Nigel launched the MORP program that Jet gave him so he could browse the internet anonymously. Nigel now felt relatively safe and secure; he could browse the Dark Web without anyone knowing about it. After about twenty minutes of browsing, Nigel found what he was looking for: the entrance to the dark compiler project called "Dark Glider.” For a brief time, it was available for sale, but it was taken down before Nigel could obtain a copy of it.
He was about to give up when he spotted a forum post that gave additional clues. As he read through the posts, another black window with blue text appeared directly in the foreground. He attempted to click away from it, but it maintained its focus. Text appeared in the window.
“What are you looking for?”
“Information,” Nigel typed.
“What information?”
Nigel didn’t want to reveal too much information, but he needed Dark Glider.
“I seek the Glider,” Nigel replied.
For a very long time nothing appeared on the screen. Nigel was about to give up and sever the connection, but he didn’t want to leave his session in limbo. Finally, additional text appeared in the window.
“Are you worthy?”
“How do I prove my worth?”
Nigel didn’t like where this was going. The person on the other end of the connection may be trying to dox him, a process of revealing someone’s true identity on the Dark Web.
“Solve the challenge by playing.”
“How do I play?”
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“I will present you with a riddle. You must answer in the form of a question. Get it?”
“Yes, I’m ready to play.”
“Excellent! I’m a function that is very aggressive; if I miss a prediction, my value increases exponentially. What am I?”
A timer appeared, counting down from sixty seconds in the top right of the screen in sixty-point font. The computer also started beeping distractingly after each second.
Nigel couldn’t immediately think of the answer, but soon it occurred to him.
“What is exponential loss?” Nigel answered with just five seconds remaining on the timer.
“Clever, but you are not off the hook yet! What function is not continuous and impractical to optimize?”
Why are these questions all related to machine learning? Nigel wondered.
With only a few seconds left, Nigel typed in what he hoped was the answer.
“Zero-one loss.”
He heard a loud horn sound, which startled him. No new text appeared on the screen for at least a minute. Nigel put his hands over his face. He was so tired of all this.
Almost on cue, he heard a typewriter sound emanating from this computer.
“You have skills and, therefore, are worthy.”
A link appeared on the screen with a thirty-second timer.
Nigel clicked the link and stared in awe as the screen turned red with gold text.
Despite the hard-to-read colors, Nigel was able to download all three parts of the code—which was a puzzle in and of itself. The checksum sequence had to be downloaded in a specific order. The code also had to be assembled by the programmer who solved the puzzles. At the end of each puzzle (or test), a series of alphanumeric characters of varying lengths had to be written down or captured with a camera. Once all three sequences were gathered, the author required the programmer downloading the code to piece each part together into a single string, then run it through another algorithm to put together a hash. The programmer had to decipher the final pieces using an algorithm called ROT-13. Once each part was downloaded, the ROT-13 had to be entered to decompress the file structure.
A lot of thought and careful consideration had to be given to solve this puzzle. If the machine was cloned or virtualized, then Dark Glider would stop working. Even if the programmer was lucky and patient enough to solve all the puzzles, the decompiler had a limited life of sixty days. The programmer did not need to completely start over, however; a clue was given at some random interval between the original unlock and expiration. This clue was forfeit if reverse engineering (of any kind) was done to the program or source code.