[ARG] The Pizza Code Mystery

Black Mesa Archive The Cafeteria
#2481

The most logical reference “the pizza is a lie” could relate to is the delivery of specimen GG-3883. It replaced specimen EP-0021 in a rush. In Half-Life 2 Eli reveals G-Man brought the sample to Black Mesa. Below is the letter sent to Colette Green from LM (Marc Laidlaw who helped develop the story-line) explaining the switch. Take note of the writings in pen, I believe they could be related to the HEX code and Pizza files on Storm’s site.

466×599

#2482

Remember the clue “21 into 1”?

The initial sample was EP-0021 and It was scheduled to go into the anti-mass spectrometer.

Could anti-mass spectrometer possibly be the key?

#2483

base64 reprents an array of bytes in readable / printable charecters, since writing it as 0010101101101 would be long
the only way for it not be valid base64 is if it contains invalid charecters :smiley:

#2484

… or if the number of characters is not multiple of 4.
But this one is correctly padded with “=” at the end.

#2485

some base64 standarts do not require the padding as mandatory

#2486

Heh just noticed something. Relating to the whole 47 thing earlier.

Niobium = 7 letters.

#2487

This isn’t Base 64, looks like, but isn’t.

I remember once I saw a code like this so I made a little dig on the internet and I found, this is a PGP encriptation or something similar, I don’t know how to decode this, but this is a start.

Here is a exemple of a PGP mail:

edit: I expanded my search a little and looks like a SSH key too:

A exemple of a SSH-RSA key

AAAAB3NzaC1yc2EAAAABIwAAAQEAklOUpkDHrfHY17SbrmTIpNLTGK9Tjom/BWDSU
GPl+nafzlHDTYW7hdI4yZ5ew18JH4JW9jbhUFrviQzM7xlELEVf4h9lFX5QVkbPppSwg0cda3
Pbv7kOdJ/MTyBlWXFCR+HAo3FXRitBqxiX1nKhXpHAZsMciLq8V6RjsNAQwdsdMFvSlVK/7XA
t3FaoJoAsncM1Q9x5+3V0Ww68/eIFmb1zuUFljQJKprrX88XypNDvjYNby6vw/Pb0rwert/En
mZ+AW4OZPnTPI89ZPmVMLuayrD2cE86Z/il8b+gw3r3+1nKatmIkjn2so1d01QraTlMqVSsbx
NrRFi9wrf+M7Q==

If the code is a SSH key, one of the sites of the ARG should has a anormal port listening, or the 22 port.

#2488

I remember from a while ago when me and a bunch of chat users were working on this that I think it had something like that.

#2489

xchelon was right about PGP.

It’s Radix-64 encoding, which is basically base64 with a 24-bit CRC checksum (the [tt]=wv7h[/tt] thing at the end is the checksum). Radix-64 is the encoding used by PGP/OpenPGP for encoding binary data into a format known as ASCII armor (.asc file).

I ran gpg on it (after formatting and saving it as a proper ASCII armored file) and it turns out that it’s a signed PGP/OpenPGP message (compressed but not encrypted).

This is what I got:

{"body":{"key":{"fingerprint":"41574ddcb2c4c4743095815a07d1490f82a211a2","host":"keybase.io","key_id":"07d1490f82a211a2","uid":"14f55f12cf73544031e890d3f053a000","username":"vocatus"},"service":{"hostname":"bmrf.org","protocol":"http:"},"type":"web_service_binding","version":1},"ctime":1407613324,"expire_in":157680000,"prev":"46a5327272d9744e56a60b0eb204a003aedc99aaaeb53dceedf5745843678bec","seqno":5,"tag":"signature"}

which led me to this:

https://keybase.io/vocatus

and

https://bmrf.org/

Note that it’s bmrf.org and not bmrf.us.

The file at https://bmrf.org/keybase.txt

[spoiler][code]==================================================================
https://keybase.io/vocatus

I hereby claim:

To claim this, I am signing this object:

{
“body”: {
“key”: {
“fingerprint”: “41574ddcb2c4c4743095815a07d1490f82a211a2”,
“host”: “keybase.io”,
“key_id”: “07d1490f82a211a2”,
“uid”: “14f55f12cf73544031e890d3f053a000”,
“username”: “vocatus”
},
“service”: {
“hostname”: “bmrf.org”,
“protocol”: “http:”
},
“type”: “web_service_binding”,
“version”: 1
},
“ctime”: 1407613324,
“expire_in”: 157680000,
“prev”: “46a5327272d9744e56a60b0eb204a003aedc99aaaeb53dceedf5745843678bec”,
“seqno”: 5,
“tag”: “signature”
}

with the aforementioned key, yielding the PGP signature:

-----BEGIN PGP MESSAGE-----
Version: GnuPG v1
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=wv7h
-----END PGP MESSAGE-----

And finally, I am proving ownership of this host by posting or
appending to this document.

View my publicly-auditable identity here: https://keybase.io/vocatus

==================================================================
[/code][/spoiler]
… contains the same signed PGP message that SupaSoldier posted.

So, apparently this guy, who goes by the name of Vocatus Gate, owns the domain bmrf.org, and is using Keybase and the signed keybase.txt file on the bmrf.org site to prove it.

Whois lookup of bmrf.org:

Interesting contact info…

I don’t think that this has anything to do with the ARG, though.

Here’s something I noticed some time ago, but then completely forgot about it:

The digit sum of Dr Horn’s number 1001085139140914 is 47, and the number of distinct digits is 7.

#2490

Here https://www.bmrf.org/

#2491

I thought you didn’t now about it, but I’ve seen now flavrans9 post about how it’s not ARG related.

#2492

Lol. I found it two weeks ago, but i was thinking that is not ARG related and i posted just a PGP message

#2493

so the password for the hex file is just 1001085139140914

#2494

bmrf now redirects to https://www.kxbm.net/article/?view=all-clear-given-for-black-mesa-evacuation-zone-10360
any other url for that domain will bring you to an error screen video using the same EAS_bg image, but overlaid with increasingly heavy distortion and occasional flashes of the G-Man.

interesting things found;
two interesting scripts from the error page. maybe nothing or nothing special but they stand out for obvious reasons. first one because, well;
https://kxbm.net/assets/three.min.js

#2495

the second one because it is just right in the source, and pretty weird looking;

****ing too long to post! gah! anyway it looks like it might be encoded ascii art (maybe the familiar lambda ascii art logo)? you’ll see it at the bottom of the source page.

#2496


There is an email address for the ‘author’ of the article Tim Evans, tim@kxbm.net
The domain “kxbm.net” was just registered on the 15th of this month.

#2497

If you click on the follow on twitter link at the new BMFR site there is this link https://www.localdesertsingles.com, when i checked it there was some stuff inside if you inspect the element with firefox. Also here is the twitter site that shows a link to the BMFR site https://twitter.com/time_van

#2498

The 47 thing came up a few times already, its also a number on a calculator in the QE level, and a few other things, its a link to the number 42, as 47 is 42 accounting for inflation.

Also if 1001085139140914 was the code for the Hex file, then its either to long or to short, if you remove the 0’s you get 8 digits though

#2499

Also note that the amount of the comments on the site is 22 which could do something with the 22 in to 1 clue.

And when at the bottom of the article it reads 12 twitter retweets but when you click to show them it goes to the twitter page and says there are no retweets of it

#2500

Except for the fact that the clue was 21 into 1

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.