DARK WEB: Cicada 3301

Speaker 2 I'm not gonna lie, I'm a sucker for puzzles.

Speaker 4 Crosswords, Wordle, escape rooms.

Speaker 2 I mean, which of my 90s kids remember that impossible computer puzzle game, Minesweeper?

Speaker 7 You name it, I'm in.

Speaker 9 And the more challenging, the better, right?

Speaker 13 Like, there's something nice about giving your brain a little workout.

Speaker 15 Now that I think about it, maybe that's why I'm so fascinated by true crime.

Speaker 18 It's sort of the ultimate puzzle.

Speaker 19 A chance to put the clues together, examine the evidence, and try to figure out who done it.

Speaker 23 I know I'm not alone here.

Speaker 24 These things can be impossible to resist.

Speaker 25 But I bet only a handful of you took a stab at this one puzzle that took the internet by storm back in 2012.

Speaker 19 It was posted by a mysterious group known only as Cicada 3301.

Speaker 29 Now, I cannot overstate how complex this game was, and the people who tried to solve it were totally addicted. It took over their lives, even caused injuries to some people.

Speaker 29 Nobody knew what this game was for or what Cicada 3301 was trying to accomplish by posting it.

Speaker 29 But the people who solved it found themselves pulled into a strange, secretive organization with murky intentions.

Speaker 29 Was it a government agency, a cult, or some twisted terrorist group? People still aren't sure. But whoever they are, they might still be operating today.

Speaker 29 I'm Ashley Flowers, and this is so supernatural.

Speaker 33 Now you're probably wondering why I'm still here, why I haven't passed the mic or the torch back to Rasha and Yvette yet.

Speaker 37 But just know that your ears aren't playing tricks on you.

Speaker 27 I'm gonna stick around for this entire story because it is one of those internet mysteries that has me absolutely stumped.

Speaker 28 So today, we're talking about a top secret organization called Cicada 3301, who posted a series of puzzles online beginning in 2012.

Speaker 32 The people who solved their riddles got an invitation to join them, but even once they were inside, they had no idea who cicada was or what their intentions were only that they planned to change the entire world

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Speaker 14 It's 2012.

Speaker 33 The iPhone 5 has just been announced.

Speaker 17 Facebook is going public.

Speaker 15 Pinterest, Twitter, and Instagram are all thriving.

Speaker 26 Meanwhile, one little corner of the internet is about to have its own moment in history, a website called 4chan, to be specific.

Speaker 11 Now, for those of you who don't know, 4chan is an online message board, kind of like Reddit, except on 4chan, anything goes.

Speaker 5 Really, there are basically no rules.

Speaker 12 People can post adult content, hate speech, even live stream violent crimes.

Speaker 38 It is the wild west.

Speaker 34 But in all fairness, there's a lot of safe-for-work chats too, like the Science and Math channel.

Speaker 14 It has everything from nerdy memes and games to advice on what jobs to get with a science or math degree.

Speaker 58 But on January 4th, 2012, a post appears that sort of changes the landscape of this forum entirely.

Speaker 57 Like a lot of 4chan threads, it's started by an anonymous user.

Speaker 60 The post contains an image of a black box with text and an image of a cicada all in white.

Speaker 30 And it says,

Speaker 42 hello, we are looking for highly intelligent individuals.

Speaker 9 To find them, we have devised a test.

Speaker 43 There is a message hidden in this image. Find it and it will lead you on the road to finding us.

Speaker 43 We look forward to meeting the few that will make it all the way through.

Speaker 43 Good luck. 3301

Speaker 62 A puzzle like this is catnip for any of those math and science fans, especially when you say you're looking for highly intelligent individuals.

Speaker 23 Everyone is going to want to prove that they're smart enough to solve the puzzle.

Speaker 11 And reportedly, thousands of people answer the call trying to figure out what the secret message is.

Speaker 31 Within hours of this thread going up, there is a brand new forum on 4chan specifically for people to talk about this puzzle.

Speaker 7 They can share what they've tried already, what's working or not working, and theories about who created the original post.

Speaker 62 Apparently, some people have already run the image through programs that are designed to detect hidden messages, but they turn up nothing.

Speaker 56 There doesn't seem to be anything hidden in the background of the image either.

Speaker 52 But within a day, someone solves it.

Speaker 41 Sort of.

Speaker 60 Now, fair warning, this gets technical, but I'm going to explain this in the simplest way possible.

Speaker 38 Basically, this guy who will be identified by a pseudonym, tech, he downloads the image.

Speaker 56 Then he opens it in Notepad, a program that usually can't open images.

Speaker 9 So instead, he gets a string of words, pretty much gibberish, popping up on his screen.

Speaker 13 That's when he sees the words, Tiberius Claudius Caesar, followed by other random looking numbers and letters.

Speaker 20 Now, if you're a history buff, or even if you're not, you probably recognize this as the name of the Roman emperor. But here is where it gets interesting.

Speaker 60 Caesar is also the name of an ancient code.

Speaker 13 During the days of Emperor Julius Caesar, the military used it to send secret messages.

Speaker 38 So Tech assumes that the phrase Tiberius Claudius Caesar is a clue, and that he should use the Caesar code to decipher the random string of nonsense that comes after.

Speaker 50 And it works.

Speaker 11 He finds a URL for a website.

Speaker 32 But when that page loads, it doesn't say, great job, you've solved it. Not even close.

Speaker 52 Instead, it shows another image.

Speaker 61 This time, it's in color.

Speaker 33 A wooden duck with text that says, whoops, in all caps, just decoys this way, looks like you can't guess how to get the message out.

Speaker 46 Now, at first, it sounds like maybe this is just another dead end.

Speaker 38 Except a group of other 4chan users figures that maybe this is actually just another puzzle.

Speaker 9 That's where things stand for three more days.

Speaker 19 People have found the duck image, but they don't know how to solve it.

Speaker 14 That's when a 15-year-old boy named Marcus Wanner gets into the game.

Speaker 20 Now, as you can probably guess from his age, Marcus is a high school student.

Speaker 14 He lives at home outside of Roanoke, Virginia.

Speaker 15 His parents are devout Catholics and they are very strict.

Speaker 25 which means that they keep close tabs on what he does online, or at least they think they do.

Speaker 5 Truth is, Marcus is really good with computers.

Speaker 13 And while his mom and dad don't approve of him visiting websites like 4chan, he still finds a way to go behind their backs and get on the site, all while covering his tracks.

Speaker 66 So Marcus is a little late to the cicada game, but that doesn't stop him from stepping up to the challenge.

Speaker 66 And even though he really knows his way around programming and deciphering stuff, even Marcus is stumped at first.

Speaker 39 So he jumps into the thread with the other code breakers, eventually forming a team with tech and some other 4chan users.

Speaker 14 As far as they can tell, there are no rules against working together.

Speaker 34 So they figure that they might as well pool their resources and collaborate.

Speaker 65 They even make a team name, Pound Decipher.

Speaker 27 At one point, they focus on the text of the duck message, specifically the second sentence.

Speaker 30 Looks like you can't guess how to get the message out.

Speaker 15 There are two words that really stand out to Pound Decipher, the word guess and out.

Speaker 33 That's because there is a code breaking program called out guess.

Speaker 64 So they plug this duck image into that and check for hidden messages.

Speaker 33 And sure enough, there's another clue in there, this time a list of numbers.

Speaker 64 which means that the solution to the puzzle is yet another puzzle.

Speaker 12 That's gonna be a reoccurring theme for the rest of this game.

Speaker 46 Each time Marcus completes one puzzle, he realizes there's another, then another.

Speaker 2 Eventually though, Marcus finds a signature while unraveling one of these riddles.

Speaker 33 It says, Cicada 3301.

Speaker 11 So Marcus wonders, is he getting close to figuring out the author of these things?

Speaker 33 He still doesn't know if Cicada is a single person or if they're a business, a government agency, a secret society, or something else entirely.

Speaker 25 But he is obsessed with finding out.

Speaker 5 He pulls all-nighters, dropping the important stuff like homework and piano lessons.

Speaker 62 He's falling asleep at all hours of the day and missing out on time with his family.

Speaker 11 Meanwhile, the Cicada puzzles are getting more complicated and bigger with each and every step.

Speaker 68 They're even leaving the internet and popping up in real life.

Speaker 13 At one point, players have to scan QR codes that are posted on lampposts all over the world.

Speaker 58 I mean, think major cities like Miami, Paris, and Seoul.

Speaker 54 So whoever created the codes has the ability to get to all those cities.

Speaker 61 Some players are even getting phone calls, even though they never publicly shared their numbers.

Speaker 19 Other players seem to just disappear without a trace.

Speaker 15 Like one day they're posting actively, the next, they're just gone.

Speaker 61 Maybe they solved it and got whisked off to wherever Cicada 3301 is operating, or maybe they were eliminated for knowing too much.

Speaker 12 Now players are starting to get nervous, wondering if Cicada is somehow putting them in danger.

Speaker 27 It's enough to scare some people off entirely.

Speaker 61 One by one, the code breakers drop out.

Speaker 14 While thousands of people were trying to solve the riddles at first, that number has dwindled to a few dozen by the end of January.

Speaker 13 But Marcus is still one of them.

Speaker 30 He's determined to finish the puzzles and see what's at the end.

Speaker 27 And on February 6th, 2012, he does it.

Speaker 25 He cracks that final riddle.

Speaker 11 And that day, he gets an email from Cicada3301.

Speaker 33 They're happy with everything he's done.

Speaker 42 Happy enough that they want Marcus to join them.

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Speaker 31 In February 2012, 15-year-old Marcus Wanner gets an email inviting him to join Cicada 3301.

Speaker 34 But there's a catch.

Speaker 13 Marcus can only be a member if he agrees to abide by their rules and their values.

Speaker 54 Except, Marcus doesn't know what those values are, let alone who these people are.

Speaker 33 They've been so secretive this entire time.

Speaker 46 After a few emails back and forth, Marcus gets a few answers though.

Speaker 47 Cicada explains that they care about privacy, they oppose censorship, they fight tyranny, and they don't do anything illegal.

Speaker 13 But their responses are pretty vague and they don't answer a lot of Marcus's follow-up questions.

Speaker 56 However, on February 28th, after almost a full month of emailing, they do send Marcus a link.

Speaker 4 It lets him sign up for a secret password-protected message board.

Speaker 33 Even though Marcus doesn't know what he's getting himself into, he does go ahead and create a profile.

Speaker 58 He thinks he's about to meet the other members of Cicada 3301.

Speaker 4 Except, all he finds is more secrets and more mysteries.

Speaker 39 There are some high-ranking Cicada leaders on this board, but they don't use their real names or explain who they are.

Speaker 38 They do talk a little bit about the group's history, though.

Speaker 13 Like they say they were founded when a few important people teamed up to promote their values. And again, those goals and values are pretty vague, unclear.

Speaker 34 All Marcus can tell is that they have something to do with privacy, but also with sharing information freely.

Speaker 46 He also learns that up until recently, whenever Cicada recruited new members, they relied on personal referrals.

Speaker 61 Existing members only brought in people they knew personally, people they thought would be a good fit and were trustworthy.

Speaker 38 Except recently, they realized they needed members who were more computer savvy, who understood the ins and outs of programming, which is why they posted all of those puzzles online to expand their circle and bring in the best of the best, which just rings a little false to Marcus.

Speaker 14 In his mind, you wouldn't be able to design those super complicated puzzles in the first place without a pretty strong tech background.

Speaker 14 So he thinks Cicada must already have some excellent programmers, which begs the question, why do they need more?

Speaker 31 There's one other key piece of information that Marcus learns.

Speaker 58 Apparently, Cicada keeps their inner workings very secret, even from its own members.

Speaker 7 Nobody knows for sure how many of them there are.

Speaker 27 or what everyone is up to.

Speaker 14 Instead, the organization is broken up into little subdivisions called broods.

Speaker 10 So members might know who is in their own brood, but they don't know how many broods there are total or what other broods are up to.

Speaker 27 Now, all of the people in this one particular online forum are Marcus's brood.

Speaker 14 There are roughly 20 of them, and Marcus recognizes about half of the usernames.

Speaker 61 A ton of the new recruits were part of Pound Decipher.

Speaker 14 So they're Marcus's friends, some he knows well enough to have their phone numbers, and others he knows nothing about.

Speaker 46 At first, they're all active on the forum, waiting for Cicada to tell them what they're supposed to do next.

Speaker 46 But eventually, the leaders say Marcus and the rest of the brood can decide for themselves what their next move is.

Speaker 13 As long as it is aligned with those very vague values I mentioned earlier, it is up to the brood on how they want to spend their time.

Speaker 61 All they have to do is come up with an idea, get the okay, and then they have total freedom to move forward however they want to.

Speaker 71 It's almost like another puzzle.

Speaker 10 Figure out what we want you to do and then do it.

Speaker 27 Well, Marcus and his brood come up with a pretty interesting project.

Speaker 12 It's called Cicada Anonymous Key Escrow System, or CAKES.

Speaker 36 In very simple terms, it's a program that will make it easier and safer for whistleblowers to leak information online.

Speaker 61 So Marcus and and the rest of his brew go to Cicada, explain what it will do, how it will work, and Cicada's like, sounds great, go make it.

Speaker 60 Now, interestingly, 3301 doesn't give them money or any real resources.

Speaker 36 It's all on Marcus and his brood to make cakes a reality in their own time for free.

Speaker 60 Occasionally, Cicada leaders will pop in and give advice and feedback.

Speaker 58 But other than that, it's not clear what the group even offers Marcus or the others.

Speaker 13 Honestly, they they could do this work on their own if they wanted.

Speaker 5 But at this point, they're in so deep, I guess they think maybe the payoff is answers, right?

Speaker 38 Which may be why Cakes becomes Marcus's new obsession.

Speaker 14 All those hours he used to spend solving puzzles now goes into writing code for the program.

Speaker 38 Problem is, he still has no idea how this software will be used when it's finished. So fast forward a little, a few weeks go by, then months.

Speaker 14 And as it turns out, nobody wants to spend their time writing a computer program for mysterious overlords for free.

Speaker 23 So people quit, one by one.

Speaker 14 By the end of 2012 or early 2013, Marcus's brood is down to just him and one of his friends.

Speaker 36 Finally, Marcus has to go to Cicada 3301 leaders and basically say, look, we can't do this on our own.

Speaker 64 If you want to see cakes get finished, we at the very least need more people.

Speaker 33 And the good news is, the higher-ups listen.

Speaker 27 They launch a new puzzle in January of 2013.

Speaker 13 It goes up on the fourth, one year to the day since the very first one appeared on 4chan, by the way.

Speaker 46 And this time, Marcus actually gets to help design some of those puzzles.

Speaker 19 But a few hours before their new game launches, Another anonymous user posts on a message board.

Speaker 27 And there, they drop a bombshell about the group.

Speaker 17 This person writes, I was a part of what you call 3301 slash Cicada for more than a decade.

Speaker 67 And I'm here to warn you, stay away.

Speaker 13 This is a dangerous organization.

Speaker 38 Now, this poster says Cicada doesn't actually care about privacy or anti-censorship at all.

Speaker 27 It's just something the group says in order to make themselves look good.

Speaker 58 The truth is, according to this poster, that Cicada is a cult.

Speaker 14 They only pretend to care about science to trick people into joining.

Speaker 35 The user says that instead of science, Cicada actually believes in something called a global brain.

Speaker 9 The idea is that each human being is like an individual neuron.

Speaker 14 When you put all of them together, they form a more powerful, more intelligent mind.

Speaker 26 One One where everyone's working toward one single purpose.

Speaker 14 Apparently, they worship the global brain like a god from what I can tell.

Speaker 33 They also believe that the ends justify the means.

Speaker 14 In other words, they'll do anything to achieve their goals.

Speaker 27 There's no such thing as right and wrong.

Speaker 30 In fact, reality itself doesn't exist.

Speaker 54 The whole post goes on for pages, and it might be tempting to shrug all of this off, but the poster backs up a lot of their claims with facts.

Speaker 13 They get into Cicada's history and their recruitment practices.

Speaker 20 They say a lot of the same things the leaders told Marcus in that secret forum.

Speaker 27 Except, according to this person, many of those initial members were part of the military.

Speaker 43 Now,

Speaker 38 is it possible this poster was making everything up?

Speaker 17 Sure.

Speaker 33 But there are so many details that are consistent with what Marcus has already been told.

Speaker 27 They seem to really know what they're talking about.

Speaker 13 Which is why there's a lot of debate about this post, known in these circles as the warning.

Speaker 46 Some people take it seriously, others don't.

Speaker 22 As for Marcus, he doesn't believe the warning.

Speaker 20 In fact, he thinks it's a test.

Speaker 57 That Cicada leadership is spreading misinformation about themselves.

Speaker 14 This will drive off code breakers who are more gullible or conspiracy theory minded.

Speaker 33 On top of that, he trusts Cicada and thinks they're doing good work.

Speaker 73 In his mind, Cakes is going to make the world a better place.

Speaker 57 Even if Cicada 3301 has some weird beliefs, everyone will still be better off if he sticks around.

Speaker 1 All he needs is someone to help him.

Speaker 65 And he figures once this latest round of recruitment is over, he'll have plenty of new broodmates to work with.

Speaker 65 Except, after the new puzzle is posted, nobody makes it in, even those who say they've solved it. But for whatever reason, they never got the invitation to join.

Speaker 33 Maybe they're lying, maybe they didn't finish the game, or maybe Cicada decided they didn't want them for whatever reason.

Speaker 34 Regardless, Marcus is out of luck.

Speaker 27 He is pretty much on his own.

Speaker 13 And by this point, he is worn out.

Speaker 43 He's been trying to keep this cakes program afloat with just one other person for a while, and he still doesn't know who he's actually working for.

Speaker 34 So he stops visiting the forum and sort of backs away from the project as a whole.

Speaker 2 Then about two months later, in March, He gets a text from his one and only other active broodmate.

Speaker 40 According to this friend, they've both been kicked out of Cicada.

Speaker 8 They're not needed anymore.

Speaker 20 Sure enough, when Marcus tries to go back to that forum, he finds it's offline.

Speaker 11 Someone took the page down.

Speaker 20 He can't even go back and look at his old messages anymore.

Speaker 14 There isn't even a note to explain what happened or why Marcus is apparently on the outs.

Speaker 30 And that's the last contact he ever has with anyone in Cicada 3301.

Speaker 27 They never come out and explain who they are or what their actual goals are.

Speaker 8 Not a peep.

Speaker 13 Marcus spent a year of his life working for this group.

Speaker 47 He sacrificed his future, lied to his parents, and he still doesn't have any answers.

Speaker 13 All he can try to do is make sense of the situation by going public with his story.

Speaker 39 In January of 2015, he gives an interview to a reporter from Rolling Stone.

Speaker 18 He tells him everything.

Speaker 33 That's the only reason we know this much about Cicada today.

Speaker 42 But even now, at 27 years old, Marcus still doesn't know who or what Cicada 3301 is.

Speaker 61 He doesn't know whether he made a powerful enemy, like the leader of a government agency or a criminal group, or if the warning was right and he spent over a year of his life working for a dangerous cult.

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Speaker 31 It's been 15 years since that first Cicada puzzle went up on 4chan.

Speaker 12 And one of the biggest questions people are still asking is who even is Cicada anyway?

Speaker 17 If we want to answer that question, we should probably start with the biggest, most widespread allegations against them.

Speaker 23 That theory from The Warning Post.

Speaker 33 Is Cicada 3301 really a cult that believes in a global brain?

Speaker 19 Do they reject ideas of right and wrong and say there's no such thing as reality?

Speaker 20 Now, at first glance, it does make sense, especially when you look at some of the things Cicada has said about itself.

Speaker 15 Earlier, I mentioned how Marcus had a lengthy back and forth with them when he was recruited to join.

Speaker 33 He was trying to get a sense of what the organization was about, and he was given a lot of non-answers.

Speaker 27 But at one point, they did say this.

Speaker 11 Quote, we are a group of individuals who have proven ourselves much like you have by completing this recruitment contest.

Speaker 33 And we are drawn together by common beliefs.

Speaker 11 A careful reading of the text used in the contest would have revealed some of those beliefs.

Speaker 33 That tyranny and oppression of any kind must end, that censorship is wrong, and privacy is an inalienable right.

Speaker 52 End quote.

Speaker 11 So let's take them at their word.

Speaker 38 Let's assume that Cicada's real beliefs are clear if you you look at the puzzles closely enough.

Speaker 33 Some of the games included references to different books, poems, and other bits of culture. You need to be familiar with a lot of classic art to be able to solve some of their riddles.

Speaker 55 And the specific works they reference have a lot of the same themes.

Speaker 14 Empowerment, self-reliance, becoming a better version of yourself.

Speaker 64 For example, in the 2013 puzzle, they built a step inspired by author Aleister Crowley.

Speaker 14 That name might ring some bells because Crowley was a pretty culty figure in his own right.

Speaker 38 He was born in 1875, but really became famous around the turn of the century.

Speaker 55 At that time, he belonged to a ton of secret societies and religious organizations.

Speaker 33 He even started a couple on his own.

Speaker 42 He also claimed that he could communicate with otherworldly spirits and do magic.

Speaker 69 Remember how the warning said Cicada only pretended to care about science?

Speaker 47 If that's true, then the Crowley puzzle might hint at what they really believe in.

Speaker 39 Using occult practices to elevate yourself, maybe even to join a spiritual global brain.

Speaker 36 That might sound like a big leap, but let's look at another Cicada puzzle.

Speaker 58 It used an essay by Ralph Waldo Emerson called Self-Reliance.

Speaker 38 I think you can guess what it's about based on the name.

Speaker 47 However, the 3301 cipher built on Emerson's themes.

Speaker 56 I'm gonna read a quote from that puzzle.

Speaker 33 The work of a private man who wished to transcend, he trusted himself to produce from within.

Speaker 20 So there are those same themes from the warning post again, references to becoming something bigger than yourself, literally transcending.

Speaker 67 And that can sound pretty cultish.

Speaker 15 Many cults promise to help make people better versions of themselves, then instead sometimes isolate their victims and require members to fork over lots of money.

Speaker 36 And speaking of isolation, let's go back to the initial recruitment around 2012.

Speaker 38 At one point, while the puzzles were still out there waiting to be solved, Cicada actively warned people not to collaborate with one another.

Speaker 36 This was after Pound Decipher had been formed and apparently they weren't the only team out there.

Speaker 36 So to stop people from working together to solve the puzzles, 3301 posted on the message board saying, quote, you've shared too much to this point.

Speaker 27 We want the best, not followers.

Speaker 13 So that could be interpreted as an early attempt to isolate the people who wanted to join.

Speaker 34 They wanted the brood to include people who didn't have a lot of online relationships or support networks.

Speaker 7 Maybe.

Speaker 14 The truth is the only evidence that they're a cult comes from the warning.

Speaker 38 Marcus has never said that they tried to talk to him about God or group minds.

Speaker 46 They also never asked him for money.

Speaker 65 But they didn't hand out anything either.

Speaker 36 They were having Marcus and his brood fork up their own time and resources to make software for them.

Speaker 13 So who can say for sure?

Speaker 52 But that got me thinking.

Speaker 13 Maybe Marcus was right when he said the warning post was a disinformation campaign from Cicada themselves.

Speaker 17 Which brings me to this next theory, that Cicada 3301 is actually a recruitment tool.

Speaker 33 One that's bringing new employees in for the FBI, the NSA, the CIA, or some other government agency.

Speaker 33 In fact, we know these groups have used puzzles exactly like Cicadas to recruit new members before.

Speaker 14 In April of 2014, the US Navy released a bunch of puzzles on their Facebook page and some related Twitter accounts.

Speaker 36 Users could solve codes and break ciphers to complete the challenge.

Speaker 17 In the end, 10 people were named as winners and the Navy used the whole game as a way to build good PR.

Speaker 36 Then in May of 2014, the United States National Security Agency or NSA tweeted out a series of cryptic codes.

Speaker 41 They said anyone who solved them could find out more about job openings.

Speaker 27 Except, in both of these cases, it was clear from the get-go who was posting these riddles.

Speaker 36 I mean, they literally came from the at NSA Careers Twitter account and one of the Navy's Facebook pages.

Speaker 61 There were no secret chat rooms or anonymous 4chan posts.

Speaker 33 One time, a reporter even asked a CIA spokesperson if they were behind the Cicada 3301 puzzles, and the spokesperson denied it.

Speaker 36 Of course, it's the CIA we're talking about, so in theory, they could have been lying.

Speaker 38 The CIA or the NSA could have still posted the Cicada 3301 puzzles.

Speaker 13 But why would they deny using a recruiting tool that was so dang successful?

Speaker 38 To me, this says Cicada has a good reason to hide their identity, especially if they were terrorists or criminals.

Speaker 6 And actually, it sounds like someone may have caught them committing a crime at one point.

Speaker 38 In 2015, a local government agency in Chile publicly said that Cicada was running a crime ring in their country.

Speaker 38 Supposedly, the Chilean police learned that someone had created a fake website impersonating a bank's login screen.

Speaker 6 When people went to this wrong URL, they entered their login information.

Speaker 38 Then the hackers kept those usernames and passwords so they could get into people's real accounts. Whoever built this website also gamed Google's algorithm.

Speaker 38 So if people searched the name of the bank, the first hit was that fake page, not the real one, which is terrifying.

Speaker 36 Once the police found out what was going on, they did some investigating.

Speaker 27 They identified and busted a few individuals who were behind the website and they found out that these people were apparently part of a group called cicada 3301.

Speaker 55 so in july of 2015 they publicly warned the people of chile to watch out for the scammers in cicada who may have been running other online scams too

Speaker 33 but right after they released this information cicada put out their own reply they said they had nothing to do with the fake website Some other criminals were just using their name without their permission.

Speaker 33 And in fairness, I have to say, this kind of fake login screen hoax is really common.

Speaker 14 You don't need to recruit the top coders in the world to pull this off.

Speaker 33 So I do think it's possible the Chilean hackers had nothing to do with Cicada.

Speaker 38 Or if they did, it wasn't authorized by Cicada's higher-ups.

Speaker 27 That said, I don't think we'll ever have the answers.

Speaker 24 It's been more than a decade since Cicada posted their last recruitment puzzle, but they haven't brought in any new members as far as we know.

Speaker 65 Maybe Cicada 3301 are government agents or criminals or a small group of tech-savvy individuals who just want to make the world a better place.

Speaker 17 Maybe they're a cult.

Speaker 71 Who knows?

Speaker 14 But the answer might be out there now, just waiting for someone to find it.

Speaker 1 Because you see, In 2014, Cicada launched one final recruitment drive.

Speaker 69 This involved a massive puzzle that still hasn't been solved today, 11 years later.

Speaker 17 And since it still hasn't been cracked, nobody can say for sure what it says.

Speaker 13 I mean, it might have all the answers we've been looking for, or it might just lead to even more mysteries that have to be solved.

Speaker 24 And that's why this whole story fascinates me.

Speaker 69 Earlier in this episode, I mentioned how much I love puzzles.

Speaker 58 There is something so satisfying about working hard at something for a few hours and then seeing the solution, like knowing the game is complete.

Speaker 43 But when you try to solve a riddle and only end up with more riddles, it is frustrating, sometimes even unsettling.

Speaker 19 But it's also one of the reasons I make this show.

Speaker 38 Because life is full of puzzles too.

Speaker 18 Do aliens exist?

Speaker 27 How about magic or ESP or ghosts?

Speaker 13 Which conspiracy theories are true?

Speaker 13 Even if we don't know the answers, the truth is still out there somewhere.

Speaker 27 And if we can just crack the code, maybe someday we'll have the answers to all of life's supernatural mysteries too.

Speaker 73 This is So Supernatural, an audio chuck original produced by Crime House.

Speaker 33 You can connect with us on Instagram at SoSupernatural Podcast and visit our website, so supernaturalpodcast.com.

Speaker 55 Join us next Friday for an all-new episode.

Speaker 33 So what do you think, Chuck?

Speaker 19 Do you approve?

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