The Mystery Of CICADA 3301

 1. On 4th January 2012, the puzzle Cicada 3301 was appeared for the first time. It was ended almost after a month.

2. In 2012 it was just a puzzle with a message : 

Hello. We are looking for highly intelligent individuals. To find them, we have devised a test.

There is a message hidden in this image.

Find it, and it will lead you on the road to us. We look forward to meeting the few that will make it all the way through.

Good luck.

3301

3. Then someone opened the image on text editor and found there was an embedded “Caesar cipher” at the bottom:

TIBERIVS CLAVDIVS CAESAR says “lxxt>33m2mqkyv2gsq3q=w]O2ntk”

4. They thought the garble message was an encryption technique. Someone realized that Tiberius had been the fourth Roman Emperor, so they moved each letter four positions back to reveal an URL.

5. By clicking the URL they it leads them to a site where they found a photo of a rubber duck with this message : 

WOOPS just decoys this way. Looks like you can’t guess how to get the message out.

6. From this sentence someone realized there is two suggested words, "out" and "guess" . So he researched and got a text editor named OUTGUESS.  After opening the duck image with that editor it led him to another URL.

7. The URL led him to a subreddit containing Mayan numerals. There was a mishmash of letters and two images labeled "Welcome" and "Problems". Rest of the clues involved book codes, King Arthur, and the Holy Grail.

8. By these clues they finally found a phone number. By dialing the phone number they received the following message:

Very good. You have done well. There are three prime numbers associated with the original final .jpg image. 3301 is one of them. You will have to find the other two. Multiply all three of these numbers together and add a .com on the end to find the next step. Good luck. Good-bye.

9. By multiplying the dimension of the first new image on the recent URL, they found there was a image of CICADA 3301 with a countdown of 72 Hours. There Was also a message : 

You have done well to come this far. Patience is a virtue. Check back at 17:00 on Monday, 9 January 2012. UTC.

10. Wait For Next Part, Stay Tuned. will be publishing in 3 days.