MysteryTwister.org has offered riddles about cryptography for more than 15 years. Now the website appears in a modern design with new features. The aim is to reach new target audiences, who want to solve exciting challenges – for instance using their mobile phone. Members of the MysteryTwister community can now exchange information in the newly established Discord server. Next on the agenda are interactive tutorials that utilize the challenges to teach beginners the basics of cryptanalysis.
Historically grown
Originally founded as a design study called “A Crypto Challenge by CrypTool”, MysteryTwister replaced the well-known MysteryTwister site by Professor Dobbertin. Today, MysteryTwister is part of the CrypTool project (CrypTool.org) and is supported and continuously developed by the Chair of Cryptanalysis at RUB and the CASA Cluster of Excellence.
MysteryTwister.org offers up to 400 puzzles in four different levels of difficulty. This is where interested parties can put their skills in cracking codes and ciphers to the test. Over 10,000 people from all over the world have already taken part -- from students to practitioners and researchers.
Exciting challenges
From A for AES to Z for Zodiac encryption -- the challenges in MysteryTwister cover various topics in cryptology and appeal to both beginners and experts in the field. The competition is aimed at participants with different levels of experience and different resources. Particularly mysterious are the “Level X” challenges, where even the authors do not know the solution -- which does not mean that the challenges are particularly difficult. Some challenges contained previously lost information, such as the 2013 cracked diaries of the Italian resistance fighter Antonio Marzi from the Second World War. Other challenges accompanied the publication of new procedures on the preprint platform arxiv: they were broken by MysteryTwister members and subsequently improved several times.
Professor Bernhard Esslinger, head of CrypTool and MysteryTwister, summarizes: “With MysteryTwister, however, we not only reach the experienced code breakers, but also pupils, whom we have been able to inspire for STEM subjects with it -- as has been reported back to us several times by their teachers. The continuous development of MysteryTwister makes an important contribution to this.”
General note: In case of using gender-assigning attributes we include all those who consider themselves in this gender regardless of their own biological sex.