort of like a Slashdot thread for French-speakers.

Terrorisme : les dessous de la filière porno

A list of the symbols that hobos would write in chalk or charcoal, to signal other hobos about what they could expect in that area (such as "Good place for a handout" "Watch out, they have a gun in this house" "You can camp here," and so forth).

Hobo Signs & Symbols

Mind-bogglingly useful page that MaxieZ set up. You can use it to do realtime ASCII/binary/hexadecimal conversion, decipher and encode certain Playfair ciphers, and also do Rot-13 decoding. Highly recommended!

MaxieZ's All In One Encryption Puzzle Generator

Extremely useful ROT-13 javascript page. Just paste in the text you want to rotate and click on the button.

ROT-13 Decoder and Encoder

Excellent quick-ref resource for hexadecimal/ASCII conversion.

ASCII character codes and html, octal, hex and decimal charts

An excellent collection of links to steganography utilities, sorted by Operating System. Used to be http://steganography.tripod.com, but evidently they recently got their own domain: stegoarchive.com

Steganography Software

This is where to go if you want to download PGP software.

MIT Distribution Site for PGP

The tongue-in-cheek cryptography tutorial that I wrote, about how I cracked the PhreakNIC v3.0 Code.

PhreakNIC v3.0 Code tutorial