Every year the infamous hacker JonnyX issues a challege to the hacking community in the form of an encrypted message known as the PhreakNic. In 2000, the version 3.0 of the PhreakNic code had remained uncracked for over a year, despite the best efforts of some of the top crytographic minds in the States.

At which point Elonka Dunin, a games developer with no prior ciphering experience, managed to crack the code in 10 days. Fortunately for us, she put together a step-by-step tutorial on how she did it.

For those with an inner geek to feed and a few evenings to kill, this is a great introduction to the fascinating world of code breaking. She gives a solid overview of cryptography and steganography, while delving deeper into specific topics ranging from anagrams and ROT13 to PGP and embedded data in graphics files.

It definitely doesn’t take a Comp Sci degree to understand the tutorial. It’s clearly written and the techniques can be mastered by anyone with a high school education. Do yourself a favor and take a peek at this code - it’ll blow your mind!