Cracking the coding interview edition by 
Ciro Santilli 37 Updated 2025-06-17 +Created 2025-05-26
Ciro Santilli 37 Updated 2025-06-17 +Created 2025-05-26 CIA 2010 covert communication websites Split header images by Ciro Santilli 37 Updated 2025-06-17 +Created 2025-05-23
Ciro Santilli 37 Updated 2025-06-17 +Created 2025-05-23Maybe it is some kind of outdated web design thing, which they took much further in time than the average website, like the JAR.
Their websites do appear to follow common style guidelines form earlier eras, around the early 2000s notably, some legit sites that look a lot like hits:
An example:
Looking at the source code of: web.archive.org/web/20130828122833/http://euronewsonline.net/euro_bus.php we noticed an interesting comment:which presumably refers to Adobe ImageReady:A sample tutorial: people.goshen.edu/~paulmr/physix/326/imageready/slicendice.php
<!-- ImageReady Slices (enewsweather.psd) -->Adobe ImageReady was a bitmap graphics editor that was shipped with Adobe Photoshop for six years. It was available for Windows, Classic Mac OS and Mac OS X from 1998 to 2007. ImageReady was designed for web development and closely interacted with Photoshop
Some of the websites use CSS background images to populate the images, e.g. ingenuitytrendz.com has HTML:and then the CSS engineering.css does:
ingenuitytrendz.com/20110201170354/index.html: <li><a id="banner1"> </a></li>
ingenuitytrendz.com/20110201170354/index.html: <li><a id="banner2"> </a></li>
ingenuitytrendz.com/20110201170354/index.html: <li><a id="banner3"> </a></li>#banner1 { background: url(/web/20110201170405im_/http://ingenuitytrendz.com/images/banner_01.jpg) no-repeat center; }
#banner2 { background: url(/web/20110201170405im_/http://ingenuitytrendz.com/images/banner_02.jpg) no-repeat center; }
#banner3 { background: url(/web/20110201170405im_/http://ingenuitytrendz.com/images/banner_03.jpg) no-repeat center; } Updates Backing up CIA website archives for research and posterity by Ciro Santilli 37 Updated 2025-06-17 +Created 2025-05-23
Ciro Santilli 37 Updated 2025-06-17 +Created 2025-05-23I've downloaded and uploaded copies of the archives of the CIA websites as follows:
- all cqcounter screenshots where cqcounter was the best source to: github.com/cirosantilli/media/tree/master/cia-2010-covert-communication-websites/screenshots/cqcounter. That commercial website does not inspire much trust, e.g. now the main pages like cqcounter.com/site/internationalwhiskylounge.com.html were giving an error:so I'm glad to have saved their precious screenshots at a safer place.
[1114: The table 'access' is full] ( 1114 : The table 'access' is full ) - all Wayback Machine archives to: github.com/cirosantilli/cia-2010-websites-dump. The exports were done with github.com/StrawberryMaster/wayback-machine-downloader by Felipe x.com/opapeldetrouxa which is an up-to-date fork of github.com/hartator/wayback-machine-downloader and the tool seemed to work very well. I've also edited that better working fork at the top answer of: superuser.com/questions/828907/how-to-download-a-website-from-the-archive-org-wayback-machine/957298#957298
The cqcounter screenshots don't offer too much information, but having the wayback machine ones could actually reveal new fingerprints and other website information leaks.
Starting December 2004, the "Submit your favored carlson quote" of alljohnny.com was mind blowingly switched to point to https://washington.serversecured.net/~alljohnn/cgi-bin/memlog.cgi thus likely leaking the control site URL. Beauty. It previously pointed to web.archive.org/web/20040901162621/https://secure.alljohnny.com/cgi-bin/memlog.cgi
mynepalnews.com actually has several archives for a /stats path which contains HTML reports generated by Webalizer, an analytic tracker that tracks the source of incoming traffic!!! It is hard to believe that the CIA would have left that there. Particularly ridiculous is the presence of
inurl:cgi server_software at web.archive.org/web/20110204095809/http://mynepalnews.com:80/stats/usage_200805.html which is almost certainly a Google dork search, which we know is something that the Iranians used to find the websites. That search hits under /cgi-bin/check.cgi. That page is itself os some interest containing SERVER_ADMIN = mmadev@mmadev.com. web.archive.org/web/20110204095815/http://mynepalnews.com:80/stats/usage_200806.html also reveals several request IPs. Even if this is not a CIA website, there's a chance we could find the IP of the Iranian counter-intelligence in these IP list, it's mind blowing. There's lots of referrer spam too as well. Further HTML inspection however seems to show close relationship to that HTML and other confirmed hits.globaltourist.net, if is actually a hit, likely has a a 2003 archive, which would be our earliest hit archive so far.
A fun fact is that looking at the source code of: web.archive.org/web/20130828122833/http://euronewsonline.net/euro_bus.php we noticed an interesting comment:which clarifies that the CIA likely used Adobe ImageReady to cut up the images for Split header images:We also understand that the tool likely outputs the layout to HTML directly, and leaks the adobe projects filenames (.pds files) in the process.
<!-- ImageReady Slices (enewsweather.psd) -->Adobe ImageReady was a bitmap graphics editor that was shipped with Adobe Photoshop for six years. It was available for Windows, Classic Mac OS and Mac OS X from 1998 to 2007. ImageReady was designed for web development and closely interacted with Photoshop
Contains highly specialized questions in various academic fields, including mathematics. The problems are answered either with a number, or multiple choice, or free text.
Some dude recreated the antihydra on Magic: The Gathering at: aesort.com/antihydra, probably: x.com/IsaacKing314/status/1870637729375219740.
It is known that Magic: The Gathering is Turing complete, but it is cool to have a concrete specific example of an open problem in mathematics coded in it.
Screenshot of the Antihydra in Magic: The Gathering construction
. This project initiated by Terence Tao aims to find the relations between various statements in abstract algebra by using a combination of automated theorem proving and human effort. As mentioned by Terence himself, this is a bit similar to the idea of the Busy Beaver Challenge:
Commutative matrix multiplication algorithm by Ciro Santilli 37 Updated 2025-06-17 +Created 2025-05-21
Ciro Santilli 37 Updated 2025-06-17 +Created 2025-05-21A "commutative matrix multiplication algorithm" is a matrix multiplication algorithm that requires the ring to be commutative. Such algorithms are inferior because you cannot use them to create more efficient algorithms for general matrix matrix multiplication by decomposing the bigger matrix into smaller ones.
For example, the Strassen algorithm is based on reduction to non-commutative 2x2 matrix multiplication optimized to be done in 7 multiplications rather than 8 as in the native algorithm.
For 3x3 matrix multiplication, the best algorithms as of 2025 are:and beating the Strassen algorithm using 3x3 matrices would require a non-commutative algorithm with 21 multiplications.
- commutative: 21 multiplications
- non-commutative: 23 multiplications
Blog post: deepmind.google/discover/blog/alphaevolve-a-gemini-powered-coding-agent-for-designing-advanced-algorithms/
Whitepaper: storage.googleapis.com/deepmind-media/DeepMind.com/Blog/alphaevolve-a-gemini-powered-coding-agent-for-designing-advanced-algorithms/AlphaEvolve.pdf
Basically they require users to hand-code a metric and provide a program skeleton with some parts of the code marked to be replaced, and then the system focuses on modifying the code regions in question to optimize the metric.
All the novel results they announced were in constraint satisfaction problems or optimization problem. Their results are still awesome, but it's not very different from AlphaGo style things.
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