Games Entry

[Bill Owens <>]

Raw result:

peoplealwaysmakethebestexploitsiveneverfoundithardtohackmostpeopleifyoulistentothemwatchthemtheirvulnerabilitiesarelikeaneonsignscrewedintotheirheadselliotaldersonmrrobot

With some appropriate punctuation inserted:

“People always make the best exploits. I've never found it hard to hack most people. If you listen to them, watch them, their vulnerabilities are like a neon sign screwed into their head.” Elliot Alderson, Mr Robot

Full crypto text:

xrhtcreeenrwdnoxbuxfvfxxfceszgwbdrgimrvywhghzgltzqmsyngdublxgrsitrbjpbyeqfmiegsmprfarggabuxqkuibzinpervtjvemkviliexpzxitvrhrjvkgapkinrhbvghxyrmkprthjrpeqbmecqikabgqiesuwg

Key: internet (that’s EIGHT characters)

I cracked it by studying Vignere ciphers briefly, then assuming that the odd-length block was likely to be the last one. Paired with the known plaintext ‘robot’, it produced a key fragment ‘netin’. Looking at the length of the remaining blocks (165 characters) it seemed very likely that the key was 8 characters long and had ended in ‘net’, beginning again with ‘in’, and therefore the key was probably ‘internet’. I found that the crypto block beginning with ‘xrhtcr’ was produced when encrypting ‘people’ with ‘intern’, so that confirmed both the key length and the key. I proceeded to decode the rest of that block as ‘peoplealway’, which certainly had to proceed to ‘s’ in the next block; that block therefore had to begin with ‘w’ and added ‘smakethebes’(t). A quick Google search for that phrase found the quote from Mr. Robot, and I used the remainder of the plaintext to reassemble the blocks and decode the entire message.

Bill.