A new 50 cent coin, released by the Royal Australian Mint today, celebrates the importance of code breaking and evolution of signals intelligence - and if you can work out what is written on the coin, the Australian cyber-spy agency wants to hear from you.
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Cloaked in several layers of the secret code, the 50 cent coin marks the 75th anniversary of the Australian Signals Directorate (ASD), the agency responsible for signals intelligence, cyber warfare and cyber security.
ASD's cryptographic experts collaborated with the Royal Australian Mint to help design the coin, which has four unique layers of code that - if broken - contain a special message.
Fifty thousand coins have been produced and are available for purchase by coin collectors and the Australian public.
Australian Signals Directorate director-general Rachel Noble said the release of the coin was a fitting tribute to its work.
"ASD has a long history that all Australians can be proud of, helping to protect the nation from foreign threats, and keeping us safer by preventing and disrupting online threats including cyber criminals," Ms Noble said.
"This exciting coin release challenges Australians to engage with the sorts of problem-solving that our talented people at ASD do every day, and might even be a pointer to a new career with us for those who can crack it."
Royal Australian Mint CEO Leigh Gordon said developing the coin was a complex task as it was critical each different code was clearly identifiable.
"While the 50 cent piece is Australia's biggest coin, it still doesn't have a lot of surface area," he said.
"Ensuring people could see the code to decrypt it was one of the challenges our people were able to solve with ASD, to create a unique and special product."
Collectively the ciphers showcase ASD's historical evolution as an organisation, combining codes thousands of years old through to modern binary code, invented during the age of computing.
