Ancient Roman generals relied on this ingenious cipher to protect their most sensitive battle plans and strategic communications. 🛡️ What stumped enemy cryptographers for centuries now challenges modern code breakers to uncover hidden messages through mathematical precision and pattern analysis. 🔍 Master the techniques that shaped the foundation of modern cryptography and prove your skills against this timeless encryption method! ⚔️
The challenge presents this encrypted flag:
Encrypted: 364m41i4-hjk6-4002-904i-6186mkijl3m3
Notice that numbers and hyphens remain unchanged, while only letters are encrypted.
The correct shift value is 7. This means each letter was moved forward 7 positions in the alphabet during encryption.
Let's decode each letter step by step:
Position | Encrypted | Shift Back 7 | Decrypted |
---|---|---|---|
4th | m | m(-7) = f | f |
7th | i | i(-7) = b | b |
10th | h | h(-7) = a | a |
11th | j | j(-7) = c | c |
12th | k | k(-7) = d | d |
17th | i | i(-7) = b | b |
22nd | m | m(-7) = f | f |
23rd | k | k(-7) = d | d |
24th | i | i(-7) = b | b |
25th | j | j(-7) = c | c |
26th | l | l(-7) = e | e |
28th | m | m(-7) = f | f |
29th | m | m(-7) = f | f |
Applying the shift of -7 to all encrypted letters:
The decrypted result is a valid UUID format containing only hexadecimal characters (0-9, a-f):
You could also solve this using:
// JavaScript in browser console
let cipher = '364m41i4-hjk6-4002-904i-6186mkijl3m3';
let decoded = cipher.replace(/[a-z]/g, char =>
String.fromCharCode((char.charCodeAt(0) - 97 - 7 + 26) % 26 + 97)
);
console.log(decoded); // 364f41b4-acd6-4002-904b-6186fdbce3f3
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