13th Labour makes my head go boom...

Ok, so I've been really bored at work lately. More so than usual. It's been slow, so slow in fact that I find myself on the phones for about 1/8th of my day at work, and the rest is sent surfing the interweb and the blogosphere.

Now I've been reading about Perplex City for awhile now. The first time I saw it advertised on Think Geek I was pretty much hooked. I ordered a few packs recently, and much to my dismay, I found that I had gotten one of the only cards that has been yet to be solved, The 13th Labour. Staring at the card, I could literaly hear the cows on the lower portion of the card laughing at me as I glared at the code before me.

(notice those bastard bovine... I'll show them!)

The card consists of a line of encryption containing a message that the good ol' boys in Perplex City obviously didn't want us to get. Encoded in RC5, whatever is hidden behind this seemingly meaningless mixup of letters and numbers contains undoubtedly one of the most important peices of the $200,000 puzzle. That damned cube is hidden somewhere, and I'm going to find it!

So after hours of online research, all done while at work obviously, have netted me a few clues as to what this card means. Lets examine it in parts:

#1. ) The name - The Thriteenth Labour.



What does it mean? :

There are several explinations for the name of the card that I've seen, but one in particular makes the most sense, so I'm going to explain this one.

First, lets dip into a bit of Greek mythology. Heracles (A.K.A. Hercules), after having been driven insane by that bitch of a goddess Hera, kinda sorta killed his wife and kids. After he'd realized what he did he prayed to Apollo for forgiveness and guidance. Apollo was pissed, and condemed Heracles to 12 years of servitude to Eurystheus, the king of Tiryns and Mycenae. The events to follow are what's known in Greek mythology as The Twelve Labours of Heracles. Basically he had to go through a series of trials to fetch some goodies for the guy, a lot more information can be found here, and it's actually a good read! So, if you're bored at work like I am, take an hour or so and do some research on it, I think you'll enjoy what you find.

Ok, so that explains part of the name, Heracles was sent on these impossible missions that took 12 years to complete. A great symbol for the task laid ahead of anyone who actually intends to decipher the meaning of this card. But there's more to this tale than just some naked guy killing hydras and stuff.

RSA Security, a world leader in cryptography and security has issued a challenge to all who would waste every ounce of their computers processing power. The challenge: Break the codes. A total of 12 RC5 encrypted messages (and one DES, but who cares about that crap? It was cracked in like 23 hours!) have been posted on RSA's site, ranging in encryption from 32bit to 128 bit. Several of these have already been cracked, but that isn't to say that it didn't take a whole hell of a lot to make it happen. In fact, lets talk a little more about Encryption, and exactly what it's going to take to break this code.

#2. ) The Encryption - 64/12/8



First of all, I am not a cryptography expert in any shape or form. Before find this card online and then opening it in a pack, I had no real interest in cryptography. But $200,000 can motivate a lot in me. And I know that there are a whole bunch of other folks out there who want to figure out this thing as much as myself, so I'm putting together as much as I can here to help everyone else out... Ok, so it's more for myself to try and gather my thoughts before I begin the process of decryption, but I'm sure others are getting use out of this too!!!

Please, by all means, if anyone see's any kind of error in my descriptions, or can provide any extra, concise detail that explains this shit better than me, e-mail it to me!

RC5 encryption, like many encryption types, is broken up into three parts:

Block Size -Pretty much, the block size is the number of bits in a string of code.

Key Size -This is the number of possible keys used in a cipher. Essentially, the number listed in this portion is first in binary, and then converted to Bits.

and Rounds - I can't even begin to explain this... and as luck would have it, this is the one segment that isn't explained on any site I've seen. From what I gather, a round is the number of passes the keys go through before deciphering a single character. Again though, I could be completly wrong. But for shits and giggles, i've encluded the above picture which is supposedly a single round in RC5.

Now, with the above mentioned information, all we have to do is apply it to the encryption. 64/12/8. Each block size is 64bit (or 8bytes), the key size is 12 bits, and the rounds for each pass will be 8. What all this means, I haven't a clue. But I do know one group who does!

#3.) The mad props - 5 cows



This, to the novice, could seem like anything. And me being the novice that I am had no friggin clue as to what those 5 beasts stood foor. But with a little research, I was able to find out that those aren't just cows my friends, They're bovines! Bovine was the code name given by Distributed.net to the project of completing the tasks set forth by RSA. To date, they have completed 2 of the 12 RC5 decryption tests given by them, and is currently pumping away at the 3rd.

The first was a rc5-32 ( short for RC5- 32/12/7 ) and took 250 days to uncover. Now, this isn't exact math, but RC5-32 seems to me that it should be half as hard as the next task they undertook. But for some reason, it took far longer than expected.

The second challenge they opted to take part in was the RC5-64 bit test. This, again, seems like it should only be twice as hard as the RC5-32 bit test, but it proved to be much... much more difficult. Using the same method as they did with the last test, they garnerd the help of every individual who would be willing to assist. By spreading work out amungst many computers, and haivng 1 or 2 central units keeping track of finished data, they would be able to get this information much faster than if they had 1 computer doing all the work. 600,000 + computers where recorded as helping out with the RC5-64 decryption, but even with all of that help, it still took 1, 757 days to crack this puzzle. that's almost 5 solid years of work to get a 6 word, 29 character phrase deciphered...

Which brings me to the final section of this card.

#4.) The Code - 176 characters of pure madness.



6 times as many characters as the test issued by RSA. Not that that particularily matters, because it's going to be the same sequence that uncovers all the letters regaurdless. But what this does mean, is that with the average english word being 5 letters, we have approximatly 35 words hidden in this cipher. Who knows what mysteries it holds!!!

If you found this at all interesting, then I beg of you... Assist the guys over at Assult on Thirteenth Labour. By singing up for their site, downloading the client, and running it when your computer isn't being used, you're going to help all of us figured out what's hidden behind this card. They are offering prizes to anyone who figures it out, and for what I've seen of them, they're pretty nice! Some complete sets of card colours, and some unopened packs.

Not to mention, if you do manage to crack it, you'll be the first to know the truth behind...

The Thirteenth Labour.

DUN DUN DUN!!!!

P.S. Expect updates to this as I learn more about this cryptic card. Also, feel free to leave your input in the comments section!

P.P.S. (hehe... I said peepee...) On a side note, not that I actually think it's related at all to the card, but there's a puzzle currently being distributed by Pentangle Puzzles named The 13th Labour of Hercules.



Kinda makes you wonder if there's any connection between that puzzle, and a certain cube I've been trying to find....