[ARG] The Pizza Code Mystery

[Astij]

@thewizard99

@JohnNotJohn

@thewizard99

you guys might want to have a relook over what Flav said here. Maybe we already have the clues we needed in the previous IRC clues.

Clue 6 pointed to the HALOS file.
Clue 5 gave the password “BENALOHPAILLIER.”
Clue 3 was the first mention of HALOS, as far as I can tell.

Clue 4, however, doesn’t seem to add much at first. But consider this: it gave a login “HALOS”
Combining the login and the password gives a total of 20 characters, which can be used as a 160-bit key for a Rijndael cipher.

Is there anyway to incoporate 21 into 1 in to all this?

EDIT :

Could a clue be to the bit on the top right of this board?

That just has to be something, it’s like nothing on there isn’t clues

[Cranken]

@thewizard99

@JohnNotJohn

@thewizard99

you guys might want to have a relook over what Flav said here. Maybe we already have the clues we needed in the previous IRC clues.

Clue 6 pointed to the HALOS file.
Clue 5 gave the password “BENALOHPAILLIER.”
Clue 3 was the first mention of HALOS, as far as I can tell.

Clue 4, however, doesn’t seem to add much at first. But consider this: it gave a login “HALOS”
Combining the login and the password gives a total of 20 characters, which can be used as a 160-bit key for a Rijndael cipher.

Is there anyway to incoporate 21 into 1 in to all this?

EDIT :

Could a clue be to the bit on the top right of this board?

You can see the examples for the encryption which they used:
AES
Twofish(?) - because 2F
SP - ?

Maybe we should also look into Twofish / SP whatever this is.
EDIT: Seems like SP could be Serpent(another AES-like encryption)
So the whole encryption thing has to do with AES.

[ramonster]

SP=Serpent

[thewizard99]

After looking back, someone mentioned about SP/Twofish a while back ( 2 years ) and someone brushed right past it. With this board and it being noted. We seem to be on the right track.

Now how does Serpant/Twofish work?

https://www.bierkandt.org/encryption/symmetric_encryption.php

That website allows you to do both Twofish/Serpant at the same time, using the Halos File, and what ever password ( im assuming BENALOHPAILLIER ) as the Key, though could be something else.
Is there away to convert BENALOHPAILLIER as a word to something that would reprsent a 1024/2048 Key?

[JohnNotJohn]

@thewizard99

After looking back, someone mentioned about SP/Twofish a while back ( 2 years ) and someone brushed right past it. With this board and it being noted. We seem to be on the right track.

Now how does Serpant/Twofish work?

I mentioned this earlier.

@JohnNotJohn

Doing a bit of research, it seems AES, Twofish, and Serpent all use key lenghts of 128, 192, or 256 bits. This means the password would need to be 16, 24, or 32 characters long.

[ramonster]

Passwords themselves rarely are the key to ciphers.
Most of the time a hash function is used to convert the password to a convenient key length.
This could mean that we don’t have to limit ourselves to 16 ,24 or 32 character passwords.
This also means that pretty much anything could be the password, so I doubt that Storm used a hash function to generate the key for encoding the hex code

[Astij]

@ramonster

Passwords themselves rarely are the key to ciphers.
Most of the time a hash function is used to convert the password to a convenient key length.
This could mean that we don’t have to limit ourselves to 16 ,24 or 32 passwords.
This also means that pretty much anything could be the password, so I doubt that Storm used a hash function to generate the key for encoding the hex code

What mode should we use or does it really matter?

[Gunsrequiem]

I ran about fifty different passwords through the different variants of AES and DES. I’m convinced that a transposition needs to occur, and that the hex is not raw data.

[xchelon]

@thewizard99

@flavrans9

@MadDoctor

I was snooping through the wiki, looking for some leads, and I found some small things. First, through all the IRC messages, Dr.Horn seems to be upgrading his OTR version. The first is at 2.0 and counts all the way up to 4.0, which is apparently the current one. […]

The message in the first IRC clue also had OTR markers in it. First the ?OTR,1,3,?OTR: marker, then an OTR: marker immediately preceding the “corrupted” message. In other IRC clues that had an inner code or puzzle, the code was preceded by an [OTR//n.0] tag. I’m wondering if the message in the first IRC clue is supposed to be [OTR//1.0]. If that’s true, then we have four puzzles in the IRC clues, each identified by the corresponding OTR version number.

In IRC Clue 2, there were location clues, one of which led us to the Kryptos sculpture located on the grounds of CIA Headquarters in Langley, Virginia. This sculpture contains a coded message in four parts which people have been trying to decipher for decades. The first three parts have been deciphered, while the fourth is still unsolved. This looks conspicuously like our current situation with the four OTR puzzles, three of which have been solved, while the fourth is yet to be solved.

In the case of the Kryptos enigma, the artist who created the sculpture has said that the answers to the first sections contain clues to the last section. Perhaps this is something that applies to the The Pizza Code Mystery as well.

@Gunsrequiem

I checked back on some things too, and found this:

Airforce Base

The jets on the landing strip are crossed out the same way as the pizza on the picture on the Tempus page. Could this be a reference to the HAFB?

• As far as I can tell, that texture is only ever used in Dr. Horn’s shack (a.k.a. the taco shack). And why is it invisible in the game? Is it a bug, or was it made invisible on purpose?

• Also, the airfield shown on the top photo is not HAFB. I checked in Google Earth. I have no idea which airfield it could be, though.

• Perhaps the crossed out circles, or circled Xes, are marking out jets or transport vehicles carrying a shipment of Niobium.

• Another thing, I don’t know if this means anything, but that map in the room, which is also found in Dr. Horn’s office, is full of circled dots.

you guys might want to have a relook over what Flav said here. Maybe we already have the clues we needed in the previous IRC clues.

If even CIA, coundn’t break it and thewizard99 showed us about the Kryptos Sculpture, the Halos File could be coded with the same cryptography that CIA used in the fourth code of Kryptos so anyone already tried to decode with the same cryptography?

[Gunsrequiem]

Nah, no one has publicly cracked that one yet, although it could technically be a variant of the other three.

[TornadoAP]

@JohnNotJohn

@thewizard99

you guys might want to have a relook over what Flav said here. Maybe we already have the clues we needed in the previous IRC clues.

Clue 6 pointed to the HALOS file.
Clue 5 gave the password “BENALOHPAILLIER.”
Clue 3 was the first mention of HALOS, as far as I can tell.

Clue 4, however, doesn’t seem to add much at first. But consider this: it gave a login “HALOS”
Combining the login and the password gives a total of 20 characters, which can be used as a 160-bit key for a Rijndael cipher.

Can anyone try this?

[P_PORTAL_RTAL]

@thewizard99

After looking back, someone mentioned about SP/Twofish a while back ( 2 years ) and someone brushed right past it. With this board and it being noted. We seem to be on the right track.

Now how does Serpant/Twofish work?

https://www.bierkandt.org/encryption/symmetric_encryption.php

That website allows you to do both Twofish/Serpant at the same time, using the Halos File, and what ever password ( im assuming BENALOHPAILLIER ) as the Key, though could be something else.
Is there away to convert BENALOHPAILLIER as a word to something that would reprsent a 1024/2048 Key?

@JohnNotJohn

@thewizard99

After looking back, someone mentioned about SP/Twofish a while back ( 2 years ) and someone brushed right past it. With this board and it being noted. We seem to be on the right track.

Now how does Serpant/Twofish work?

I mentioned this earlier.

@JohnNotJohn

Doing a bit of research, it seems AES, Twofish, and Serpent all use key lenghts of 128, 192, or 256 bits. This means the password would need to be 16, 24, or 32 characters long.

the most used way to translate any text to a 32 charecters is an MD5 hash

the MD5 From BENALOHPAILLIER = 8fba32cbd68e3beb48c8ca0a1152c982

( simpel MD5 Hasher: https://www.miraclesalad.com/webtools/md5.php )

[thewizard99]

@Gunsrequiem - I dont think Storm intends us to solve this using the same methods as the Kryptos Sculpture, but maybe he intends us to follow suit, in the way the creator of it stated that clues where in the other parts

Now ive been looking back over the IRC clues, and if Storm intends us to use the Information in the IRC clues, we need to see what they actually have in them rather than rushing to the next clue.

IRC 1 - Was basically just a initial stage telling us it would be going out of the game.

IRC 2 - Was a decoded base64, and gave locations to external game entities, the Kryptos Statue, White Sand Missile Range, Domino’s Pizza ( A joke Location to do with Pizza) and a dessert Location, which would later be used in IRC 3
Now this similar to the Second cipher for the Kryptos Statue, in the fact that is linked to Locations. Kryptos being one of them is probably a hint that we have to probably use the cyphers that was sued to decode that.

IRC 3 - Mentions the White Sands, the Airforce Base, Niobium, and X01/02, and doesnt hold much infomation in it, other than the “Old Code Talker” ( which is later used in IRC 4) everything else is Locations or Items to the story.

IRC 4 - Again Base64 but required the Navajo code Talkers Dictionary, which was used during World War 2 ( this makes sense when i explain it )

IRC 5 - Had again Base64, which ended up being a polyalphabetic cypher ( again this was used in the Kryptos Statue) this was brute forced but was found that a Running Key Cipher (Tabula Recta) only used 26 letter of the Alphabet.

Now the thing that gets me is the constant link to Germany, WW2 the Navajo code, the Kryptos Statue’s creator mentions a German Clock, the Berlin Clock.

Now this clock ( if Storm does indeed want us to make the link ) and the whole Time Reveals All, thing could be a link to Mengenlehre or Set Theory Principle, which is what that clock is based on.

[thewizard99]

May have just had a kinda crazy, yet simple idea.

What if we need to go real simple. Substitution, Transposition and Concealment. This would go well with the whole Kryptos thing.

[Gunsrequiem]

Yeah, that would just depend on what method was used to conceal it. The good news about hex is that any output that results in decimal or letters would be a solid result and would warrant further investigation.

EDIT: Come to think of it, maybe we should try examining the decimal output of the hex for possible transposition. Perhaps reconverting that transposition to hex and performing the aforementioned AES decryptions might result in something. I’ll try this later tonight.

[TornadoAP]

Quick question, what do you guys use for decryption?

[Skidoo]

One thing I find ourselves overlooking is the story-line around the Sector E Biodome complex. Opposing Force reveals the existence of the Displacer Cannon in sector E’s material transport offices level B. Shephard acquires the teleportation cannon in the chapter “We Are Not Alone” Is this what the clue “Aren’t you alone” on the website is referencing?

https://half-life.wikia.com/wiki/Sector_E_Biodome_Complex
https://half-life.wikia.com/wiki/Displacer_Cannon

[ev1te]

I have not been active here for some time, so I decided to read a bit on the wiki to get a new fresh look at the status of the HALOS.txt file, here is my recap for anyone who is new here:

So all the in-game codes was used to access this site (hence it must be very important!):
www.thestormseeker.com/thepizzaisalie/
username: drhorn
password: 1001085139140914 (combination of all the in-game codes A-D)

One of the files found on that site is the HALOS.txt (ASCII85 coded file) which in turn contains another “coded” message (752 HEX characters):
https://thepizzaisalie.wikia.com/wiki/752_Hex_Code

The other files found on that site is a jpg image and a html file (which has the picture in it).

The picture (grilledpizza.jpg) had a binary sequence encoded in it, and was decoded to:
congratulationsyouwonthePIZZA

There was also a text on the html page (short quote here below), remember this is the page which also showed the jpg image with the above message (congratulationsyouwonthePIZZA):

…HALOS is far too complete to stop now. They can’t hide there, not now, not now I have this, this holds the key to all things… they CAN’T hide from me. I will follow them, I’ll set up a link and this to remind me.

I interpret “this” in the text as a reference to the image right above it. maybe “congratulationsyouwonthePIZZA” should be used to decode the HALOS file.

Furthermore there was a clue/hind from stromeseeker on IRC (IRC clue 5) with this message:

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.

Clearly BENALOHPAILLIER should be used in some way to solve the HALOS.txt file. But the last sentence in that message references “pizzas”, maybe this means to bring the “grilledpizza.jpg” which was on the html page. However it says “pizzas” in plural, so maybe we need more pizza-related images/codes to make a longer code, just as we combined codes A-D to get the HALOS.txt in the first place?

This was my initial thoughts after reading through the codes and clues again after 6+ months of absence. I Hope it can give some new ideas to someone,[/size]

[TornadoAP]

@ev1te

I have not been active here for some time, so I decided to read a bit on the wiki to get a new fresh look at the status of the HALOS.txt file, here is my recap for anyone who is new here:

So all the in-game codes was used to access this site (hence it must be very important!):
www.thestormseeker.com/thepizzaisalie/
username: drhorn
password: 1001085139140914 (combination of all the in-game codes A-D)

One of the files found on that site is the HALOS.txt (ASCII85 coded file) which in turn contains another “coded” message (752 HEX characters):
https://thepizzaisalie.wikia.com/wiki/752_Hex_Code

The other files found on that site is a jpg image and a html file (which has the picture in it).

The picture (grilledpizza.jpg) had a binary sequence encoded in it, and was decoded to:
congratulationsyouwonthePIZZA

There was also a text on the html page (short quote here below), remember this is the page which also showed the jpg image with the above message (congratulationsyouwonthePIZZA):

…HALOS is far too complete to stop now. They can’t hide there, not now, not now I have this, this holds the key to all things… they CAN’T hide from me. I will follow them, I’ll set up a link and this to remind me.

I interpret “this” in the text as a reference to the image right above it. maybe “congratulationsyouwonthePIZZA” should be used to decode the HALOS file.

Furthermore there was a clue/hind from stromeseeker on IRC (IRC clue 5) with this message:

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.

Clearly BENALOHPAILLIER should be used in some way to solve the HALOS.txt file. But the last sentence in that message references “pizzas”, maybe this means to bring the “grilledpizza.jpg” which was on the html page. However it says “pizzas” in plural, so maybe we need more pizza-related images/codes to make a longer code, just as we combined codes A-D to get the HALOS.txt in the first place?

This was my initial thoughts after reading through the codes and clues again after 6+ months of absence. I Hope it can give some new ideas to someone,[/size]

Interesting to note by the way: congratulationsyouwonthePIZZA is 28 bytes. Rjindael can use a key with 28 bytes to decode it…

[PsYxOpAt]

I googled BENALOHPAILLIER in case something new shows up and I found this. https://www.cosic.esat.kuleuven.be/publications/article-1327.pdf What was interesting is points 2.2.5 and 2.4.2. We know that BENALOH and PAILLIER are two different cryptosystems. From what I read I think that we should try combining them into 2 via a homomorphic encryption/decryption. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homomorphic_encryption