Although it has its origins in older conspiracy theories, the first post by Q was in October 28, 2017 on the anonymous imageboard website 4chan.
Later Q migrated to 8 chan:
Q soon moved to 8chan, making it QAnon's online home.[18] Q's often cryptic posts became known as "drops", which were later collected by aggregator apps and websites.
Cicada 3301 had a special key to verify it was them.
On April 29, 2017, a new user came to the #cicadasolvers IRC channel and notified us that he found a new PGP signed message from 3301 on Pastebin. The user searched "7A35090F" - 3301's PGP key - on the site, sorted by date, and found a previously undiscovered message from 3301. Currently, this is the most recent communication from 3301, coming over a year after their last message.
Message is signed with 0x7A35090F key. Date of signature is: Signed on 2017-04-04 23:23 GMT
When #cicadasolvers users opened link, the Pastebin had 113 views. The user found the message 25 days after it was posted.
According to google cache on April on 6 Apr 2017 11:46:25 GMT, the page had 72 views.
It led to this message:
Beware false paths. Always verify PGP signature from 7A35090F.
3301
Weirdly if you take Cicada 3301 verification key and post it here, one post posts up:
I have no idea why, but the verification key for Cicada leads to Q post #7.
Why wasn’t HRC prosecuted for the emails? Put simply, Obama ultimately OK’d by using the non govt email addy to communicate w/ Clinton. Obama also had an alias along with each of his cabinet members. Therefore indicting HRC would lead to indicting Obama & his cabinet etc which could never happen. Remember he lied about knowing but that ultimately came out in the dump. Poof!
Weirdly, searching "7A35090F" doesn't lead to any Q posts on any other Q aggregator. Just this one:
You had to use graphics, ciphers, and other tools to figure out the secret messages.
This is when it first appeared:
On January 5th, 2012, a mysterious image was posted on 4chan’s /x/ – Paranormal board.
You had to down load the graphic file and put it into here to find the hidden message:
There was indeed a message hidden in this image. You can download the image and try it yourself with Boxentriq’s Text Extractor tool. See the screenshot below:
Then use a cipher tool to break the code.
Eventually you'll be lead to another graphic:
To decode it, you will have to set the Shift to 4 and the Language to “Custom”. It will then give a link to an Imgur image: https://i.imgur.com/m9sYK.jpg
Once again you plug in the graphic to figure out the hidden message that is hidden within the graphic.
Still, it contains two keywords that hint at how to get the REAL message out: guess and out. This indicates that you should use the steganography tool OutGuess. If you use OutGuess, you get a much more interesting message:
This message tells you that the numbers are a book cipher (also called a book code). A book cipher consists of numbers that reference pages, paragraphs, lines, words or letters in a book. To decode it, you will need access to the book. The quest continued on Reddit.
Only real messages from Cicada 3301 are signed with this key ID: 7A35090F. Using this ID, their public key can be downloaded from the MIT keyserver.
Again only in this Q aggregator does Cicada signature lead to Q post 7. Typing in just a 7 won't do this. Only this number combination does it.
Maybe it's nothing, but I just find it very curious.
There was another puzzle on cicada 3301 that involved using the graphic:
Looking at the image posted on 4chan, it had no obvious prime numbers, but the size is 509 x 503 pixels. It happens that both 509 and 503 are prime numbers. Therefore the total number is 509 x 503 x 3301 = 845145127.
You had to take the graphic size, multiply it to itself and multiply 3301.
That later led to mysterious posters that popped up showing Cicada 3301 and QR codes.
You know I just realize QR code...
Q = 17
R= 18
Ha! R is the next letter in the alphabet after Q.
Just wanted to post this privately for discussion.
Wanna bet there's a message embedded in the Q post from Cicada?
Remember when stenography came up in regards to photos, but then something happened to the particular stenography tool we were supposed to use and it wouldn't work anymore?
Agghh! I can't remember what got a bunch of us started down this path. There was a theory that stenography might be used in photos to send messages, so we started looking into it. Silent Eye was the one we were supposed to use, but I don't know where that idea came from. The problem was, you couldn't just run a photo through silent eye and expect to get a message, as the person who set up the message could password protect it. If you wanted to see the message, you had to know the password and none of us could get past this point. Eventually, everyone gave up on it.
Perhaps, though, the password for post 7 is Cicada's ID.
u/lonewulf
u/basedcitizen
u/rooftoptendie
CICADA 3301
Q first appeared on 4 chan:
Later Q migrated to 8 chan:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/8chan
Funny 8 chan... give all the 8 comms we've been seeing.
I talked about the 8 patterns around the FBI MAL raid.
https://greatawakening.win/p/15JAcJjpp3/using-41020-djt-for-q-proofs-is-/
But also historical events sure are following crazy eights
https://greatawakening.win/p/15JUCZCLps/is-it-just-me-or-is-there-a-patt/c/
8 also looks like the symbol for infinity.
Remember this Trump gif had the Left melting down:
https://www.dailydot.com/layer8/trump-campaign-thanos-meme/
He shows himself as Thanos and uses the infinity stones (8 symbol) to make Pelosi disappear.
Text to Trump 88022
Six months earlier Cicada 3301 made their last post at the end of April, 2017 (exact date unknown).
https://uncovering-cicada.fandom.com/wiki/PGP_Signed_Message_April_2017
Cicada 3301 had a special key to verify it was them.
It led to this message:
Weirdly if you take Cicada 3301 verification key and post it here, one post posts up:
https://qalerts.app/?q=7A35090F
I have no idea why, but the verification key for Cicada leads to Q post #7.
Weirdly, searching "7A35090F" doesn't lead to any Q posts on any other Q aggregator. Just this one:
https://qalerts.app/?q=7A35090F
And this one has also had some strange glitches before.
Like this:
https://qalerts.app/?q=%3E
As for Cicada 3301 here is how complicated that puzzle was (the last one still hasn't been solved):
https://sunnyrabiussunny.com/solution-of-cicada-3301-puzzle/
You had to use graphics, ciphers, and other tools to figure out the secret messages.
This is when it first appeared:
You had to down load the graphic file and put it into here to find the hidden message:
Then use a cipher tool to break the code.
Eventually you'll be lead to another graphic:
Once again you plug in the graphic to figure out the hidden message that is hidden within the graphic.
Again only in this Q aggregator does Cicada signature lead to Q post 7. Typing in just a 7 won't do this. Only this number combination does it.
https://qalerts.app/?q=7A35090F
You can delete 090F and it still works
https://qalerts.app/?q=7A35
But if you delete the 5 and only type 7A3 into the search it no longer takes to Q post 7.
It takes you to these 34 posts:
https://qalerts.app/?q=7A3
(likely for the ID).
If you type 7A34, you get these 5 posts:
https://qalerts.app/?q=7A34
Maybe it's nothing, but I just find it very curious.
There was another puzzle on cicada 3301 that involved using the graphic:
You had to take the graphic size, multiply it to itself and multiply 3301.
That later led to mysterious posters that popped up showing Cicada 3301 and QR codes.
You know I just realize QR code...
Q = 17 R= 18
Ha! R is the next letter in the alphabet after Q.
Just wanted to post this privately for discussion.
https://sunnyrabiussunny.com/solution-of-cicada-3301-puzzle/
Wanna bet there's a message embedded in the Q post from Cicada?
Remember when stenography came up in regards to photos, but then something happened to the particular stenography tool we were supposed to use and it wouldn't work anymore?
Oh was heir a stenography tool that Q had wanted us to use? I'd never noticed before. Do you know what post that was in?
Agghh! I can't remember what got a bunch of us started down this path. There was a theory that stenography might be used in photos to send messages, so we started looking into it. Silent Eye was the one we were supposed to use, but I don't know where that idea came from. The problem was, you couldn't just run a photo through silent eye and expect to get a message, as the person who set up the message could password protect it. If you wanted to see the message, you had to know the password and none of us could get past this point. Eventually, everyone gave up on it.
Perhaps, though, the password for post 7 is Cicada's ID.
It'd be worth a try. Do you still have it to use?
Or maybe you take the graphic sizes and multiple by 3301 and that's the password? Just like how that one decode worked.