The Cicada 3301 puzzles started to appear on 4chan in 2012, claiming to be a test to find "highly intelligent individuals" — but no one knows who posted these puzzles or why.
Cicada 3301One of the Cicada 3301 messages.
The mystery of Cicada 3301 began with an Internet message posted by a user named 3301: “Hello. We are looking for highly intelligent individuals. To find them, we have devised a test. There is a message hidden in this image. Find it, and it will lead you on the road to finding us. We look forward to meeting the few that will make it all the way through. Good luck.”
Posted to 4chan’s /x/ board on Jan 4. 2012, this message marked the beginning of what many would hail as the Internet’s greatest mystery: Cicada 3301. No one knew who “3301” was or why, exactly, the user was seemingly recruiting puzzle solvers via 4chan. But these questions only made participants more interested in finding out.
Several theories soon emerged. Some believed that the puzzle had been posted by intelligence agencies seeking out prospective talent or by a mysterious Illuminati-like organization recruiting members. Others believed that they were some kind of academic research, or possibly the early stages of an alternate reality game, a.k.a. an “A.R.G.”
What was clear from the start was that the Cicada 3301 puzzles were extremely complex. They incorporated elements from diverse fields, including cryptography, number theory, philosophy and esoteric knowledge, computer programming, and literature, particularly the works of William Blake. They were dispersed in three stages — one in 2012, a second in 2013, and a third in 2014 — and though some individuals managed to solve parts of the puzzles, few made it to the final stages.
Those who did reportedly received private communications and were invited to collaborate on undisclosed projects. But much about Cicada 3301, including who posted the puzzles, remains a mystery.
The First Cicada 3301 Puzzle Appears Online
Cicada 3301The first post from Cicada 3301 on 4chan.
The Cicada 3301 puzzle begun the moment 3301 posted on 4chan. The hint was right there in plain writing: “There is a message hidden in this image.”
Originally, 4chan users were unsure how serious 3301’s post was. The online forum had long been a somewhat popular and controversial site for discussion — as well as illegal content, hate speech, harassment campaigns, and birthing the radicalizing QAnon conspiracy theory.
Regardless, the Cicada 3301 post gained a fair amount of attention, and many who attempted to solve the first puzzle simply to see if they could.
“Initially, I just thought it would be a nice little brainteaser,” Swedish developer and cryptosecurity researcher Joel Eriksson told Fast Company in 2014. Eriksson was one of the few people who solved the initial puzzle.
He continued: “I’ve always been interested in anything that can challenge me, and I never give up. In the case of Cicada, the puzzle in question turned out to be a lot more than I thought it would be when I started.”
Marcus Wanner, a 15-year-old who was among the first wave of puzzle solvers, was also able to solve the first Cicada 3301 puzzle thanks in part to a community of participants who referred to themselves as team #decipher.
Solving the puzzle became an obsession, Wanner told Rolling Stone in 2013: “[My mother] got sick of me not showing up for meals because I was passed out from exhaustion.”
Ciphers, Decoys, And A Mysterious Voicemail
Opening that initial image in a steganography program revealed a hidden text message that included a string of numbers and the words “Tiberius Claudius Caesar” — a sign that indicated the use of a Caesar cipher. When decoded, it provided a URL which led to an Imgur image of a duck.
Keen-eyed puzzle solvers recognized the duck for what it really was: a decoy. But two words in the image — “out” and “guess” — suggested to puzzle solvers that they should use another steganography program called OutGuess, which produced a hidden book code that subsequently led to a Reddit URL with Mayan numerals at the top of the page.
Cicada 3301Many Cicada 3301 puzzle solvers came across this image of a duck — which was actually a “decoy.”
From there came more hidden messages and more riddles leading to another string of digits. These happened to be a phone number in Texas, which, when called, led to a voicemail:
“Very good. You have done well. There are three prime numbers associated with the original final.jpg image. 3301 is one of them. You will have to find the other two. Multiply all three of these numbers together and add a .com to find the next step. Good luck. Goodbye.”
Doing the math led to another website with a countdown and an image of a cicada. After the countdown ended, the site showed a series of GPS coordinates that led to telephone poles in countries across the globe, including Spain, Russia, the United States, France, Japan, and Poland, all of which had physical posters with a QR code.
That QR code led to an anonymous darknet page via Tor, but after some time, the puzzle funneled down to a “private phase.” But the people behind Cicada 3301 expressed disappointment that most people only reached the site because they worked in groups — not individually — and effectively shut out anyone who made it that far after a certain date. That included solvers like Eriksson.
“It was quite disappointing,” Eriksson says. “Especially considering that the people who registered in time were mostly ones that had not actually solved much of the puzzles themselves. People were sharing solutions and collaborating a bit too much.”
But while Eriksson’s journey came to an end there, for others it kept going, at least, in theory. If they continued on, they’ve remained relatively tight-lipped about what followed. Other than a few unsubstantiated leaks, the identities of the people behind Cicada 3301 are still unknown.
What Is Cicada 3301 And Who Created It?
Cicada 3301A Cicada 3301 poster in Warsaw.
One month after the first post appeared on 4chan, Wanner — and presumably, others who had solved the puzzle — received a curious email from 3301, addressing some of the questions while remaining frustratingly vague.
According to the email, 3301 is an international group with no real name, symbol, or membership roster. They claimed to be a group of individuals who have “proven” themselves and were “drawn together by common beliefs.” The email asserted that they were not a hacker group, nor were they engaged in illegal activity.
“You are undoubtedly wondering what it is that we do,” it reads. “We are much like a think tank, in that our primary focus is on researching and developing techniques to aid the ideas we advocate: liberty, privacy, security.”
Those who responded to this email with answers deemed honest and in alignment with these values were reportedly contacted again and put into a chatroom of sorts with other prospective recruits. They said 3301 was started by a group of friends and then gradually expanded to include like-minded people from across the globe, with no specific ties to any one agency or government.
Their goals were supposedly to increase privacy and security in the “Digital Age” and ensure the freedom of information.
“They wanted to make it seem like they were this network of people that had ‘infiltrated,’ if that’s the right word, various private and public organizations,” another member of team #decipher, who used the pseudonym Tekknolagi, told Fast Company in a follow-up piece.
But of this new “brood” of recruits — the phrasing here specifically meant to refer to broods of cicadas — only Wanner continued to visit the secret forum months on. His excitement over collaborating on software with other puzzle solvers faded, and he asked 3301 to recruit new members.
They told him they would.
Cicada 3301The image posted for the second round of puzzles in 2013.
Then, a year after the first puzzle was posted, 3301 dropped a second round of puzzles. Once again, a prospective collection of puzzle solvers took up the challenge.
The Remaining Mysteries Of Cicada 3301
Cicada 3301The Cicada 3301 “epiphany” post.
The 2013 follow-up puzzles proved to be even more difficult, incorporating the writings of occultist Aleister Crowley, embedding riddles in songs and paintings, and leading people to seek out more QR code-stapled telephone poles.
This time, it seemed as if no one could solve the puzzle. Wanner didn’t meet any of the new brood, and before long, he was unable to log back onto the darknet site. The site was simply gone.
Then, on Jan. 6, 2014, a Twitter account using the handle @1231507051321 posted a cryptic, Cicada-like message: “Epiphany is upon you. Your pilgrimage has begun. Enlightenment awaits.” More than a decade on, it seems no one has solved this third set of puzzles, though people certainly haven’t stopped trying.
Cicada 3301A Cicada 3301 post referring to Aleister Crowley’s Liber Primus.
Cicada 3301, for their part, have mostly been quiet, other than a few highly obscure messages in 2015, 2016, and 2017. The 2017 message seems to have just been a warning to stay on track, effectively telling solvers to keep working at it, but beyond that there have not been any other major developments in the story.
Theories about who the identity of Cicada 3301 continue to be discussed, but some of the wilder theories have been tempered as some of the messages from solvers leaked. Are Cicada 3301 members actually extraterrestrials? No, probably not. Are they recruiting people for government agencies? Also unlikely, given Wanner’s experience and 3301’s own admission that they were international and unaffiliated with any government.
Cicada 3301Runes from the Liber Primus, which contain a clue to the third set of Cicada puzzles.
This seems to be an Occam’s razor situation — the simplest explanation is the closest to the truth. Cicada 3301 most likely did begin as a small group of intelligent, like-minded people who decided to expand, with the goal of creating software together — they did, after all, ask Wanner to code software — for the sake of cybersecurity and protecting the freedom of information.
Perhaps one day, the final puzzle will be solved or members of 3301 will step out into the light. Until then, Cicada 3301 continues to be one of the Internet’s greatest mysteries.
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