Room 03 · secrecy, ciphers, surveillance
Room 03. Who is watching?
Кто смотрит?
Hiding a message in plain sight is the oldest art and the oldest technology. Without the key a cipher looks like noise; with it, like text.
Pairs in this room
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03/01
Kryptos ↔ encryption
Everyone sees the Kryptos cipher; no one has read its fourth part. End-to-end encryption works the same way: the server sees only symbols. Turn it on in your messenger.
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03/02
Skull ↔ steganography
Holbein's skull is visible from one spot only. Steganography hides a message the same way, in the lowest bits of a photo. Find the spot on the floor where the word appears.
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03/03
NINA ↔ watermark
Hirschfeld hid the name NINA in his drawings, Shostakovich his initials in notes. Files are signed the same way, with an invisible watermark. Play D–E♭–C–B on the keyboard.
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03/04
Caesar ↔ E2E
Two thousand years of ciphers, from Caesar's shift to a key that lives only in your phone. Without the key it is noise, with it — text. Decrypt today's word with your passport key.
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03/05
Cable ↔ metadata
The internet is physical: cables, shores, 99 phones in a cart that fooled a map. Your phone keeps broadcasting too. Remove the location tag from a photo before posting it.
Check 3 of 4
Decrypt today's word on panel 03/04 with the Vigenère table. Key: КОРМЧИЙ.
Without the key a cipher is noise; with it, text.
Interactives
The Vigenère wall and Alberti wheels
- Under each letter of the cipher write a letter of the key КОРМЧИЙ.
- In the table find the row of the key letter, and the cipher letter in it.
- The letter above that column is yours. Write the word and take stamp 3.
View source
- The screen shows garbage. Press the button.
- See what is hidden in the source code.
Opening talk
From Caesar to end-to-end encryption in 15 minutes