Thursday, July 8, 2010

Heraldry in the News! Part Two

Well, that didn't take long.  All of a little over three hours, in fact.  (I'm way too slow.  No tee shirt for me, I guess.  Then again, "Dammit, Jim, I'm a herald, not a hacker.")

The mysterious code in the United States Cyber Command logo has been cracked.  The story broke at: http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/07/code-cracked-cyber-command-logos-mystery-solved/?npu=1&mbid=yhp

Danger Room reader jemelehill figured out the odd string of letters and numbers in the logo of the U.S. military’s new Cyber Command. Turns out, it _is_ the new unit’s mission statement, translated into 32 digits with the md5 cryptographic hash:

USCYBERCOM plans, coordinates, integrates, synchronizes, and conducts activities to: direct the operations and defense of specified Department of Defense information networks and; prepare to, and when directed, conduct full-spectrum military cyberspace operations in order to enable actions in all domains, ensure freedom of action in cyberspace for the U.S. and its allies, and deny the same to adversaries.
Other commenters eventually figured it out (especially after jemelehill’s solution made it to all the databases of cracked hashes). But others continued to offer their own tongue-in-cheek guesses:

“If you can read this, send your resume to jobs@nsa.gov.”
“I’m sorry, Dave. I’m afraid I can’t do that.”
“If the intelligence community is a family, think of us as the uncle no one talks about.”
“Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra”
“In God We Trust All Others We Monitor”

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