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The GCHQ Challenge 218

Posted by emmett from the okay-now-where's-my-bond-girl dept.
James writes "The UK's GCHQ has set a challenge for visitors to their website. They have broken up a secret message and hidden it around their site... if you can figure it out, then they say you could be suited to a job as a spy!" I wonder if you automatically get an Aston Martin and a Walther PPK.
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The GCHQ Challenge More

The GCHQ Challenge

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  • Re:Here's one - if anyone's interested (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Argh! Please remember to use spoiler space, rot13 or similar methods when posting puzzle solutions.

  • The Troll Bill of Rights (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    The Troll Bill of Rights Trolls [slashdot.org] | Posted by AC [mailto] on 2000-01-13 23:23:12
    from the moderate this!dept.
    Trollmastah [24.3.227.128] writes: The following text is a transcription of the first 10 amendments of the Slashdot Bill of Rights for Trolls in their original form.

    Amendment I
    Slashdot shall make no moderation rule respecting an establishment of flamebait, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of first posts, or of the thread; or the right of the trolls peaceably to assemble, and to flame the Moderators for a redress of grievances.
    Amendment II
    A well moderated flame, being necessary to the security of a free Slashdot, the right of the trolls to keep and bear accounts, shall not be infringed.
    Amendment III
    No AC shall, in time of post be caught flaming a troll in any thread, without the consent of the Llama, nor in time of off-topic, but in a manner to be prescribed by all that is foolish and trivial.
    Amendment IV
    The right of the trolls to be secure in their flames, redundant posts, naked, and Petrified rants, against unreasonable moderation and flames, shall not be violated, and no "Troll you suck" comments shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by first post oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the thread to be slammed, and the troll or comments to be flamed.
    Amendment V
    No troll shall be held to answer for an off topic, or otherwise unintelligible post, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Postmastah Jury; nor shall any troll be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of post or comment; nor shall be compelled in any moderation case to be a witness against himself or herself, nor be deprived of karma, liberty, or account, without due process of law.
    Amendment VI
    In all threaded Jon Katz prosecutions, the accused, Jon the most trollish of us all, shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public flame, by a completely partial jury of the Slashdot community wherein the flame shall have been committed, which thread shall have been previously ascertained by moderation, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the rant; to be confronted with the naked and petrified posts against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining lame flamebait responses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of all the IANAL crowd for his defense.
    Amendment VII
    In threads slammed by common meta moderation, where the value in controversy shall exceed -1 karma, the right of trial by posters shall be preserved, and no fact tried by a poster, shall be otherwise reexamined by any karma whore in any thread of the Slashdot site, than according to the rules of moderation.
    Amendment VIII
    Excessive flame shall not be required, nor excessive moderation imposed, nor cruel and unusual posts inflicted.
    Amendment IX
    The enumeration in the rules of moderation, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage firsts' posted by the trolls.
    Amendment X
    The powers not delegated to the trolls by MEEPT, nor prohibited by them to the posts, are reserved to the posts respectively, or to the trolls.

  • Re:That is not misselling (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Your comments just goes to show that you have NO FUCKING SENSE OF HUMOR.

  • It took me 4hrs...not most of the info is hidden in the html source code 1) Job Mathematicians section: "" = WELLD 2) Job Tech section: "--- .-- .- .--. .--." = OWAPP 3) Tech Section/Networking: "01001100 01011001 01000110 01001111 01010010 " =76,89,70,79,82=L,Y,F,O,R 4) found on linguist page.......next to

    img src="../images/salary.gif": "OHE - H" -- change Hs to and Ns (see later) 5) Found an unspecified image - in http://www.gchq.gov.uk/images/ajob.gif : AJOB! LYFOR OWAPP WELLD "ONE - N" AJOB! just a rearrangement: WELL DONE - NOW APPLY FOR A JOB! Please dont distribute this too much...... Cnl.Pepper (aint got a /. account yet....too lazy :) )

  • Complete Solution for Dummies (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Go to http://www.gchq.gov.uk - View with images - Careers - Careers - Mathematicians - View Frame Source (of main frame, bottom right) - Top says - Substitute 01=A,02=B,...,26=Z to get WELLD - BACK - Linguists - View Frame Source (of main frame, bottom right) - About two thirds down the page - IMG SRC="../images/salary.gif" ALT="OHE - H" - Change the H's to N's to get ONE-N - BACK - Technology - "--- .-- .- .--. .--." is clearly displayed - This is morse code for OWAPP - BACK - BACK - BACK - About GCHQ - Technology - Change your preferences to always view with your colours (or View Frame Source yet again) - To the right of Networking is 01001100 01011001 01000110 01001111 01010010

  • Re:uh (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    That would be tea!
  • Uh, that is the _correct_ spelling of colour. At least for anyone whose head of state is still the Queen of England anyway...
  • £24k for a graduate (that's with a Masters degree for my American viewers) is pretty good.

    I wouldn't mind getting paid £24k and it's been a loooong time since I graduated.

  • Re:??? (Score:1)

    by martin ( 1336 )
    Off topic I know, but hey Chris where are you now???


    Martin
  • Yep, that's it. Couldn't find the ONE,N myself. Very nicely done, though. Well hidden. I didn't spot the --- .-- .- .--. .--. for ages, and it was staring me in the face. And I was going to mail them to tell them to fix up their graphics.

    View Source will help you get 2 of those 4. Can't find number 5 though.

    Oh, and they made an error in the Text-only version of the page - the binary string, which is coloured the same as the background in the Graphics page, is coloured white. If you are not using IE, then your background will be grey, and the binary will just jump out at you.

    Still wondering where the ONE,N is. If anyone finds it, please let me know.



    T.
  • The OHE-H is on the same page that they discuss what a linguist does here [gchq.gov.uk]. You'll notice that the text for the Linguist heading is in italics. Look at the source code and then look at the ALT tag for the image above it.

    BTW, how did you come up with WELLD? I'm guessing it has something to do with the weird mapping on one of the nav bars...
  • The OHE-H is on the same page that they discuss what a linguist does here [gchq.gov.uk]. You'll notice that the text for the Linguist heading is in italics. Look at the source code and then look at the ALT tag for the image above it.



    BTW, how did you come up with WELLD? I'm guessing it has something to do with the weird mapping on one of the nav bars...

  • Yup, GCHQ salaries suck. Typical industry tech salaries outside London are 20-40k. Cheltenham, where I work and where GCHQ is based is about 70 miles outside London. Inside London salaries can double (but there's that little tiny drawback... living in LONDON SUCKS!).

    GCHQ and other "public sector" areas usually pay 5k under industry rates. And don't increase by much, if my somewhat disillusioned drinking partner is anything to go by...

    Wierd thing is that Cheltenham is quite a posh area with lots of financial industry jobs. Which makes me wonder just what GCHQ is doing to retain staff...

    --

  • For anyone thinking of applying to GCHQ, here are some more links about the Cheltenham / Cotswolds area.

    Cheltenham Borough Council [cheltenham.gov.uk]
    Gloucestershire County Council [gloscc.gov.uk]
    Gloucestershire Tourist Board [visit-glos.org.uk]
    Echo and Citizen local newspapers [thisisglou...hire.co.uk]
    Cotswolds Hyperguide [digital-brilliance.com]
    Alderton Parish Website [custodian.com]

    It's quite a nice area. The towns are human in scale but large enough for decent facilities, and the countryside is breathtaking. I like living here. If you need any more info (about the area, not about GCHQ), email me evilandi@cimmerii.demon.co.uk [mailto].

    --

  • The rest may be fair comment but bringing up the Spice Girls is hitting below the belt.
  • Seems to me that this is a lot of grunt work for
    next to no pay. The job isn't going out on cool
    007 type tasks. It's sitting at a desk crunching
    codes while you make a whopping £16-£24.

    Combine the pay and the ease of finding WELLD
    ONE!N OWAPP LYFOR AJOB! it doesn't quite seem
    like a best-of-the-best type of job.
  • Well, I got it, and I thought it was very amusing. Mind you, it's you who are spelling it wrong... ;)

    "Sir, I'd stake my reputation on it."
    "Kryten, you haven't got a reputation."
  • We have been looking for a suitable brain donor for some time and we believe we've found him! We'd like to take a moment to outline some of the reasons you might like to donate your brain:
    • You'll post better on slashdot. -1, Redundant not for you? You'll like not having a brain then!
    • No more sad jokes. Let's face it, your humor could use alittle work. With your donation of 1 brain you'll never have to worry about using tired cliches again.
    • You'll still be more intelligent than the lobotomized flatworms that call tech support (they were a client of ours).
    • And last, but not least, You get 50 free karma points with your donation!
  • Pay range at the NSA [nsa.gov] for tech jobs is from $33,538 (£20,369) to $69,278 (£42,075), while at GCHQ it's from $26,707 (£16,221) to $56,791 (£34,492).
  • Whatever car they use, they should at least have the decency to utterly wreck it. It's tradition. :-)

  • And of course the great thing is that you don't
    even need to send them a CV / resume - after all
    they know more about you than you know yourself.
  • Colour is the correct spelling!, You americans like to drop letters out of words.
  • oooooooops. www.bnd.de [www.bnd.de] doesn't belong not to the German secret service, but some strange network company (just checked with denic). The "real" bnd is to find at www.bundesnachrichtendienst.de [bundesnach...ndienst.de] (they have no challenge, but a photo of James Bond in action - otherwise not very flash).
  • The German Bundesnachrichtendienst [www.bnd.de] has a challenge on its page as well. I guess they are so hopelessly useless that they try everything to attract people. Is this a trend?

  • Well, being given an Aston Martin for a company car is rather tempting, don't you think?

    In any case, haven't the Intelligence and Security Services been outsourcing a lot of stuff recently? All those IT services companies seem to be doing rather well... ;-)

    D.
    ..is for Dastardly!


  • Assassination is handled by MI7, silly!

    D
    ..is for Deadly.

  • Say the word... Color. Color. Colour. Colour.

    Damnit, Slashdot strips IMG tags!!

    (From Dictionary.com)

    Color [dictionary.com]
    Colour [dictionary.com]

    If you scroll down to the punctuation of the words, you'll see they're exactly the same...

    I just don't hear that 'U' in there anywhere. To me that last section would be more like the 'ooh' sound in 'you' -er (the sound of the last budweiser frog).

    - 8Complex
  • Just highlight everything on the page with your mouse to see it. I used to do this for defaced sites to look for hidden hacker messages. I didnt think they would actually do this. :/
  • I wonder if they have encoded any of the words in the images themselves. I know images could be used to encrypt and hide messages in them. I think this would be more likely then useing the same foreground/background colors in html. =)

    j/k.
  • Then again that might just be the qualities they are looking for.
  • I was going to reply and say how silly that sounded but I think I'll reconsider. While we have already found most (all?) of the hidden code blocks that they announced on their page they might have set up a second contest that is _much_ harder to find. I say go ahead and look for steganographic encoding, the rest of us can work over the text blocks we already have (this code was broken and broadcast on a British TV news show already anyway). If you find something (ala Contact) let us know and we can bring all our guns to bear.
  • Hah.... We appear to have ./ed GCHQ....

    That's actually quite funny if you think about it...
  • Like James Bond, you mean? ;-)

  • Euoropeans tend to spell things differently than Americans.

    Colour
    Defence, etc.



  • ....Are just more efficient :)
  • Even funnier is the box underneath that asks that if you ticked 'Yes' to any of the above, could you please provide details in the space below...

  • Sic (Score:1)

    by wangi ( 16741 )
    "be a spy"... more like be an geek, sitting in front of a boredom infested monitor.

    Perhaps they should just reply with a free CD player for each completed application - it's more of a reason. Or a tenner...

    And remember all you boredom craving USian geeks - you have to be UKian to work at GCHQ.

  • Re:Sic (Score:1)

    by wangi ( 16741 )
    Nope, you've got to be a British 'citizen', or you parents must be... See http://www.gchq.gov.uk/apply/national ity.html [gchq.gov.uk]
  • "23 05 12 12 04"
    "--- .-- .- .--. .--."
    "01001100 01011001 01000110 01001111 01010010"
    "AJOB!"

    one last one to go :)
  • a forgot to metion that
    "23 05 12 12 04" is in a commentary in the source html of http://www.gchq.gov.uk/careers/job5.html)
  • I wonder - how much dough are you guys paid to direct the slashdot effect around like this? This story is not fit for print on Slashdot...
  • What use is a secret message when you could just crack their web server instead? :-)
  • no, you don't get the walther PPK and the Aston Marton. In fact, you don't even get to order your martinis shaken, not stirred.

    What you do get if you land a job with GCHQ is a lot more restrictions on your freedoms than if you took the equivalent gig at NSA. The Brits have the "official secrets act" which sorta sucks. Of course, the Brits don't have a 2nd amendment, either.

    My (20 years ago) experience with the GCHQ guys were that they were all incredibly bright Oxbridge types. Back then, the tech opportunities in the States were much brighter than in England, so if you were the brightest kid at Harvard, you moved to Scottsdale, Arizona and started a software company whereas an equivalent brightest kid at Oxford or Cambridge took a job at GCHQ. Now, if you start a company in Arizona, you can do fun things like move it to Redmond, Washington, but if you take a gig at GCHQ, you're pretty much stuck in Cheltanham, UK.

    Me, I preferred the sunny climes of western michigan, land of Lake Effect.
  • Certainly. I teach No Such Agency people, they're actually pretty good folks. Still, I'll bet NSA is going to one-up GCHQ on this. . .
  • a)Selling information to the enemy
    b)Selling information to your 'alies'.
    c)Publishing a book with a couple of national secrets thrown in so you get free publicity from having your book banned in the U.K.

    The 24k is just to tide you over until you get yourself sorted out.

  • I wunder eef de abbility two spel is a prereckwisit?
  • I wonder if you automatically get an Aston Martin and a Walther PPK

    More like a keyboard and a place to sit: they're responsible for the electronic and computational side of things, not the James Bond stuff. There are a fair few Cambridge CompSci's who've worked there (not me, I hasten to add).

  • err... that's 26 letters. of course the spirit of the message is what you said. still you may need to look at a few more pages.


  • Not 5 words, 5 groups of 5 characters each. Also those 25 letters might not be the final message. You'll probably have to do some work on them after finding them.
  • Nope. It's the ones modified on the 17th of Dec. that are important. Compare job6.gif [gchq.gov.uk] (dated 17th Dec.) & job6_old.gif [gchq.gov.uk] (dated 27th of Oct.)
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • A real spy wouldn't use something as simple as this. A real spy would do something like encode it in a GIF file. For example, take every nth pixel and offset the RGB values a little. In a large, busy picture, a small change wouldn't be noticed by the naked eye, especially if you only allowed changes that were "close" to the original color of the pixel. For large messages, do this with a wav or avi. JPEG and MPEG probably wouldn't work because of lossy compression.

    Not that I've thought about this or have any experience with it. Sure I work for a government contractor on a classified project, but... er... stop looking at me like that!

    Something tells me I should post this one anonymously...

  • all hail the king!
    it is great to have /. with all these people who just can't resist a challenge to their intellect. i can't resist, either, but lazyness usually gets the better of me... so thanks everybody for figuring it out!
    i think the whole challenge is probably more descriptive of what secret services do than they intended it to be. basically, you have to look at every page, all the source code and all the pictures. the rest does not take above-average IQ (ASCII code and binary numbers - how much smarts does that take? oh, and morse code...).
    to sum up your future job: you will be sorting through all these documents we got from all kinds of sources and try to extract useful information for us. all i can say is:
    where is the walther PPK? where the aston martin? where the beautiful russian counter spies?
  • 1st posting anonymously is soooo 20th century :)
  • it's "do i make you 'orny baby"
  • This not ment to be a troll ! but what's going on, on Slashdot lately ? Is this a lack of actuality or just Slashdot Laziness and lack of inspiration. Franckly is this a story worth posting on Slashdot ? What does it brings concretly to Slashdot readers !? Same for the Matrix Story !? I have submitted what I honestly believe to be much worthy stories (well of course I am biaised) but I can't believe that from the 190 wanting to be ckecked by Slashdot I was told when I submitted my stories, those two last ones are the more interesting. I really refuse to believe that !

  • Vetting (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I wonder if they're still doing those wonderful vetting forms these days. Some years ago, I applied for a job at Rolls Royce - not the car company, but the people who make jet engines.
    Because this would have entailed writing control systems for military jets, I had to fill in a Ministry Of Defence vetting form. One of the questions was:-
    Are you now or have you ever been a member of or involved in any organisation involved in the following activities:-
    1. Sabotage yes/no
    2. Espionage yes/no
    3. Terrorism yes/no

    Like anyone was ever going to tick 'yes'!!!
  • Well they have to hire people somewhere. And I guess Oxford was not producing enough people for them.
  • According to some so called "experts" on this mornings breakfast TV, the last few words are:

    "Now Apply For A Job"...
  • In the history timeline, "robin Cook" is not correctly capitalised, in the last pop-up window. (Yes, that's possibly a typo, but you never know.)
  • You're wrong. Noah Webster and his cronies thought that English spelling needed to be more logical. He was responsible for colour->color, centre->center, theatre->theater etc. Spelling reform was rampant in the 19th century and the American Philological Association came up with spellings that have since reverted back to the original British forms 'are->ar, definit->definite, gaurd->gard'. Some of their changes, such as catalogue->catalog have stuck in US spelling. This all culminated in the federally funded Simplified Spelling Board who used your tax dollars to come up with through->thru and others.

    The spelling reform zeal eventually died out which is why some words remain unreformed, for example the British 'defence' was changed to 'defense', otensibly to make it more in line with the Latin root, defensere, although of course, it could easily have come from defendere, to support. However the reformers never got as far as the word 'fence' which also comes from defensere.

    Mark Twain's comment on spelling reform [ifi.uio.no] should be the last word on the subject.

    Nick

  • Well as the language is called 'English' and that is the way we in England spell things I think it must be the right way then ;)
  • So the GCHQ is going all touchy-feely. Whatever next, Spys-R-Us with a nice line in assasination tools for the discerning would be spy? Although I suppose that's more MI5's department. Perhaps this is all part of the government's attempt to give state agencies a purpose in the new economically driven Britain.

    Chris Wareham

  • I think you mean MI6, MI5

    You're probably right, although who knows whether MI5 doesn't resort to assasination at times? (That should get the conspuracy theorists going).


    Chris Wareham

  • I can tell you why they're gonna win the next cold war... they have a sexier website. Really, honestly now - how many of you geeks out there didn't consider a position because their website sucked? :)
  • http://www.gchq.gov.uk/cereers/job5.html

    It's in a comment at the top of the source.

    "Moderation is good, in theory."
    -Larry Wall

  • I'm still missing one set of letters
    My guess is:

    Well Done, Now apply for a job!

    WELLD "23 05 12 12 04"
    ONE,N ???????????????
    OWAPP "--- .-- .- .--. .--."
    LYFOR "01001100 01011001 01000110 01001111 01010010"
    AJOB! "Mouse rollover"

    Matt

  • He doesn't use a H&K in the films - he uses a Walther P99.

    D.
    ..is for Dangerous!


  • Well, if that were the case, wouldn't they just give the people they want to hire a call? ;-)

    D.

  • And then on http://www.gchq.gov.uk/about/technolog y.html [gchq.gov.uk] there's
    01001100 01011001 01000110 01001111 01010010
    In hidden text (due to colourmap madness i can see it). So that translates to LYFOR in ASCII.
  • Okay, the answers are already posted. Morse code was a cute way of doing it, but I doubt the folks in charge of HR would say, "Dear God, he deciphered Morse code! We must hire this prodigy at all costs!" But then again, this is the same country that gave us the Spice Girls, so who knows?

    One thing I have to admit, at least the NSA gives a *somewhat* more challenging "toy" to the people requesting job information. If you apply for their summer programs, they have a neat little challenge on the back, with four or five puzzles to solve. Each one tells you how to solve the next-- i.e., the first message (rot13) tells you that the next one is based on the faction 2/7 or something of the sort, which then tells you that the next one is a transposition cipher, etc.

    Really, neither side has come up with an interesting problem for the public yet, but at least the American folks can keep us entertained for five minutes more. Come on, let's see the GCHQ come out with something better! We could have an arms race going in no time!
  • Another ..

    http://www.gchq.gov.uk/apply/index.html.

    Upper frame. Mouse over on the GHCQ logo: "AJOB!"

  • ooh (Score:2)

    by Foogle ( 35117 )
    I talked to the guys over there about this and they told me that if they hire anyone, they don't automatically get an Aston Martin... What the hell was emmett doing, getting my hopes up like that?? I had to call long distance!

    Of course they do supply their agents with brand new BMWs and turkey-sandwiches that explode on contact with saliva... that's almost as good.

    -----------

    "You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."

  • WAAAAAHHH! Mommy, they won't bring the stories I've submitted a story and they won't bring it. It's so boring, but I keep going there anyway to whine about it.
    I think this is a pretty interesting thread, with the collective riddle-solving.
    If this story doesn't interest you, go to the next one, if none of them interest you, go look at www.wide-open-beavers.com
  • WAAAAAHHH! Mommy, they won't bring the stories I've submitted. I'm bored! Play with me! It's so boring, but I keep going there anyway to whine about it.
    I think this is a pretty interesting thread, with the collective riddle-solving going on.
    If this story doesn't interest you, go to the next one, if none of them interest you, go look at www.wide-open-beavers.com
  • I really don't believe that any of the codes were difficult.

    But they were all different. That's the key point of interest. How many people know BOTH Morse and binary/ASCII codes ? I don't know morse at all. (except for SOS) I didn't even recognize it at first. How many people would recognize the binary and be able to translate it to ASCII ? Not to mention finding it required a trick. The pool of people that would recognize both morse and binary encoded ASCII is small.

    Although the "challenge" was simple it is the variety that makes it interesting at all. By picking different "encodings" they can see how flexible you are. This certainly doesn't prove you to be a master cryptanalyst.

    It does mean you are observant, thorough and that you have "some" talent in the area of decoding. I expect that almost everyone here (/.) is a suitable candidate for these kinds of jobs.

    Now go to work or school and ask yourself how many of those people could do it.
  • Sorry, typo

    should be

    WELL DONE! NOW APPLY FOR A JOB!

  • Re:uh (Score:2)

    by twit ( 60210 )
    turkey-sandwiches that explode on contact with saliva

    Not if you like turkey *g*.

    But seriously, the web is the perfect place to recruit for scientific/mathematical trades. No professional organization can be run entirely through cronyism (aka, the old school tie - and I know, I've benefitted from my old school tie. Cha Gheill!).

    The other traditional recruitment base for intelligence work is the military, and it's not exactly well stocked with scientific and technical trades. And if they are - they're probably just that, tradesmen, rather than the professionals GCHQ neeeds.

    It's possible to educate someone in a profession from the ground up with an apprenticeship and further education, if you have time and money. But that would mean that GCHQ ends up with both the successful and the responsibility for disposing with many more unsuccessful candidates (and hopefully not in a shallow grave). Putting the onus on the individual to get a suitable education and the private/public sector to provide it is quite a business advantage. If you hire someone who's credentialled and who does well in an interview, they may still be inept but at least they won't be totally ignorant.

    --
  • I've counted it 3 times and I still get 25 characters...


    Youfo
    undit
    nowap
    plyfo
    rajob!

    Oh damn, I was leaving out the second P! LOL!!!
    *slaps himself around*

    Sorry about that guys, moderate my other post down as 'Just plain wrong!'

    Kintanon
  • Umm, yeah 5 sets of 5....
    I can't find the place where everyone keeps saying the found 'welld'...

    Kintanon
  • I'm sorry but I just can't see myself a british spy...

    "He's really clumsy, he keeps shooting himself in the foot, but he's the best man we've got!"

    Not likely...

    --
    David

    Smurf: the other blue meat.
  • 1 f0013d |_| 411!!!
    1 h4\/3 h4xx0r3d 7he 8r1715h g0v3rnm3n7!
    4m 1 31337 4nd h4rdc0r3, 0r wh47???? 1 r00l u 411!!! @==--==@!!!!
    7h3 8r1t15h 6ChQ ph33r m333333!!!!



    Notes to secret squirrels everywhere - I'm kidding, OK?

    Strong data typing is for those with weak minds.

  • They are trying to be slashdotted, to be able to test Echelon 45.23 beta
  • GCHQ is basically the code breaking section. If you want to be a British spy you need to join MI6 or MI5 I can never remember which.

    GCHQ was responsible for all the major code breaking in the second world war, including Enigma. They also built the first computer, but it was destroyed after the war, or at least kept secret so it would not fall into the hands of the enemy, probably at that time Russia.
  • does anyone else think web based recruiting for spy agencies is funny? I think I need coffee.
  • ummm, no.

    You Fond it now apply for a job!

  • Joke? Laugh? Hello? Maybe next time I should include some more smilies. How about this:

    Blah blah blah... 'colour' instead of 'color' blah blah blah... ;p

    Better? =)
  • They seem to be misspelling 'color' as 'colour' in SEVERAL places, as well as a few other words. That must be one of the clues, but I can't figure out what it means for the life of me.

    There is no sig.
  • I can see it now...

    Random Hacker: "I finally cracked it!"
    Men in black knock at your door.
    ManInBlack1: "Sir im going to ask you to come with us"
    Random Hacker: "It was only a game! Really!"


    And so another hacker disappears...
  • A.
    Like any tech job in the government, be prepared to get paid less than an equivalent job in the private sector.

    In fact, seeing as how it's tax payer's money that would be used to pay for the government job, you would essentially be working for free, if you pay taxes (Paying yourself to work?! That's crazy!) :)

    (I have to admit, that compared to what you get paid working as a student, the government wages would be fantastic.)

    Also, I'm not sure how the British Government operates, but where I'm from the Government has set levels of pay, usually that are NOT based on the occupation, but rather they are based on the experience. Also, they *usually* do not hire external candidates for high-level/high-paying positions ... they *usually* recruit from within.

    In all fairness though, I have seen some Government jobs where they would pay a bit higher than the set pay level. However, these situations usually only arrive because they have had an extremely difficult time finding an appropriate candidate.

    B.
    Now, this little scheme that GCHQ has cooked up looks to be one where they hope to get a person with adequate initiative to join their ranks. I see some good points and some bad points about their methods of finding candidates though.

    Good: They are able to reach a large target demographic by using their website. Obviously, they are looking for people who have some type of computer skills. They can filter these people out by using their current technique. (Binary code, morse code, etc.) Anyone able to decode their little "surprises" should have the basic knowledge necessary for the job (which, seeing these little encoded snippets, isn't saying much ... no offense to those people that were feeling good about themselves for having decoded them all.)

    Bad: Building on how I ended the example "good" point above ... Being able to decode a few elementary strings is far from impressive. It is also hardly a testimant to the initiative of whoever is able to successfully decode them. There is much, much more to initiative than looking through the HTML of various web pages, seeking encoded text. This is comparable to saying to a group of 6 year old children,
    "I've placed several chocolate easter eggs around the house. Your job is to run around and find them. If you find them all, I'll let you ask me for a dollar. Good luck!"
    Now, I admit that in this case the "easter eggs" are encoded (albeit, very rudimentally), so perhaps a better comparison would be if the chocolate easter eggs were made to resemble various household items (i.e.: Chocolate ashtray, with a picture of an easter egg stamped on the bottom, etc.)

    Just my thoughts on the matter.

  • GIFS (Score:3)

    by Signal 11 ( 7608 ) on Friday January 14, 2000 @05:26AM (#1373409)

    It's likely hidden inside a .gif or .jpeg on the least-significant bit. Take each bit, put them in groups of 8 (usually) or 16 to form bytes. Then it's simply a matter of determining if it's noise or actual data. I will assume they made it fairly easy. Grab a mirroring utility, and a quick C program combined with linux' find utility should make this contest a snap. Assuming, of course, I'm right. =) If this was meant for the general public and not geeks, mirror the site and start a greppin' for html comment tags and ALT tags.

  • Slashdot like distributed.net? (Score:3)

    by generic ( 14144 ) on Friday January 14, 2000 @05:36AM (#1373410)
    I wonder if slashdot can be used as like a 500,000 nerd clustered code breaking computer? Think about it 500,000 people with backgrounds in everything from math, programming, physics chemistry etc.. Have all of them look at one problem like a puzzle and report their findings on a forum.

  • Pay scales....? (Score:3)

    by dr_labrat ( 15478 ) <spooner@g m a i l .com> on Friday January 14, 2000 @05:11AM (#1373411) Homepage
    How the hell did bond get all those cool tuxedoes and gamble so much.....

    Did you check out the pay scales...? £24k per *annum*....

    Christ.... No wonder the british empire is in the state it is.

    Either that or they have been on a pay freeze since the sixties... In which case supervillans have the edge now then.....

  • Here's one - if anyone's interested (Score:3)

    by wangi ( 16741 ) on Friday January 14, 2000 @05:02AM (#1373412) Homepage
    http://www.gchq.gov.uk/careers/job6.html [gchq.gov.uk] contains a passage of morse on the 2nd line:
    --- .-- .- .--. .--.
    That translates to OWAPP...
  • Easier to read if you view source.

    That is how I found it.

  • Re:Here's one - if anyone's interested (Score:3)

    by Kintanon ( 65528 ) on Friday January 14, 2000 @05:26AM (#1373414) Homepage Journal
    The answer is 'You found it now apply for a job!'
    Slashdot them.


    Kintanon

  • Not a PPK (Score:3)

    by razzmataz ( 69616 ) on Friday January 14, 2000 @05:30AM (#1373415) Homepage
    The British Secret Service doesn't use the PPK any more, they use the HK VP-70M. Seen a recent Bond movie lately? The pistol Bond now has is a VP-70M, not a PPK. But then again, this is a nitpick, and not relevant.
  • Here's a summary of The Collected Slashdot Wisdom:

    Solution:

    WELLD
    ONE-N
    OWAPP
    LYFOR
    AJOB!

    http://www.gchq.gov.uk/careers/job5.html
    Source comment on top, "23 05 12 12 04"
    WELLD

    http://www.gchq.gov.uk/careers/index.html
    go to linguists
    http://www.gchq.gov.uk/careers/jobs10.html
    alt tag for "salary" is "OHE - H" (typo?)

    http://www.gchq.gov.uk/careers/job6.html
    graphic has Morse code:
    http://www.gchq.gov.uk/images/job6.gif
    Morse: dashdashdash dotdashdash dotdash dotdashdashdot dotdashdashdot
    OWAPP

    http://www.gchq.gov.uk/about/technology.html
    hidden by coloring, easily seen by view-source
    01001100 01011001 01000110 01001111 01010010
    LYFOR

    http://www.gchq.gov.uk/apply/index.html or
    http://www.gchq.gov.uk/apply/gchq_top_bar.htm
    mouse over logo, which is
    http://www.gchq.gov.uk/images/ajob.gif
    "AJOB!"

  • POSITION VACANCY : James Bond (Score:4)

    by RuntimeError ( 132945 ) on Friday January 14, 2000 @05:06AM (#1373417)
    We are looking for suitable commited and hardworking candidates for the post of James Bond, 007.

    Minimum Qualifications

    1. Ability to bed three women during one assignment - Preference for Big Breasted Blonde Bimbos an advantage.
    2. Ability get out of seemingly deadly but ludicrously simple situations.
    3. Accept the existence of Cold war, KGB and the Soviet Empire.
    4. Quick wit, but half will do (apologies to R)

      Dress Code: Tuxedo

      Please email your application to m@mi5.mil.uk

  • WELLD
    ONE!N
    OWAPP
    LYFOR
    AJOB!

    WELL DONE NOW! APPLY FOR A JOB!

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