Saturday, July 02, 2011

[onyfwmxa] World's most difficult puzzle

A simple app idea, kind of a joke.

The app presents 128 buttons and 128 lights corresponding to one 128-bit block of AES, and the player is challenged to turn all the lights on.

If you can solve it, the NSA would like a word with you.

Many modes possible. Here is one.

Random unshown key.  Lights show ciphertext.  Buttons toggle plaintext bits.  Initial state: plaintext buttons set to decryption of all-zeros ciphertext, so all lights are off.  Target is to enter the plaintext which yields the all-ones (all lights on) ciphertext.

With the ability to set the key manually and decrypt, it becomes a silly yet functional real cipher implementation.

Another variation for hashes: the player enters bits one by one to try to generate the all 1s checksum.

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