A real life Dan brown novel???

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/internet/10468112/The-internet-mystery-that-has-the-world-baffled.html

For the past two years, a mysterious online organisation has been setting the world's finest code-breakers a series of seemingly unsolveable problems. But to what end? Welcome to the world of Cicada 3301


One evening in January last year, Joel Eriksson, a 34-year-old computer analyst from Uppsala in Sweden, was trawling the web, looking for distraction, when he came across a message on an internet forum. The message was in stark white type, against a black background.


“Hello,” it said. “We are looking for highly intelligent individuals. To find them, we have devised a test. There is a message hidden in this image. Find it, and it will lead you on the road to finding us. We look forward to meeting the few that will make it all the way through. Good luck.”


The message was signed: "3301”.


A self-confessed IT security "freak” and a skilled cryptographer, Eriksson’s interest was immediately piqued. This was – he knew – an example of digital steganography: the concealment of secret information within a digital file. Most often seen in conjunction with image files, a recipient who can work out the code – for example, to alter the colour of every 100th pixel – can retrieve an entirely different image from the randomised background "noise”.


It’s a technique more commonly associated with nefarious ends, such as concealing child pornography. In 2002 it was suggested that al-Qaeda operatives had planned the September 11 attacks via the auction site eBay, by encrypting messages inside digital photographs

I have been unable to determine that this is a fake or some sort of art, but it reads like an Dan Brown novel. It reports as being real life....  :\\:[:  :\\:[:  :\\:[: 

If your interested read on, quite a long story at source, I'd like to know other's opinions.

   "The truth is out there.."

I'm always more than a little wary of anything concerning technical, scientific or IT issues when it's in one of Murdoch's 'anti-science/anti-academic' newspapers or TV shows these days...

Doubly so when I see a News Corp. journalist opening his story with the phrase "the world's finest code-breakers" with no examples, references or explanations..

I reckon it could be in any reader's own interest to approach this report with their scepticism meter wound up to "healthy cynicism", in this particular case.  

@bee
Yes that's why I looked around to see if I could find some reference to it else where. it is very sensationalist