Well, looks like nobody managed to get this right. Everybody who PMed me fell for the MD5 hash, which is actually an unsalted hash of the word "Fake". The clue is in the name of course
It's just a decoy.
Like I said, this wasn't intended to be a technical exercise, the actual answer is incredibly simple to come by. The title of the thread is "Crack This Post", that is your first clue, just as when analysing an email you should look at the message source, when analysing this post, you should look at the HTML source. Staff members, you'll find another hidden message in the original post (click edit) which is not visible to other users in the HTML source-code.
Notice the URL which is disguised in the main post? Following the URL you can see that it leads to a 404 error, but if you examine some of the other URLs on the website you will find this is simply because the URL is in the wrong format. The proper format of URLs at the metro.co.uk is as follows:
Code:
http://metro.co.uk/2014/08/01/things-are-about-to-get-loud-cheryl-cole-and-mel-b-prepare-for-battle-in-new-x-factor-trailer-4818765/
Notice that the date section has been zeroed out and the 'friendly' section of the URL (with the headline title) is jumbled. The ID number has also been zeroed out, and the phrase "word26" has been appended.
The key here is in the jumbled letters and numbers. A closer inspection should reveal that it appears to be in base64 format, and indeed decrypting the text from base64 gives you the following text:
Code:
rolf-steiner-cow-gets-stuck-on-roof-in-swiss-alps
The URL still won't be valid without recovering the zeroed values, which can easily be done by searching Google for the url phrase. This gives us the folloiwng complete URL:
Code:
http://metro.co.uk/2014/06/17/rolf-steiner-cow-gets-stuck-on-roof-in-swiss-alps-4764420/
Notice the word26 is not present in the actual URL. Instead, counting into the text by 26 words from the start of the article leads us to "bovine" which is the correct clue word
As for the rest of the four clues, as nobody actually got the first clue right, I won't reveal what they were or how they worked (in case I decide to do another of these kind of threads some time).
The main point being that breaking ciphers and systems is as much about the thought process as how much technical knowledge you have. A proper analysis of the situation is essential as going in with an incomplete understanding will lead you to be more susceptible to failure
