Secure Racing – Cipher 1

I’m a big fan of motor sport; I’m an even bigger fan of ciphers, so when the two are combined together it’s great news for me. Recently I was lucky enough to get an all access pass to Brands Hatch to watch the inaugural race of the new Secure Racing GT Team.

The idea behind the team is to draw attention to Information Security not just in a business sense but in daily life.

For their first race they hide a cipher on the car for the public to break. I was lucky enough to be one of the first to see it.

It was easy enough to break but I wanted to write this little tutorial for those who didn’t manage to break it.

Here is where the cipher was “hidden”, if you’d like to see more images of the cipher and the car then please visit their photos page.

This is the entire cipher text as it was displayed on the car. You’ll notice the zigzag pattern of the binary blocks, so all you have to do is follow the pattern.

If you have followed the pattern correctly then you should have ended up with the following:

Line 2           Line 5   Line 4           Line 6           Line 2   Line 4           Line 3   Line 1
0110011101101111 01101111 0010111001100111 0110110000101111 01111001 0011100001001100 00110011 01010001

The next step is to convert the binary to ASCII (human readable text in non technical jargon). You can either use a lookup table or find an online converter.

Once you have converted the binary you will end up with the following clear text, goo.gl/y8L3Q it should be clear that this is a minified web link. Clicking on the link you will be redirected to the following web site http://www.secureracing.org/c1ph3rh4x/.

Once there you will be presented with the following text:

CNRT.ELO.OWR.OSEN.O.NTEPTAEPES.MI.OTC@EUEAIGC.KOGASW.OKFRADT.EIGYUI.H.ILN!LAEEALCNATSCRRCN.OU

Remember this is a cipher challenge so they must have used some sort of cipher to encrypt the text. The clue as to what cipher they used can be found in how the binary was placed on the car i.e. a zigzag pattern. As it turns out there is a cipher that works in a zigzag pattern it’s called a Railfence cipher.

The minimum number of rails you can have to encrypt the text is 2 rails, so we’ll start there, the basic process is as follows split the encrypted text in the middle, place the first half on top and the second on the bottom as shown below.

C N R T . E L O . O W R . O S E N . O . N T E P T A E P E S . M I . O T C @ E U E A I G C . K
 O G A S W . O K F R A D T . E I G Y U I . H . I L N ! L A E E A L C N A T S C R R C N . O U

If you have followed this process correctly you will end up with the following and that is the message you needed to send to the organisers.

CONGRATS.WE.LOOK.FORWARD.TO.SEEING.YOU.IN.THE.PITLANE!PLEASE.EMAIL.CONTACT@SECURERACING.CO.UK

Note: The competition has now finished so please don’t email this in.

Conclusion

I had a great time at Brands Hatch and this was a fun cipher to break. I’d like to thank Secure Racing for the pass and the team for organising the day. I hope you’ve enjoyed this tutorial and if you wish to learn more please visit the links provided.