I found the following email in my inbox:
I almost disregarded this as spam at first but further investigation revealed a curious puzzle. The web page has the following appearance:
(I am security conscious and opened the page in a VM for safety.)
Here is the website's source code (line numbers added by myself):
1 <head><title>The Game is On</title></head>
2 <!-- The toast is close. The key is long, and on this page. -->
3 TELO SY RF IDAXF BVIHUIX LXAG
4 <br />Only the French would truly understand.
5 <br />
6 <br />Poor Mr. Bellaso.
7 <table width=30 height=30>
8 <tr>
9 <td width=10><center>N</center></td>
10 <td width=10><center>O</center></td>
11 <td width=10><center>P</center></td>
12 </tr>
13 <tr>
14 <td width=10><center>O</center></td>
15 <td width=10><center>P</center></td>
16 <td width=10><center>Q</center></td>
17 </tr>
18 <tr>
19 <td width=10><center>P</center></td>
20 <td width=10><center>Q</center></td>
21 <td width=10><center>R</center></td>
22 </tr>
23 </table>
24 <br />
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26 <center>[email protected]</center>
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29 <br />6 levels deep.
30 <br /><center>Current Payout: <b>0.00765 BTC</b></center>
31 <br /><center>Contribute to the winnings: 18zFNTrjYcGt6N6uw58KqFUXE5WeaTtUsc</center>
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73 <a href="/tabula-recta">.</a>
74 <!-- The key is in clue -->
I tried using ROT13 on the message along the top, but no transpositions seemed to produce meaningful English or French (granted, I don't speak French, but I could probably recognize words that sounded French :P).
One possible clue I was able to come up with: Bellaso was an Italian cryptologist.
The Help Center requires that I mention that:
- this puzzle is not my own
- I am not aware that an answer exists yet for the puzzle
<br />I didn't mean for this to be so difficult. Keep it up. More hints are there.<br /> $\endgroup$<> Show originaloption, I don't know about on other clients.) It looks likenoreallyitis.mehas "browntech.space" in its MX record. $\endgroup$noreallyitis.me) looks like it points to a raspberry pi at someone's home IP address; the latter (browntech.space) looks like it points to an Amazon cloud server. $\endgroup$