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Re: Encrypted Game Manual - Could we crack it?
This seems to come up every year.
FIRST releases the game manual early every year to allow teams to download it early- the servers get hammered on kickoff with teams trying to download the manual, and this helps minimize the load during kickoff. It is encrypted so they can still prevent teams from seeing the contents until kickoff.
Don't abuse this. Trying to crack the manual shows a significant amount of disrespect for FIRST and all other teams competing in the program.
If you want to challenge yourself by cracking it after kickoff, by all means go ahead.
As for is it actually possible:
Using brute forcing, no, it would not be possible to crack it prior to kickoff.
Using more refined techniques like you suggested, sure, you might be able to crack it if you are lucky. If you are making incorrect assumptions, then you'll just waste your time though. They could very easily use a word not in your list (or a word they made up), or they could change the pattern ever so slightly and you could be running your cracker for 4 days with no results.
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