[ARG] The Pizza Code Mystery

Black Mesa Archive The Cafeteria
#2041

Damn, those "?"s might not have been intentional after all. :fffuuu:

On the 752 Hex Code wiki page, someone with the username FADEDxLIGHTNING posted his/her attempt at decoding the hex to ASCII in a comment. While not 100% identical, FADEDxLIGHTNING’s representation of the code also has the foreign "?"s inserted at the exact same positions. The comment was posted over a year ago, long before Gunsrequiem posted the PM he received from 0418_.

The only explanation I can think of is that both 0418_ (Stormseeker) and FADEDxLIGHTNING copy-pasted the formatted representation of the hex code from the 752 Hex Code wiki page, where the hex code has been formatted in groups of 8 hex digits (4 bytes per group) separated by spaces, and with 8 groups per line, resulting in 32 bytes shown per line, and then used a hex to ASCII converter that for some reason puts "?"s wherever there are linefeeds in the hex input. It doesn’t make any sense for a converter to do so; the converter should just ignore any non-hex characters in the input. Nevertheless, there could be a buggy converter out there that does exactly this.

@JeffMOD, do you remember which web-based hex to ASCII converter you used to produce the code in this post? The ASCII code you posted looks identical to 0418_'s code, but without the "?"s. The ones I’ve found and tried so far didn’t produce the exact the same result as 0418_'s code (with or without the "?"s). Also, do you remember whether you copied the long continuous hex string from HALOS.txt (with no spaces or line breaks), or the formatted hex code on the 752 Hex Code wiki page (split over 12 lines)?

If we can reproduce 0418_'s representation of the code with the "?"s, then it’s confirmed that the "?"s probably weren’t intentional and, as a result, have no meaning whatsoever.

#2042

According to my browser history, it was this website. You’re lucky you asked now - I’m getting ready to format my computer.

Pretty sure I got it from the formatted part of the wiki page. I just plugged it in again and got this -

And taking (again, from the wiki page) the code from the “original transmission” I got this

Which is slightly different, I think due to lack of capitalization on the letters and slight changes in formatting.
Sadly, I’m not an encryption whiz like some of you guys - sorry if anything is inaccurate - I have no clue how to extract the original transmission from the original file.

#2043

That’s very helpful. Thanks, JeffMOD. Good thing you still had that link in your browser history. :slight_smile:

Well, from what I can see, the only differences between the two versions you posted are the placement of some spaces no doubt inserted by the forum (that’s why it’s better to use “[CODE]” tags instead of "

[QUOTE]
" tags when quoting codes and stuff) and sure enough, those troublesome "?"s, which are indeed present in the first version you got from taking the hex from the formatted part of the wiki page. If I remove the spaces from your first version, it’s identical to what Gunsrequiem posted above, i.e. with the "?"s.

So, it’s as I suspected in my previous post: It’s the hex code being formatted the way it is on the wiki page, combined with the use of that particular web-based converter which causes foreign "?"s to be inserted into the resulting ASCII code.

This means that (sadly) we can most likely conclude that the "?"s were not placed in 0418_'s code intentionally, which invalidates the idea that the "?"s might be a hint as to the block size of the block cipher, or a hint for anything else for that matter (sorry AngelSG :frowning: ). So, it seems we’re back to where we were before we got distracted by these odd "?"s, which is back to square one, basically.

#2044

Well, at least you noticed before we ended loosing lots of time looking into it. It could have been far worse. Now, what’s left to do? Testing passwords has been like trying to move a mountain. Is it possible to look into the game A.I. scripts? We know that there are two main sources for the ARG content, the game and the webpages, it seems that everything that was to be found was found, in both places, the only place left that could hold a clue or the key to solve this are the game’s files. So far we’ve looked into the textures and models, but we haven’t look into the game files thoroughly. I’m leaving what I had written, but I found this, and I don’t remember a wine barrel in any place of the game, anyway, the interesting part is the location

Breakable Barrels // i.e Wine Barrel in de_Inferno

It’s on the propdata.txt, on the scripts folder. If we can locate where de_Inferno is, we might find something ARG related, after all Hell seems to be related. de is not the abreviation of any chapter, so, no idea where to start.

#2045

de_inferno is a Counter-Strike map. (bomb defusal gametype) I’m guessing the propdata.txt in BM is an edited version of the default Source engine one that they used for HL2 and CSS.

#2046

Oh well… :[
Thank you, I was already looking into the game files just to see if I could find the model and texture. I’ll just give up for now.

#2047

Stormseeker mentioned in a post that he had given us a hint somewhere. Like some of you, I’ve been looking hard for this hint, but it’s like looking for one specific headcrab in the entire Black Mesa Research Facility in the aftermath of the Resonance Cascade. We don’t really know if this hint is hidden somewhere in the available evidence known to us, except that nobody has dechiphered it or understood what it means yet, or if this hint is located out there somewhere that’s yet to be discovered.

However, I had one small idea about a possible password, which I’m not sure what to make of yet. If it’s true that the password is “hinted at, perhaps in a less that obvious way”, it’s possible that it has something to do with the BENALOHPAILLIER password mentioned in the IRC clue 5 solution. We know that Benaloh and Paillier are references to partially homomorphic cryptosystems. One thing that is particular about homomorphic cryptosystems, is that they are malleable by definition. From the wiktionary page for the word malleable:

By now, I think you know what I’m getting at. So, my question is, could BENALOHPAILLIER be a deep reference to the Valve Hammer Editor? Or what’s being “hammered”, like maps maybe?

The other day, I tried the map names for the QE maps stringed together “bm_c2a4ebm_c2a4fbm_c2a4gbm_c2a4h”, which is exactly 32 characters long, as key for Rijndael, I’ve yet to try with other ciphers. However, this password doesn’t really fit into the story. Dr Horn wouldn’t have a clue about Hammer or map names, but it does relate to Stormseeker, since he was the one who designed those maps. I’m wondering if there might be something else that relates to both Dr Horn and Stormseeker, much like the “Laser Optronic Linear Inducer Cannon” of which he was the creator, both in-game and IRL. However, if there is such a thing, one would think that someone would have thought about it already.

Another thing that’s malleable is Niobium:

So maybe the password has something to do with Niobium. After all, Niobium is important in the story and then we have the list of Niobium isotopes in the Tempus Omnia Revelant clue.

Another thing that has struck me, is that while Stormseeker says we can’t brute force the answer, 0418_ says we may have to: “…and as such, key forcing may be necessary.” The question is, who are we supposed to believe? It’s like he’s saying that we can’t really brute force the answer, but yet we can. Maybe part of the password needs to be brute forced. Maybe “Time reveals all” is related to the CPU run time needed to brute force the answer? Or maybe the code is encrypted with a block cipher in CTR (counter) mode where the counter has to be initialized to a specific value (i.e. we must increment this counter value until find the right value, but we still need the right key).

Who knows, there are so many possibilities. But maybe we are going about this all wrong. I don’t know. I think Stormseeker really pulled a Jedi mind trick on us when he posted the comment “How do you know solving this has anything to do with encryption?”

#2048

Key forcing might be a dictionary attack. Nevertheless I would not pay much attention to the PM, he also talked about rainbow tables for AES, but those rainbow tables would take more HD space than the whole internet. I think he was just making up things on the spot, that’s why the code he used was from the wiki and converted online. But who knows, maybe there is a hint in there.

He is mafia, he is trying to confuse us to kill us all in our sleep and win the game.

Could this malleabity hint that the ciphertext is altered in some way? I remember that it was proposed by Gunsrequiem that code could be shifted just before stormseeker said somebody was close.

About the Tempus page, I don’t think it is time-locked puzzle. I looked into that and the only algorithm I found was on a research paper, was not implemented and required several parameters, including a large prime. That would mean that the algorithm would have to be custom made. The password could be time locked, like a PRNG that operates from a seed, but I think we don’t have anything like that.
Time might reffer to when the page was created, on 12.12.12, that was the day the world was ending, the mayan calendar and all that nonsense. Aparently it is also the the day the Hamad International Airport oppened, we know that Dr. Horn likes planes, and he had some bills in his taco hut board about some business fiasco with an electrical company in Saudi Arabia, I do not recall exactly, but it should be in the last 5 pages of the thread.

#2049

Well, no, that was supposed to be either 21.12.12 or 12.21.12 depending on your date system.

#2050

I got the all the information from wikipedia, everyone knows all information in wikipedia is correct, even the bits and pieces that contradict other bits.

#2051

With a SFM BM pack released, I’d suggest checking it for some hidden messages or hints. I find this Stormseeker’s announcement https://forums.blackmesasource.com/showthread.php?p=586511#post586511 highly suspicious.

#2052

To be fair, we are completely stuck in a rut for the ARG, and one of the hints did say time would reveal all.

…Though it is possible that we’re interpreting it wrong and it has something to do with a timecode, rather than just waiting for the next stage to come along.

#2053

It’s a fair point. Admittedly, in search for clues, we have perhaps put everything you’ve written under a bit too close scrutiny.

#2054

I am beginning to think that only a portion of the ARG is available and that is why there is a constant brick wall.

#2055

Maybe the whole entire ARG, even the game itself is one big LIE.

#2056

It’s not.

#2057

I hope the ARG will hurry up and continue…

#2058

Calling it right now, ARG will have its final clue in Half-Life 3. Jokes aside, I think Stormseeker said something near the beginning of the thread that he thought it’d be solved in a week or something. I may be wrong, I wasn’t on this site at that time and read that part a while ago. So it is something in the mod as it stands right now, I would assume.

#2059

This code was designed to be a holding puzzle, he said the “solving in a week” about the first part of the ARG, but actually the last code took about a month to solve. A year ago he also said that somebody was close, but a year has passed by and is still not solved.

I’m starting to think that we can’t actually solve it. Maybe something is missing, maybe the password needs to be guessed in a way that it’s not obvious for us, due to our own lack of knowledge on a specific field or because it is not obvious in any way. I mean, we have not advanced at all, every idea we had has failed, but maybe we were on the right track, so we cannot even rule things out.

#2060

Considering how long people have tried to crack this latest puzzle, and with all the different approaches everyone has taken, it’s probably fair to say that there’s too much noise for anyone to figure out which path is the correct path.

At least, not without going through this entire thread of discussion and listing everything that’s happened — story, ideas, theories and outcomes, over the course of all 104 pages of this thread to date. It’s been suggested before, but it’s a rather unfair task.

Founded in 2004, Leakfree.org became one of the first online communities dedicated to Valve’s Source engine development. It is more famously known for the formation of Black Mesa: Source under the 'Leakfree Modification Team' handle in September 2004.