[ARG] The Pizza Code Mystery

[TornadoAP]

@AngelSG

I checked with OpenPUFF, there’s no watermark. How was it stablished that the sound file is completely clean? The image has the same checksum as the source they used, therefore there’s no modification and no room for anything hidden. But the sound to a certain extent was created by them. Or I’m missing something?

In the IRC chat we think someone ripped the tones from a regular weekly test from the system and then added in their own voice. The code that comes out when you decrypt it confirms it because of the tag RWT.

This lead us to believe that more information will come next week, although we are really grasping at straws here.

[AngelSG]

The tones seem regular EAS tones and the voice seems to be computer generated. But there’s noise through the whole file, it could be added to make it sound like a real radio transmision, or it could be due to data hidden through steganographic means.

[thewizard99]

Someone mentioned 21 is in 1, has no one replaced all of the 1’s in the hex code to be 21, thus moving all the codes up by 1 and extending the hex code?

[thewizard99]

When CPU posted the Korean Text Image, i had a play about with the HEX code and translating it myself from HEX to UTF-8 Unicode. Now taking the Korean Text in to account i put in the first Line of Hex Code in and converted it.

B32B003A 35BADD66 577C24C1 4FC91906 4346D131 A7C54BB8 2FFE03E0 22615777

Well, when i translated it, not only are Korean Symbols coming up, but Chinese, as well as some Greek Letters and other languages.

㫀:5ꝦW|$OəCFѱ煋课ࢡWw <---- May not show up on all computers

Now this is the bit that got me. Fѱ, more notibly the ѱ, which is psi in the Cyrillic Aplhabet and dreived from the greek letter Psi.

Now asusming that is just letter, placed after the F, making Fpsi. After a big of google searching ( and large grain of salt ) fpsi is the Flordia Public Saftey Institute, dont think it has anything to do with it, but the FL cropping up a few times, might be worth something of note.

Im currently translating the rest of it. slow going and only have a few things. I know that the First Symbol - 㫀 - means Vessle, or more importantly “huge tripod of bronze with two ears, heavy three-legged caldron or sacrificial vessel regarded as a type of imperial power” which sounds very similar to The Anomalous Materials test chamber.

ill let you know if i have more though im struggling to find some translations.

EDIT - 课 - Means Lesson or Course
煋 - Means On

[nou343]

@thewizard99

ill let you know if i have more though im struggling to find some translations.

maybe the people of r/translator could help translate it? i don’t know how any of you feel about reddit (im kinda of a mix bag on reddit, i like /r/halflife and r/halo that’s about it.), but it won’t hurt to ask? right? just an idea.

[thewizard99]

Not a big fan of reddit, ive got a Chinese buddy who i helping with what he can, and im googling the rest. when i have the full thing done ill post a update to see if it make sense

[hooligan]

@thewizard99

When CPU posted the Korean Text Image, i had a play about with the HEX code and translating it myself from HEX to UTF-8 Unicode. Now taking the Korean Text in to account i put in the first Line of Hex Code in and converted it.

B32B003A 35BADD66 577C24C1 4FC91906 4346D131 A7C54BB8 2FFE03E0 22615777

Well, when i translated it, not only are Korean Symbols coming up, but Chinese, as well as some Greek Letters and other languages.

[COLOR=‘Red’]㫀:5ꝦW|$OəCFѱ[COLOR=‘Red’]煋课ࢡWw <---- May not show up on all computers

Now this is the bit that got me. Fѱ, more notibly the ѱ, which is psi in the Cyrillic Aplhabet and dreived from the greek letter Psi.

Now asusming that is just letter, placed after the F, making Fpsi. After a big of google searching ( and large grain of salt ) fpsi is the Flordia Public Saftey Institute, dont think it has anything to do with it, but the FL cropping up a few times, might be worth something of note.

Im currently translating the rest of it. slow going and only have a few things. I know that the First Symbol - [COLOR=‘Red’]㫀 - means [COLOR=‘Red’]Vessle, or more importantly “huge tripod of bronze with two ears, heavy three-legged caldron or sacrificial vessel regarded as a type of imperial power” which sounds very similar to The Anomalous Materials test chamber.

ill let you know if i have more though im struggling to find some translations.

EDIT - [COLOR=‘Red’]课 - Means Lesson or [COLOR=‘Red’]Course
[COLOR=‘Red’]煋 - Means [COLOR=‘Red’]On

Could the definition of vessel be in the context of a ship? So those 3 characters you mentioned in their occuring order could translate to “Vessel on course”

Borealis reference?

[dnlbaines]

Ignore me if this has already been said, but there is a comment in the code on bmrf.us:

<!-- ?MMMI MMMMMMMNNNNNNNN OMMMMNNN. . ONNNNNNN MMMMN. .DDDD+ NMMNN DDD8 NMNN DDDDDD D888 MNNN 8888. ,OOO .NNN 8OOO OZOO NNNO OOZZ. $ZZ NNN ZZZ$$$ 777 .NDD Z$$$7777 :II= DDD $$77 III? ,??~ DD8 $77I. ??++ =++ D888 77II. ===. ~~~ =88O 7II? ~~~~~:: :::: 8OOZ 7I??. ::::,.. ,,,, OZ$$ . ,,,, $$7I? .... :I?++= ...... +==~~::,, ........ ::,,............ ........ -->

Clearly the HL logo but perhaps this is a code of some sort?

[Dreamer]

Also, blackmesasource.com have this logo too

[code]

<!-- www.bmrf.us -->

[/code]

[Dreamer]

And there are this line in the blackmesasource.com code :

_gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-287383-11']);

mayby this means something?

[makzk]

@SupaSoldier

And there are this line in the blackmesasource.com code :

_gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-287383-11']);

mayby this means something?

No, that’s Google Analytics stuff.

[JazzOwl]

@thewizard99

When CPU posted the Korean Text Image, i had a play about with the HEX code and translating it myself from HEX to UTF-8 Unicode. Now taking the Korean Text in to account i put in the first Line of Hex Code in and converted it.

B32B003A 35BADD66 577C24C1 4FC91906 4346D131 A7C54BB8 2FFE03E0 22615777

Well, when i translated it, not only are Korean Symbols coming up, but Chinese, as well as some Greek Letters and other languages.

㫀:5ꝦW|$OəCFѱ煋课ࢡWw <---- May not show up on all computers

Now this is the bit that got me. Fѱ, more notibly the ѱ, which is psi in the Cyrillic Aplhabet and dreived from the greek letter Psi.

Now asusming that is just letter, placed after the F, making Fpsi. After a big of google searching ( and large grain of salt ) fpsi is the Flordia Public Saftey Institute, dont think it has anything to do with it, but the FL cropping up a few times, might be worth something of note.

Im currently translating the rest of it. slow going and only have a few things. I know that the First Symbol - 㫀 - means Vessle, or more importantly “huge tripod of bronze with two ears, heavy three-legged caldron or sacrificial vessel regarded as a type of imperial power” which sounds very similar to The Anomalous Materials test chamber.

ill let you know if i have more though im struggling to find some translations.

EDIT - 课 - Means Lesson or Course
煋 - Means On

I have not been able to render a fully coherent conversion, however here is my progress on that very endeavor:

ꊀ䙷 뛉 쨆 ꥴ 줒 흀 瀕
⑥ 啋(hex line 2, 3) 熭 쩻 瀔 鉇 ⒱
␌ (hl 3.1)  (hl 3.3) ﾑ 絶 ꘟ 関 墶 --Discount Line 3 until revisions.
𧢳 䴽 㔾 ꨡ 灖 낂 㰏 肸
𣏕 㤃 ┐ (hl 5.4)  쾀 み 톹
(hl 6.1) (hl 6.2) ႎ ﵡ 窃 騦 (hl 6.7) ᴭ
C 鮆 (hl 7.3) ⲣ 밑 〮 (hl 7.7) 惋
갵 㷡 盅 㚐 ⁀ ȇ 녳
篦 祏 (hl 9.3) 䟧 ᥟ 驐 葓 纉
扒 귦 튜 ʈ 㣣 戇 ⒥ 敆
稊 䵣 㫗 (hl 11.4) 湛 愷 尐 宙
(hl 12.1) 索 ꀹ 隮 㰥 脊

The parenthetical portions represent unconverted sets of hex, and each character represent on block of hex.

[thewizard99]

When ive been looking a a block of hex can contain 2, 3 if not 4 characters.

but that message seems to be almost complete, the ꘟ im assuming is breaks, or change of sentence.

but now i have that i can work out what most of it is.

Thanks.

[jeikobu]

Hey,

i think that we’re on the wrong way.

@Stormseeker

If it’s about the ARG, I’ve not set up or had any sites setup for hacking, so no. There is an answer, but you can’t brute force it, the CIA couldn’t brute force it. Someone is already close.

(May 22, 2013)

So we know that somebody around May of 2013th was close to solving the puzzle. Everybody then was basically claiming that the 752hex is ciphered. So IMHO the Unicode lead is probably wrong.

On the IRC we were trying to decipher it with PGP. I even thought that maybe the first 512/1024/2048 bits of 752hex are the PGP private key, the “benalohpaillier” is the private key passphrase and the rest of the hex is the message. It didn’t work, though. Some guy on IRC (EDIT: it actually was dogelition_man, if I recall correctly) was also trying some combinations of PGP and also had no result at all.

As for the Lambda logo: this is probably unrelated. It’s simply an ASCII art, and when saving all characters in single line it looks nonsensical, especially with those dots at the end.

[JazzOwl]

@jeikobu__

Hey,

i think that we’re on the wrong way.

"If it’s about the ARG, I’ve not set up or had any sites setup for hacking, so no. There is an answer, but you can’t brute force it, the CIA couldn’t brute force it. Someone is already close. " ~Stormseeker (May 22, 2013)

So we know that somebody around May of 2013th was close to solving the puzzle. Everybody then was basically claiming that the 752hex is ciphered. So IMHO the Unicode lead is probably wrong.

On the IRC we were trying to decipher it with PGP. I even thought that maybe the first 512/1024/2048 bits of 752hex are the PGP private key, the “benalohpaillier” is the private key passphrase and the rest of the hex is the message. It didn’t work, though. Some guy on IRC was also trying some combinations of PGP and also had no result at all.

As for the Lambda logo: this is probably unrelated. It’s simply an ASCII art, and when saving all characters in single line it looks nonsensical, especially with those dots at the end.

I shall ask once more: Has anyone tried using the Benaloh Cryptosystem or the Paillier Cryptosystem? Since this is a cipher, and both of them created algorithms of encryption, surely using their systems would uncover something.

[jeikobu]

@JazzOwl

I shall ask once more: Has anyone tried using the Benaloh Cryptosystem or the Paillier Cryptosystem? Since this is a cipher, and both of them created algorithms of encryption, surely using their systems would uncover something.

I have no idea, but probably not since it requires to write your own decryptor. Or at least compiling it from a source code. And it seems that it can be a big pain in the ass to write your own decryptor. I highly doubt that Benaloh or Paillier were used, maybe it was used in password only to remark that the 752hex is ciphered?

[Defrostmode]

I’m pretty sure this is nothing of any help and that everyone has noticed, but just in case… the similarity between the website emergency picture and some monitors in game. Could that tell us anything at all?

[jeikobu]

@Defrostmode

I’m pretty sure this is nothing of any help and that everyone has noticed, but just in case… the similarity between the website emergency picture and some monitors in game. Could that tell us anything at all?

Not really, no. The monitors are displaying common TV test screen, and the emergency picture is taken from Web.

[Astij]

The 1st digit in the hex string without spaces is b, and the 21st is 2. Could we be looking at an A=1, B=2 kind of code? Maybe the fact that its in hex is simply a ruse?

[Astij]

I converted all of the data using the method a = 1 , b = 2 up to F = O . I have no idea whether the new ascii code means anything yet but I will paste it here anyway

KCBK00CJCEKJMMFFEGGLBDLADOLIAI0FDCDFMACAJGLEDKKHBOON0CN0BBFAEGGGBDGIBCMLBAOFBLMDAHBNIALCKBFGKEDEJKLJNMJO0BFAEA0MDNNJANHGLMCCLGLGGACAC0ILLDBH0NKDBDCMAAEDO0DDOILOFBIFMIKOOGCIGNDCI0IHGONFCB0CMJ0MND0BGHKC…

Edit: Here is the hex with the same process, but instead the lettering A-F has been replace with numbers 1 - 6

2CB200C1 CE2144FF EGG3BD3A D63IAI0F DCDF4ACA 1G3ED22H B6650C50 BBFAEGGG
BDGIBC43 BA6FB34D AHB5IA3C 2BFG2EDE 12315416 0BFAEA04 D551A5HG 34CC3G3G
GACAC0I3 3DBH052D BDC4AAED 60DD6I36 FBIF4I26 6GCIG5DC I0IHG65F CB0C4104
5D0BGH2C 1ED6E443 FIGE610D 6GDIHDI5 A1FBEIE1 I6FC020G IEIAC450 AEC5C113
CHH3DE62 I4HE0365 IACEDA4F 30HCIH6B 3HHCCB1H B64600BH A4FB6343 D65G5DF1
5I03EA3E 3H0F2DAA FD5CC12I B3IFHFB5 0FH203AF 30III02H CHA10041 GIAE2FG6
5D1B06EI I206A2F4 DHAIAC3G 2IECH355 FCIADD6D AEFA21IB 5D65GEA4 A5BDB34H
H6EA4FIE EAIHHGAC F1G3AE11 24G2D00D DIBB0ADA C01IA6AG 06FF332C 3ACIDFC1
G5I0I1CG 11HFC62B GH0E63IG CA30I3H3 GI0FG5GI IC01D0FE DF2BD3I1 FBI2BF3B
35B1D25D H6EHI1CG E652GCA6 3D12BBE3 AAHDH36H I5BIA62B GACCIG03 0FCFAHDG
D1HIBH0A 544FH6ED FIH3E5E2 E0FGDF6F GFE1F6G6 ABBE451D 41AAD065 2F06FE0G
DEBDA3FI CFIEHHC4 32BA5F62 65622HE1 BIIAIDH0 CF1EB2E4