201107021324 if6wk
solved unencrypted manual
A message: 'You appear to show interest in the data cycles ...'. Hex-ASCII.
From the post to its content
As posted
596f752061707065617220746f207368 6f7720696e74657265737420696e2074 68652064617461206379636c65732074 6861742068617665206265656e20706f 7374656420746f207468697320526564 6469742e1f1f54686520646174612063 79636c657320696e2074686973207265 6464697420617265206e6f742072656c 6576616e7420746f20796f75206e6f72 20746f20746865207365637572697479 206f6620796f757220636f756e747279 2e1f1f5468652064617461206379636c 657320617265206e6f74207573656420 666f7220747261666669636b696e6720 696e20616e7920696c6c6567616c2061 637469766974792e1f1f546865206461 7461206379636c657320617265206e6f 742061202274726f6c6c2c22206e6f72 20617265207468657920696d706f7274 616e7420746f20796f752e1f1f546861 6e6b20796f7520666f722074616b696e 67207468652074696d6520746f206465 636f64652074686973206d6573736167 6520737563682074686174206f746865 72732063616e20626520696e666f726d 65642e1f1f417474656e74696f6e2067 6976656e20746f207468657365206461 7461206379636c6573206973206e6f74 206e65636573736172792e
Explanation
Write-up
I have found an early post not in the auto analysis archive: if6wk (title 201107021324), originally found here. It was posted on 2011-07-02 20:19 UTC, got no comments, and as far as I can tell nobody has ever read it. It is not encrypted at all, it is plain hex-encoded ASCII (first lines):
596f752061707065617220746f207368
6f7720696e74657265737420696e2074
68652064617461206379636c65732074
...
Decoded:
You appear to show interest in the data cycles that have been posted to this Reddit.
The data cycles in this reddit are not relevant to you nor to the security of your country.
The data cycles are not used for trafficking in any illegal activity.
The data cycles are not a "troll," nor are they important to you.
Thank you for taking the time to decode this message such that others can be informed.
Attention given to these data cycles is not necessary.
(Line breaks added by me. In the original the sentences are separated by two 0x1F bytes, the ASCII "unit separator" control character, rather than by spaces or newlines.)
For context, this was posted two hours after if4fl (201107021123), the first post with the GUID-shaped records, and a few days before people noticed the sidebar changing (July 6). It reads like a direct reply to the people who had started poking at the posts. It is also the first time the posts are called "data cycles", a phrase I have not seen anywhere else. I could not find the text or the phrase anywhere in the sub, on /r/Solving_A858 or in the wiki.
The post is fairly long, so this fetches it from the Arctic Shift archive and decodes it (needs curl and jq):
curl -s 'https://arctic-shift.photon-reddit.com/api/posts/ids?ids=if6wk&fields=selftext' \
| jq -r '.data[0].selftext' \
| xxd -r -p \
| tr '\037' '\n'; echo
Solution summary
- Method
- hex-ASCII, no cipher
- Result
- 'You appear to show interest in the data cycles ...' message
- Explanation
- Unencrypted message nobody had read before this project
- Re-checked
- hex -> ASCII message