[tshadwell]

What area of 'cybersecurity' would I be finding myself breaking substitution ciphers based on wingdings in?

I work in the information security industry, and I feel like I'm missing something but I really have to ask what these are relevant to.

Cryptography, which this appears to be a reduced form of is mostly tangential and very nuanced relative to the ciphers in this challenge. I often feel my line of work is grossly misrepresented by dizzying fields of esoteric numbers and references to ancient cryptography when I'm happy to find myself many of my days engrossed in the security characteristics of some powerful technology used right now in the real world.

I moved from engineering to security, but if this was my only interaction with security, I'm not sure I'd have been interested.

Edit: if you're interested in real crypto challenges, try http://cryptopals.com/ and read Cryptography Engineering, which is a wonderful read that goes over not only the cryptography but also the principles common across the many specialisations of the infosec industry

[mortehu]

This looks like it could have been inspired by the Cipher Challenge[1] from The Code Book[2], which starts with monoalphabetic substitution problems.

1. http://simonsingh.net/cryptography/cipher-challenge/the-ciph...

2. http://www.amazon.com/The-Code-Book-Science-Cryptography/dp/...

[ultramancool]

If anyone is looking for a seriously great introduction to cryptography check out the Art of the Problem series on YouTube, don't have a link right now because mobile but it is probably the best easily accessible explanation of real world cryptography I've ever seen.

EDIT: https://m.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLB4D701646DAF0817

[besselheim]

It's more a rough aptitude test for creative problem-solving and persistence than anything else. Of course you need the strong technical background as well. But enjoying these sort of puzzles can be an indicator of sorts. I also work in cybersecurity, and most of my colleagues and I get a kick out of these sort of challenges.

[massemphasis]

I think this is geared for kids, and not really adults.

[TheOtherHobbes]

It's a recruiting exercise for various companies.

Apparently it's a serious recruiting exercise for various companies - which is frankly terrifying for anyone who knows anything about infosec but isn't a cybercriminal, terrorist, or foreign hostile.

[0x4a42]

Yes, as the title says it's "cybersecurity", not infosec. :)

[Moppers]

Must be pretty smart kids. One of the last puzzles is very hard.

[luch]

> I often feel my line of work is grossly misrepresented by dizzying fields of esoteric numbers and references to ancient cryptography when I'm happy to find myself many of my days engrossed in the security characteristics of some powerful technology used right now in the real world.

Have you never worked a custom written crypto algo in your line of work ? For example, countries' army are the bane of sysadmins since they implement about every standard of networking since computer exists.

Working in infosec, you hardly have to crack an akbash cipher, but I'm pretty sure you'd had to understand a closed source algorithm.