[ARG] The Pizza Code Mystery

Black Mesa Archive The Cafeteria
#4886

The clue is probably something that we already found, we just have not realized what it means because it’s too subtle. That’s why he was interested in the story, there must be something either in the IRC clues or in the TOR wiki page that needs to be interpreted in a context we don’t have. For instance, all the references to smuggling niobium to HAFB, the model plane on Dr. Horns desk and the hidden texture on his shack with the plane and the airport pictures. That’s something that hasn’t been tied to the rest of the story, and planes seem to be a recurring theme here. We also don’t know why Welsh decided to steal and hide the pizzas, we know he discovered the secret project, but not why he’s angry about it. Also, as CPU pointed in the wiki, it’s quite possible that Dr. Stone transferred his “conscience” into the quantum computer, to be part of the AI.

We think the pizza’s probably been used to smuggle niobium used to construct HALOS, and that’s why there’s tacos in the shack, Dr. Horn knows they have Niobium and he won’t eat them, and one of the audio announcements in the game, before the resonance cascade, talks about a medical emergency, regarding officer Sisk (I think it was Sisk), who Horn left a note in one of the whiteboards so he would stop stealing pizzas. It seems he ate one and got poisoned, or Dr. Horn went berserk on him because of the stealing, which is more likely since Niobium is not poisonous. So we know things in game seem to be consistent with one another, but there’s still things that are isolated. The other option would be that the pizzas were just meant to cover the cost of the extra niobium, but then he shouldn’t care about Sisk or anyone else taking the pizzas, or Welsh hiding them.

I’ve been looking into the HAFB webpage, and there’s a pizzeria, so we could just assume that it’s not that Dr. Horn was burying Niobium there, which would make no sense, but that he was ordering the “spiced” pizzas from there, to get Niobium that was on the base. Which would make some sense, since that way he could take it past BM security without worries.

Another thing I noticed reading the wiki. 21 goes into 1. 21 is singular, as in 21 is a thing, not 21 things. Then somebody “Lachnummer”, who just commented once (fishy that the name is number/laughing-stock in German, being number the interesting nickname, but maybe I’m looking too much into it), posted information about the images: https://forums.blackmesasource.com/showpost.php?p=560262&postcount=1591 and determined that the biggest picture was an image of Chengdu airport in China. Here’s the thing, when searching in google for 21, one of the first things that appears is MiG-21, which is a single thing, “[a MiG-]21 goes into 1” makes sense; and there’s also a Chinese fighter-jet named Chengdu J-7. Any thoughts on this?

#4887

I’ve either had a flash of brilliance or the bulb blew up with a brilliant flash and it no longer works…

What if the purpose of the pizzas isn’t to cover up snuggling Niobium into the facility but rather to get Niobium INTO Dr Horn’s victims so they can be used as part of his AI creation?

We have multiple core CPU’s. Dr Horn is creating a multiple core AI!

#4888

IIRC, it’s still hidden in the Steam release. I wonder why that is. If it was a bug, then why hasn’t it been fixed? Things like the garment bag on the wall has been updated with a better model, and some of the content on the poster board has been changed (I can’t remember exactly what has changed, though). However, I originally thought that this was the only location where that airport texture was used, well it is, but the same image is also used on another poster board texture.

That’s why I took a closer look at the airport in the 3D skybox of the STU maps. But the only things that stood out were ‘KXBM’ and that dial/compass thing on the tarmac.

Well, in his diary log note he was complaining about all the lists of tasks to do that Dr. Horn was giving him. Maybe that was where the frustration was coming from, as well as being left out of the loop about what was going on in Dr. Horn’s secret labs.

There’s a user called Lachnummer on the wiki as well. But the user appears to be active on other wikias, so I don’t think there’s anything suspicious about that user.

There’s one thing about that hidden airfield photo in Dr. Horn’s shack, which strikes me as somewhat interesting, and that is that it has similar crossed-out circle “bomb site” markings drawn in red like the one drawn over the pizza in the Lies picture on the TOR page. It may be nothing, or it may be something. It’s clear that Dr. Horn has an interest in the aeronautical field, so maybe the key to the puzzle lies in there somewhere. But we don’t seem any closer to identifying any cipher.

#4889

Either this is an amazing coincidence, or stormseeker is evil. Check out the list of Nato codenames.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_NATO_reporting_names_for_fighter_aircraft

Chengdu J-7 is the Chinese version of MiG-21, and both are code-named fishbed by Nato. So two fish.

About the AI infecting people, that would be in line with the Bugs TV series about Cyberax.

Edit: The hidden texture in the shack has to mean something, maybe it’s not the key nor a clue, but it has to have some relevance, as an Easter egg it doesn’t make sense to hide it inside the shack, which is an Easter egg itself, hidden so that it doesn’t show up in game.

Also, the image on the bottom, that has the circles with the X on them, also has red lines above the circles, seem to be a mirrored L, a vertical line, and another mirrored L or C, perhaps even an E, so it would be LiE, the other picture on top gets in the way. The Chengdu airport is not an airport, but a helicopter base, so maybe pointing at the helicopter in surface tension? The KXBM is probably the ICAO code, elev. it’s probably the elevation the airport is at, but I don’t think that’s a compass. Compasses have either 4, 8, 16, 32, etc. main directions, since they start with the 4 basic and divide each section by two to get an intermediate one. That thing has 12, like a clock. I can’t read what is written around it, but if it’s a compass it is not a regular one.

#4890

Well, it’s one of the four ciphers suggested by 0418_08151814 (aka Code_ aka Storm) in the PM to Guns, and one of the three ciphers mentioned on the pizza budget whiteboard. Several things seem to be pointing right back at this whiteboard. For instance, the “Awesumz” text mentions a whiteboard, and the nearest whiteboard is the pizza budget whiteboard. The “Steals it. Eats it.” in the Lies picture, in reference to Dr. Stone, may be a reference to “Anthony - Please stop stealing my Pizzas!”, which is scribbled on that whiteboard. “Seek Code out” could also possibly be a reference to “Code”, which is also on the whiteboard. “Code” with a capital ‘C’ is also mentioned in the “Awesumz” text.

So, we keep coming back to these ciphers. The problem is, of course, the block size mismatch and all the technical intricacies involved in applying these ciphers. It’s not as simple as inputting a password, and keep trying until you find the right one. There are all these cipher modes and different methods of how to convert a password into a key. This means that we have to be both a programmer and a cryptographer to solve this. We know that the puzzle is hard, but the biggest problem is not knowing the level of skill required for solving this, and whether we are missing something important that would help us solve this.

I’m not really familiar with the topography of the New Mexican desert, but I believe the elevation of 4032 feet makes sense for that region. The elevation can also be seen on a sign on the hangar building where you meet the guard who has an unfortunate fate. I’m not sure if that means the number could be important, or if they are just being consistent with all the small details in the game. @thewizard99 suggested it might be a reference to the Commodore PET computer, specifically the CBM Model 4032. But that seems a bit of a stretch, although an old computer like that would fit the theme of old style terminals and such.

About that “compass” thing, I agree, it doesn’t look quite like a compass. Airport compasses should look more like these, which are airport compass calibration pads:

1332×920


499×528

But then again, those are also divided into 12 directions…

If we compare the IRC clue puzzles with the in-game puzzles, we see that there is one key difference: In the in-game clues, it was much easier to distinguish between what was information that was to be used for something beyond the gateway puzzle (the four codes), and what was information that might contain a clue to the gateway puzzle (“Victor would like this extension” + the image of the coin).

In the IRC puzzles, there is no such clear distinction. We basically have no idea whether a piece of information might be a clue to the current gateway puzzle, or if it’s something needed for something further down the road. All we can do is guess. For instance, the clues seem to suggest that we need to login somewhere with the username “HALOS”. It’s very possible that the “BENALOHPAILLIER” password is the password for that login, in which case it’s not part of the HALOS code puzzle, and we can focus on the remaining pieces of information found in the IRC clues. But can we be sure?

#4891

I must have missed it. Flav you mentioned a compass, could you please post the image? I have not seen it. Aviation is what I spent my career in, so I actually know a little bit about this stuff, for a change. like said above, the compass painted at the airport is a compass swing for aircraft, any time there any type of electrical malfunctions, hard landings, new parts installed in the cockpit, thunderstorms, test flights etc… the compass swing must be used to recalibrate or make adjustments. It has to be in an area where there is NO POSSIBLE magnetic interference. (fun fact; when performing a compass swing on a uh-60, sometimes you need to go to the rear of the aircraft, next to the tail rotor and next to the engine exhaust and manually move the mag pic up in the tail section while everything is running. Watch that tail wheel!!!) also, airports have 2 sets of degrees listed, for instance a runway labeled as runway 8, or the runway with the heading of 80 degrees, will be the magnetic compass heading. But will have a TRUE heading of perhaps 90 degrees, true north is based off of the planets axis of rotation, while the other is the ever changing magnetic north. so, at different airports, depending on the year, the magnetic declination should be able to be identified, ONLY reason I’m putting this up, if it is airport related, this information could be useful.

and what was said above, about logging in somewhere under halos, is it possible that the login terminal is somewhere in game? is it possible there is a trigger somewhere that opens access to said terminal? with that in mind, is it possible to get 2 players or more into the same game? not as a multiplayer game, but so there could be a couple of us at different areas, for instance, someone sitting by a terminal, while another flips a switch, lets say, in questionable ethics? I remember there being an interactive switch there, that when hit, would make a noise like it activated something, unlike every other switch like this in the game. OR is it possible, that if there were multiples of us in game, our own single player game, that if someone activated something in their game, could it possibly activate something in someone elses game? meaning we had to do something together, in our own games at the same time? I’m not suggesting these as solutions, I’m just asking if something like this would be possible to do?

one other thing I just thought of, maybe if we can identify an airport, we can look up the airports radio frequency? could that be applied to a radio somewhere in game?

#4892

So it’s normal for compasses divided in twelve parts to be painted on airports. Today I learned something. Then maybe it’s just that they went into the trouble of making an airport that’s realistic. One of the airports in the hidden texture is the Chengdu helicopter base. Then there’s a picture of a biplane, and another smaller picture of what seems to be an airport in the dessert, I checked airports in New México and it’s none of the big ones, none has strips that shape close to buildings.

https://vignette2.wikia.nocookie.net/thepizzaisalie/images/5/5d/Photos2.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20150110203352

Even if it was an airport that we could know the frequency, there’s no place in the game where it could be used. About something needed to be activated in game, it’s improbable, because there doesn’t seem to be anything beyond what’s been found, but it’s not impossible, storm did imply that there’s something in the game that has not been found or has been overlooked, so it’s an option as good as any other.

About the IRC clues, in hindsight, the first clues gave information about where to look and where not to look. For instance, IRC 1 pointed clarified it was Konami code. IRC 2 can be interpreted as “don’t pay attention to kryptos location” (I’m assuming it was around the time people were talking about kryptos on the forum or IRC) and pointed towards White Sand’s Missile Base. On IRC 3 it says WSMB is no longer viable, move to main site. On fourth is says main site is compromised, return BMRF. Login Halos. This could either mean that the login is Halos, as you said, or it was telling somebody to log in Halos, since the spaces were not present in the decoded message.

IRC clue 5 is what doesn’t seem related at all with the other clues, at least not at this point. IRC clue 6 straight points towards the website where the halos/752 code was found.

So we also know this that 0418_ said when people were trying to solve code D : “I think the IRC clues are storyline based, in this case the transporting of an element needed for a project. I dont think they are clues, as nothing in there seems relevant to a cipher. … As for where it leads, who knows, I suspect as with all gateway puzzles there will be some kind of clue embedded within it.”

Which was true, the decoded Code D pointed towards the site:

IT HAS COME TO MY ATTENTION THAT RESEARCH INTO POTENTIAL ALTERNATIVE BRIDGING METHODS MAY BE SUPPORTED BY THE INCLUSION AND APPLICATION OF THE LASER OPTRONIC LINEAR INDUCER ARRAY TO ACT AS AN AXIS MODULATOR FOR REGULATION AND FOCUSING AN UNKNOWN ENERGY FORM WAS DETECTED WHILST INVESTIGATING THIS HYPOTHESIS PLEASE USE CODE D 0914 TO COMPLETE THE SEQUENCE ON MY SITE [As a note, why the hell does the forum have highlighting for Brainfuck Source Code? I remember looking back in the day into esoteric languages because there is a really weird and impractical one called malbolge, which ties in the Divine Comedy quote on the TOR page, said by the giant Malebolge, and I thought could be the way the 752 had to be interpreted.]

So we can “discard” the first fourth clues and the sixth, the first four because they seem to be history related, how they were moving the Niobium from place to place, and the sixth was already used. So we’re left with the fifth, and the message from Code D, as the only information available on day 1 to solve the HALOS code, plus whatever is plainly seen in the game, plus the grilledpizza.jpg and the message accompanying the 752 Code.

Now IRC clue 5:

"This is a message left for Dr. Horn. Just to remind you in case of emergencies that the password to the HALOS files is BENALOHPAILLIER. I have programmed HALOS to send in level seven cases. You should bring pizzas." This just doesn’t make sense. First, it’s not Horn, nor Halos, nor Welsh because he would not help Dr. Horn, who sent the message. If we’re to assume the 752 Code is one of the HALOS files, since it was the name of the page on storm’s site, BENALOHPAILLIER should be the password, now we know it’s probably not, because it’s supposed to be hinted at in a “less than obvious way”. Back in the day I tried cryptographers, homomorphic crytosystems and what not related to Benaloh and Paillier. Now, in the “awesumz” message, it says the password is the name of those two “cryptographer peoples”. Could it be that the password is literally the name, and not the surname? So Josh and Pascal, but this doesn’t seem to tie in to anything else, like the TOR page.

About the different methods to convert the key, twofish accepts keys up to 256 bits. It’s in section 4.3.1 of the manual.

https://www.schneier.com/academic/paperfiles/paper-twofish-paper.pdf

It says that the key should be padded with 0 on the right till the key is the length of the next standard key size. So any word or phrase up to 32 characters could be the key, without the need to hash, which would be convenient since we don’t have anything pointing to a particular hashing algorithm for the key. Also, the mode, as discussed before, should be ECB, because of the [ABORTIVE] in the message where HALOS code was found, Abort I VE =Abort Initialization VEctor. Then, as you say, everything seems to point towards that whiteboard with the “stop stealing my pizzas”, which has AES, twofish and serpent written on it. Also, OpenSSL doesn’t support twofish.

This actually looks promising as the algorithm to go. The only thing that seems a bit awkward is the 128bit block size, but maybe the decoded message is supposed to appear truncated, like one of the clues left in the wiki. So maybe something needs to be appended at the end of the code, still, without appending it the first blocks will decode without problem.

#4893

I posted a screenshot of it along with the screenshot with the airport code a few pages back.

I tried to upload the original texture where it is found, but the forum gave me an error. Apparently, the image is too large.

I don’t have a screenshot of the runway with the runway number, but the number on the taxiways is 26-8, with a large number 8 at one end of the runway.

I suppose it’s possible, but if you need to enter a password, they would’ve had to implement it programmatically by a programmer. It’s not something a level designer could put into a map (if I’m not horribly mistaken).

The game would have to support co-op, which BM does not.

Btw., @Angel, I’m not sure if you are aware, but @CPU created a new thread for storyline discussion, where he collected a large number of posts from this thread, which focuses solely on storyline theories: [ARG] The Pizza Code Mystery Story Line

I don’t think anyone was talking about Kryptos before IRC clue 2, but when someone tried to look up the coordinates, but got the location slightly wrong, 0418_ was quick to point us to the right location, which was the location of the Kryptos sculpture, which suggests that it was important somehow. But maybe it was just to prepare us for polyalphabetic ciphers, which would come later.

Strange, it shouldn’t detect letters-only-text as Brainfuck, only when you use a number of characters used in Brainfuck. The only way to avoid it is to switch to BBCode in the editor and replace [tt][code][/tt] with [tt][code=plain][/tt] and then submit. If you switch back to normal view, the [tt]=plain[/tt] disappears and it becomes Brainfuck again.

But let’s say the HALOS code is not truncated, which means the code doesn’t fit the block size of a 128-bit block cipher. This means that the ECB and CBC modes can’t be used, since these modes need the message to be a multiple of the block size. However, the modes CFB, OFB and CTR turn the cipher into a stream cipher, which means the message doesn’t have to be a multiple of the block size. These modes need an IV (or in the case of CTR, a nonce). However, for the CFB mode, the IV only affects the first decrypted block, so we will be able to decrypt the whole thing but the first block by using an arbitrary IV. The CTR mode uses a counter which is incremented for each block. The counter is usually initialized to a nonce (number used once) and counts from there. But if the encryption was done with the counter starting from 0, then all we would have to to worry about was the key.
stu_ramp_far_03_cropped.png

#4894

And this brings the discussion back to… WHAT is the key? Having the IV or the encryption method does us no good if we don’t have the key.

However, I will go ahead and begin coding something that will let us use and test Twofish on a browser, similarly to what I have done with Lucifer.JS a few pages back.

Never mind. We have this.

#4895

Yeah, It could be any other mode really, it’s just that having a mode without and IV seems more… reasonable. Then again this puzzle might not be reasonable at all, so anything goes. About the brainfuck source code, it seems it’s included in the burning board software that this forum is made with, and it’s present in any board using the software, so it has nothing to do with the ARG.

That tool has a problem, it only allows 60 tries per IP per day. If you run out of them try this one: https://www.bierkandt.org/encryption/symmetric_encryption.php has unlimited uses, the problem is that you have to click on the input to be interpreted as hex, and the output to binary/none every time you decode, or it will automatically give the output in base64 and interpret the input as text instead of hex. We still should try to figure what could the password be, trying everything we can come up with, even if we used a script to automatically try passwords it would end up being annoying, by hand it’s just too much to do.

#4896

Note that it will fill in the IV for you if you select an IV based mode. The IV it uses is the SHA1 hash of the key (which is a bad idea from a security perspective), but we don’t know if that’s how the IV was derived for the HALOS code, if an IV based mode was used. However, you can fill in the IV field with your own.

That tool is broken for any mode other than ECB. Apparently, the tool uses a fixed hardcoded IV, but doesn’t seem to use the same IV for encryption and decryption, which makes it useless. There is no option to input your own IV.

There’s also another online tool here: https://www.tools4noobs.com/online_tools/decrypt/

However, that tool also uses a fixed hardcoded IV, which I’ve determined to be 30303030303030303030303030303030 in hex, or “0000000000000000” in ASCII.

I’m pretty sure all three tools use Mcrypt in PHP (which is based on libmcrypt) for encryption/decryption, so another option would be to use that directly by writing our own PHP script.

#4897

Oh bugger. Well, then there’s no online tool able to decode properly in any mode other than ECB, I would imagine that storm would make this so that anyone could decode it without coding knowledge, It seems too big of a jump going from pen and paper ciphers that there’s tools available online, to make a puzzle that’ cannot be solved unless you know how to code. Well, there’s cryptool2, which I guess anyone can use without coding knowledge, so still doesn’t need to be ECB.

#4898

Actually, I was slightly wrong about that bierkandt tool. It doesn’t use a fixed hardcoded IV. Instead it uses a different IV, possibly pseudorandom, for each encryption. But it looks like it’s also using a random IV for each decryption, which makes no sense. The IV needs to be added to the result along with the encrypted message so that the same IV can be used when decrypting the message.

That said, my point still stands. The tool is broken for modes other than ECB.

From a cryptographic point of view, the IV doesn’t have to be secret, but it must be unique and unpredictable for each encrypted message. That’s why I’ve been wondering if the IV could have been included with the HALOS code, prepended or appended to the code. That is, of course, if we are at all dealing with encryption that involves using an IV.

EDIT: If we look at all the other puzzles, we see that Storm for the most part stuck to using standard encodings: base64, ascii85 (and I’m assuming the same thing goes for the hex as well) and SSTV; and straight forward and well-defined ciphers: pigpen substitution cipher, playfair, running-key polyalphabetic substitution cipher and SECOM (although we had a bit of trouble with that one too due to a step in the cipher’s description that was a bit unclear. In the end it was solvable using a tool downloadable from a site known by ARGers and crypto puzzlers).

The only puzzles that were exceptions to this, and which might be called “out of the ordinary”, were the composite paintings puzzle and the grilled pizza binary triangle puzzle.

#4899

I’ve wondered for a long time who else Dr Horn was meeting with at his shack.
There are 3 tacos, 3 plates and 3 of what appears to be lunchboxes.

Obviously, one of each of these would be for Horn himself but who are his two visitors?

Dr. Bottomley, because he’s Dr Horn’s boss?
Dr. Foreman, because he shares an office with Dr horn?
JD Marcel, because he uses Niobium 5 ‘for that AI project thing’
Dr. Junek because he’s suspected of having access to the HALOS project.
or could it even be Gman himself because of the suit bag on the wall?

Who else are likely visitors?

#4900

I’ve been thinking about the same thing ever since I first got to the shack in-game… like, a week and a half ago. I kinda forgot to post it here, though. Whoops. Anyway, figuring this out might be part of the “story line” thing Stormseeker apparently wants us to work on, too.

I’m pretty sure we’ve got some hints somewhere about Horn working together with… one or two people. Gimme a sec, I’ll see if I can dig them up on the wiki.

Edit:

Here it is; “Only Dr Horn and Dr Bottomley seem to have access to those rooms, hmm perhaps Dr Junek too…” - I’m pretty sure that is the clearest thing there is in regards to who Dr. Horn might be working with.

#4901

Most likely that.

However, there is another scenario: Dr. Horn could have invited Dr. Welsh and Dr. Stone to meet him at the shack to talk over a friendly meal, so he could confront them about the troubles they were causing him and have it out with them in a civilized manner. But there is no evidence of an altercation or scuffle at the scene, which would suggest the meeting ended peacefully. (Or, maybe it ended badly and someone got thrown off the cliff…)

#4902

I tried flying around the cliff with noclip on to see if I could find anything like that, perhaps a body at the bottom of the cliff, but kept dying by “blackout”. Considering the insane out-of-bounds I was able to go to on other maps, I wonder why the game won’t let you do that on the cliffside. Is something hidden? Or was it just to keep the shack hidden a bit better?

#4903

There’s a trigger wall very close to the cliffside, which will trigger a reload. It leaves very little room to maneuver any distance out from the cliffside. See this post for how to disable the reload.

EDIT: As for why it’s there, I think it’s mostly just to “catch” players falling off the cliff, and maybe also, as you say, to keep the shack hidden a bit better.

#4904

Well, while that explains how the reload happens, it doesn’t explain the why… although I guess I might be looking a bit too deep into that.

Edit:

… yes, that.

#4905

Pascal you say? Its a Programming Language

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascal_(programming_language)

And also Pascal’s Triangle. Where you add up the numbers and work down a Pyramid ( or should i say pizza slice )

As for Josh the only thing worth mentioning is a episode of The Outer Limits ( something about missing Satellites hah ) and Josh is a City in the book of Mormon.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josh_(The_Outer_Limits)

Josh Cohen Benaloh (16) + Pascal Paillier (14) = 30, + two 0’s for padding = 32 Characters.

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