ROT13 Mystery

ROT13 Mystery

I want to tell you a story. A true story. A mysterious story. It has an ending but I will leave it to you to figure out. I want you to think about this just long enough so that it will stick in your mind and there might come a day where you remember it, and it makes sense to you. It did for me, but this isn't a story with an ending that can be explained in words.

I woke up one morning as the rooster crowed in Kauai, Hawaii. The roosters actually do crow, because according to legend Captain Cook sailed there one year and dumped a bunch of chickens on the island and that is the reason they roam free today. It was a breezy morning, just like every morning as the cool trade winds blew, and perfect weather in the mid 70s Fahrenheit.

I was there on Kauai, for the second time in my life. This time I saved up $2000 and landed on Kauai and found a room to stay in from a Craigslist ad. I purchased a cheap moped for $800, and I hit the block looking for work determined to make my stay longer. By the time this particular morning had occurred, I'd made it a year and half doing odd jobs, janitorial work, cleaning construction sites, and part-time computer repair work.

My excuse for being there was 'I was finishing my degree,' and I was doing it online so I could be anywhere - so why not Hawaii?

I was living in no more than a shed by this time, that was converted into a duplex behind someone's house. I had no kitchen, just a hotplate and a microwave and a refrigerator. I shared one bathroom with the other side of my duplex from my neighbor who would frequently call the ambulance because, "he was going down." He was a childhood friend of my landlord and they were both locals. He suffered from some mental health condition, like many people on this magical little island, who all found the peace and serenity (and seclusion) rather nice. Kauai is the 4th smallest island and it is tiny and it is beautiful. I made fast friends with "Black", that's what the locals called him because his Polynesian skin was many shades darker than normal locals - it's what he preferred to be called.

I lived in the part of town that the locals described as where the "Menehunes" lived. According to lore they were a mythical species of small humans who were very mischievous. I really enjoyed the rich lore associated with every mountain and area. It was all so well developed culture over thousands of years that it could very well be a religion; or it just may be, I'm not really sure.

I stretched out after waking up in my bed, who knew where the sheets were, they just seem to fly off the bed when I go to sleep. Probably the Menehunes. And I go out to check my mail and discover a my student loan reimbursement has arrived. This check for about $1800 was sure to help me last a little longer on the island. I hopped on my moped and went to the store and a shiny bottle of Crown Royal was sitting on the gas station counter. In Hawaii you can buy hard liquor at gas stations. I didn't, and still don't, drink very often but I thought what the heck, let's celebrate.

I cruise back down the hill to my duplex with the bottle of Crown Royal and a 12-pack of Coca-Cola, and some snacks, and turn on the TV. I open the Crown Royal bottle for an adventure I'll never, ever forget.

A few drinks in, I'm watching TV and feeling good too much to even think about studying and I'm bored. Suddenly I get struck with the idea that I am just going to fly to Honolulu and do some shopping. I had never been to Honolulu before, but this certainly seemed like a rational thing to do so I hopped on my moped, the one place I shouldn't have been while buzzed, and head off to the airport to buy a ticket.

I arrive at the airport and park my Moped. I just had a backpack with my laptop in it and that's about it.

When I get on the plane, I order a few more drinks and they make an announcement that there will be a delay in landing the airplane because of the APEC conference. I had no idea this was going on, and I had never heard of APEC in my life but it is some conference for global leaders of the world to come together and solve some challenges and it just happened to be happening right then.

When the plane lands, it's nearing darkness, and I wander over to the phones because I hadn't planned anywhere to sleep and see that there is a free taxi to a hotel nearby. I picked up the phone and called the taxi and sure enough, one arrived to pick me up.

As we are nearing the hotel all of the streetlights are flashing yellow and there are national guard at every corner directing traffic. There are concrete barricades all over the road, especially in front of buildings. There were a lot of concrete barricades in front of the hotel we were pulling in, my hotel. It looked like a complete war zone in disarray.

I get out of the taxi and make my way to the front desk, and since I was paying with all the cash from my student loan reimbursement they asked me for a credit card to use as a deposit. I worked out a deal with them to pay for a cash deposit because I don't and still don't own credit cards.

I get up to my room and toss my stuff in a chair in the corner, and head off to go exploring. I first explored the hotel bar where I grabbed a drink. Then I made my way through the dark to the courtyard where there are some picnic tables and some folks standing around them. Unlike me to do this but I drank enough to say I was drunk, I striked up a conversation with a group of people at the picnic tables in the courtyard. I don't recall all of the details, but I remember one of them saying he was a pen-tester after I told him what I was in school for (cybersecurity), and he chatted me up for some time. I thought it all went well and I headed back to my room to go to sleep. I took off all of my clothes except my boxers and, threw my wallet, phone, everything into the little chair in the corner, and jumped into bed.

I slept like a baby and the beds were just fanciful. This hotel was like $300 a night and not quite what I was used to.

The next morning I take off in Honolulu to go do some shopping and thought while I was here I would go see Pearl Harbor. I bought some clothes, got a haircut, and visited pearl harbor where I met one of the last living survivors and talked with him for what felt like hours. I'll never forget the first hand conversation I had with him when I asked him what it was like and he told me, "The ground shook so hard I fell to my knees." When I tell this story, that doesn't seem to phase people, but that paints the picture perfectly what the chaos and disaster it must have been to have bombs being dropped all around you.

I had someone snap a photo.

The day was coming to an end and I needed to get back home to my island, now sober. So I check out at the hotel and get my deposit back and as I was leaving there was a police parade of cars leaving from my hotel which I could only assume it was whatever dignitaries that were staying at the hotel leaving to go back to their respective homes.

I arrive at the airport and make my way towards TSA and pull out my wallet from my back pocket, reach in to pull out my ID to show them, and noticed there was a yellow stickey note on the back of it, and on it in pen, not in my hand writing, it said

ROT13

This baffled me but I handed it the TSA agent anyway and they hand it back.

I make it all the way back to my home, get unpacked with all my new bags of clothes and things and hop on the internet to tell my buddies about this strange adventure I just had and this strange ROT13 note.

This was over 15 years ago, and it led me down a rabbit hole for a decade in which, just in the last five years, I understood what the mystery of ROT13 is all about.

You can still see remnants of ROT13 encoded ciphers in some of the most obscure places in the internet, all referring to this one idea.

Tyler Wall is the founder of Cyber NOW Education. He holds bills for a Master of Science from Purdue University and CISSP, CCSK, CFSR, CEH, Sec+, Net+, and A+ certifications. He mastered the SOC after having held every position from analyst to architect and is the author of three books, 100+ professional articles, and ten online courses specifically for SOC analysts.

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