Cicada 3301
Internet puzzle and mystery
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| June 2024 | A ransomware group calling themselves Cicada 3301 begins spreading ransomware, possibly reusing the original group's name. |
| 2021 | Dark Web: Cicada 3301, a comedy-thriller film directed by Alan Ritchson, was released. The film follows a hacker participating in Cicada's recruitment game while evading the NSA. |
| 2017 | Assassin's Creed Origins video game references Cicada 3301 through a member of the Isu civilization mentioning the organization among historical mysteries. |
| April 2017 | Cicada 3301 posts their last verified OpenPGP-signed message, denying the validity of any unsigned puzzle. |
| January 5 2016 | A new clue is posted on Twitter, slightly deviating from the previous January 4th timeline. |
| July 2015 | A group calling themselves '3301' hacked into Planned Parenthood's database, which Cicada 3301 publicly denied any association with through a PGP-signed statement. |
| January 4 2015 | No new puzzles are published, breaking the previous annual pattern. |
| 2014 | The United States Navy released Project Architeuthis, a cryptographic challenge based on the Cicada 3301 recruitment puzzles. |
| 2014 | The television show Person of Interest aired the episode 'Nautilus', featuring a fictional puzzle game inspired by Cicada 3301's cryptographic challenges. |
| 2014 | Another puzzle was released by Cicada 3301, maintaining their pattern of annual cryptographic challenges aimed at identifying and recruiting highly skilled individuals. |
| January 4 2014 | Third round of puzzles begins after confirmation of a new clue posted on Twitter. The third puzzle remains unsolved. |
| 2013 | Marcus Wanner solved the first Cicada 3301 puzzle. Those who solved the puzzles were questioned about their stance on information freedom, online privacy, and censorship. Satisfactory respondents were invited to a private forum and tasked with devising a project to further the group's ideals. |
| January 4 2013 | Second round of Cicada 3301 puzzles begins, following the pattern established in the previous year. |
| January 4 2012 | First Cicada 3301 puzzle begins on 4chan, running for nearly a month. This initial puzzle marks the start of an elaborate online cryptographic challenge aimed at recruiting 'intelligent individuals'. |
This contents of the box above is based on material from the Wikipedia article Cicada 3301, which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.