RutSum

IEEE Code Breaking Event - Encryptopedia (at DCE)

The IEEE guys at my college recently hosted an on-the-spot code breaking event called ‘Encryptopedia’ on August 20, 2008. I had seen posters for this event around the campus before, but because I considered it to be a waste of time, I ignored it. Just about an hour before the event, these IEEE guys came into my class and told us that it was a general event based on IQ and no tech knowledge whatsoever was required. The participation was only in teams of 2, so I paired up with Sneezy and went to the Computer Centre to take part in the prelims.

The prelims were written, and consisted of about 20-25 general and IQ based questions, majorly consisting of number patterns and lateral thinking puzzles. This was a 15 minute round and around 126 teams participated in it (This was the number I heard from one of the IEEE guys, but I don’t know the exact and official number). After the prelims were over, we got an SMS from the IEEE crew that we had qualified and had to report at the Computer Centre for the finals. We had to miss a Physics practical and reach the Computer Centre. The final round was on Computers, and was more or less another in the series of KlueLESS, Hackslash, HackThisSite, and Hack4U. The only difference here was the basis of code breaking - It was IQ and general knowledge rather than knowledge of HTML, Javascript or other commonly used algorithms/reverse engineering. The contest started with a given webpage, and the aim of the contest was to break the code using the given hints, entering a password to advance to the next level. There were 13 such levels, and the time given was around 1 and a half hour (don’t exactly remember when it started but ended at 3:30 pm). We broke 11 levels of the 13 levels in minimum amount of time and therefore, finished first.

I must say that I was very impressed by the level of the puzzles and it was far more interesting than I expected to come out of something at my otherwise boring college. Some of the levels were very tricky and we got stuck on them for long periods of time. Others were very easy and took seconds to break. The thing that pleased me the most was the constant applaud that we got from the IEEE guys who were watching us break level after level in no time. Overall, it was quite a thrilling and interesting contest. The posters mentioned ‘lots of cash prizes’ for the winners, but we are still to receive any kind of prize. Lets just hope we do get a prize .

Official Encryptopedia Thread at DCETech.com


Play Encryptopedia Online

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