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Naknaknak Nak? Naknak Nak. Naknak nak?

2 min readFeb 7, 2024

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A duck rushes in, and announces:

Naknaknak Nak? Naknak Nak. Naknak nak? Nananak Nak Naknak Nananak Naknak naknaknak Naknak naknaknak Naknak nak! Naknaknak Nak? Naknak naknaknak Naknaknak Naknaknak Naknak nak. Nananak Nak Naknaknak Nananak Naknak Nanak Naknaknak Nak? Naknaknak Nanananak

What pop group did the duck announce?

Well, it is the NakNak (or Duck) cipher challenge. For this, we convert each ASCII character to the hexadecimal equivalent, and then use:

0 = ‘Nak’,
1 = ‘Nanak’,
2 = ‘Nananak’,
3 = ‘Nanananak’,
4 = ‘Nak?’,
5 = ‘nak?’,
6 = ‘Naknak’,
7 = ‘Naknaknak’,
8 = ‘Nak.’,
9 = ‘Naknak.’,
A (10) = ‘Naknaknaknak’,
B (11) = ‘nanak’,
C (12) = ‘naknak’,
D (13) = ‘nak!’,
E (14) = ‘nak.’,
F (15) = ‘naknaknak’.

The character ‘a’ is “61” in hex, and so this is “Naknak Nanak”.

a 0x61, b 0x62, c 0x63, d 0x64, e 0x65, f 0x66, g 0x67, h 0x68, i 0x69, j 0x6A, k 0x6B…

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Prof Bill Buchanan OBE FRSE
Prof Bill Buchanan OBE FRSE

Written by Prof Bill Buchanan OBE FRSE

Professor of Cryptography. Serial innovator. Believer in fairness, justice & freedom. Based in Edinburgh. Old World Breaker. New World Creator. Building trust.