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- In early 2011, a Reddit user by the name of A858
posted for the first time under their new subreddit,
with the same name.
These posts were made up of long strings of random letter
and number combinations that were uploaded daily.
The user and the subreddit would go unnoticed
for about a year before they started
to gain some popularity,
but once they did, Redditers started to notice small bits
of information that made them question the true intent
behind the posts, whether it was the obscurity of the posts,
or just the mass quantity of them,
something about them was intriguing to people
as soon enough a dedicated team
of computer science students, amateur codebreakers,
and redditors alike, combined forces in an attempt
to solve the mystery of R/A858.
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Other than these strange letter and number combinations,
there was a very little for the Reddit community
to work with when it came to figuring out the purpose
of this weird account,
some even doubted that there was any reason
behind them at all.
After all the internet is full of many bizarre,
and pointless things.
Was A858 just another troll,
or could their puzzles actually contain important data,
and be a window into a world,
we were never meant to see?
To begin with the creator kept the subreddit private,
and only those who are deemed worthy were allowed in,
however a sister subreddit called R/solvingA858
was created as a hub for curious minds,
and this likely led to the floodgates opening,
and R/A858 eventually being opened up to all
Despite this huge wave of interest though,
there were 1000s of sequences to dig through,
and to this day only a handful of them
have ever been solved.
What's more, the ones that have been decoded,
still leave us with more questions than answers.
Results of these solved puzzles range
from a simple thank you message,
which was actually in response
to a user gifting A858's creator Reddit Gold
to an excerpt from the book, "Actions and Passions",
by Max Lerner to an ASCII image of Stonehenge.
For years, the solving of A858 subreddit worked tirelessly
to crack the codes given out by their mysterious creator
without any interaction with him or her,
aside from the ciphered encouragement
or encoded messages of things,
but then all of a sudden in August, 2015,
users noticed someone putting hexadecimal chains
on the R/solvingA8 subreddit that matched with the ones
from the original R/A8 message board.
Through this The solvers figured out
that the creator was actually doing an AMA
or an Ask Me Anything.
Moderators quickly created a script
that automated the codebreaking process.
This allowed users to ask questions,
and interact A858's creator for the first time
When asked why they would break the silence after so long,
user A858 simply said
that the audience was getting frustrated.
However, they would not yet reveal the project's purpose,
stating quote, "We cannot disclose the purpose.
"A858 will end when the purpose is disclosed or discovered."
A858 even revealed surprisingly that one of the posts
had actually been properly decrypted,
but that nobody noticed, except for them,
it was a woman from the UK
that had apparently managed to accomplish this,
but she deleted her account soon after,
and the creators would say no more about her achievement
the AMA left enthusiasts with a lot more questions
than answers, but it also gave them a much needed boost
of enthusiasm to keep working towards a solution.
Public interest in A858 seemed to peak in mid-2016
when mainstream media outlets,
such as Fox News and the Daily Dot
began covering the case.
By then, A858 had been posting consistently for five years,
and just when it started to gain some real traction,
something really strange happened.
A post was made by the now deleted user teamw mod
on the solvingA858 subreddit,
claiming that the project had ended.
They went on to thank the individuals
that attempted to solve,
but stated that any further attempts would be useless
as quote, "The information available to the public
"is not sufficient to solve all outstanding puzzles."
And that because of this misinformation
any further efforts on solving A858 would be in vain.
This user would be confirmed by the moderators
of the solvingA858 to be an owner
of the original A858 sub,
furthermore, they said that they would not be responding
to any questions or direct messages,
and shortly after that, the account would be deleted.
So that would appear to be the end of the story, right?
A closed case mystery to be forever left unsolved.
Well, yes, but also no.
A couple of weeks after the project and ended post was made,
a user by the name of Eve made a post titled, some closure,
and explained that himself and another user
by the name of Franklin were able to contact
the person behind A858.
The pair revealed the following.
"The person we spoke to said that he was paid
"to post code puzzles using encryption
"or various methods of text manipulation by a company.
"This company would occasionally request
"that post be made to draw interest to the project.
"This would include the Stonehenge post
"and various others found on the Wiki."
The two internet detectives said
that they would not be releasing any personal information
about the puzzle creator or the company that hired them,
plus they were still unsure about the actual purpose
of the project themselves.
The puzzle creator and poster also explained
how most of the posts were just randomly generated texts
with extremely difficult, and changing encryption.
So even if the post were ever decrypted,
you wouldn't be able to tell it most of the time,
after all, there's a significant difference between encoded
and encrypted data.
Encoded information is meant to be read
in a different format,
while encrypted data is meant to remain a secret.
As for why the project ended
while so many puzzles remained unsolved.
He said that the company paying him
no longer wanted to fund the project, and shut it down,
going on to state that he does not believe the project
will ever be rebooted,
and the original A858 subreddit was then locked.
Now that all sounds pretty final,
yet two years after this reveal came,
another post titled, R/A858 is back open, appeared.
It seemed as though A858 had been brought back to life,
and some changes had been made to the original sub.
It was once again made public and user, A858,
the original poster of the mysterious texts
had been deleted.
The community was buzzing once more.
However, this excitement was short-lived.
After about a week,
the subreddit was made private once again,
and has remained that way ever since.
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Even though this project has concluded,
people are still trying to figure out
why it existed to begin with,
and with the information that has been confirmed,
a couple of plausible theories have gained popularity,
the most credible of these being
that it's a recruitment tool,
perhaps for a cryptography or a security firm.
This would make sense due to the highly encrypted code
used in the posts.
In addition, we have seen many other online mysteries
have a similar purpose, like Cicada 3301.
The subreddit was running for about five years though,
which would be quite a large time investment
for simple recruitment.
The posts also seemed to be a slightly too random
and encrypted to a level
that would make them impossible to solve,
so I don't know how they'd be recruiting with that.
This leaves us with another theory, number stations.
Number stations are shortwave radio stations
broadcasting messages to spies in foreign countries
or shady groups, encrypted using one-time keys.
This theory matches up quite well
with the unsolved ability of so many posts,
and it isn't completely outrageous either.
In 2015, the New York Post made an article
revealing how some terrorist groups used Reddit
and eBay to send coded messages through,
however This theory does not line up well with the story
we were given to by the user,
paid to post the coded messages,
claiming to be doing it for a company.
Additionally, it wouldn't make much sense
that some of the posts were actually decoded,
the post regarding Stonehenge
also wouldn't make much sense
for a group trying to stay under the radar.
Lastly, it could just be an alternate reality game,
a made up story based in the real world
created for the owner's amusement.
While this seems to be the outcome of many online mysteries,
the creator would be doing quite a poor job of it
with only a couple of posts successfully decoded,
it really isn't much of a game.
Nonetheless, it's still one of the most viable conclusions
out there.
It's now been a further two years since A858 went silent,
and it does not seem as if they'll be coming back
anytime soon.
I suppose anything is possible though.
What do you think could be the answer to this puzzle?
Let me know down in the comments.
Thank you guys so much for listening,
and supporting this channel.
It's truly amazing to see you guys enjoy these videos,
and I hope to see you again soon, have a good night.
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