[ARG] The Pizza Code Mystery

[thewizard99]

@TornadoAP

@Nonimportantuser

It should be known that the clocks throughout the game have been very interesting to me and i don’t know why.

I believe the were actually part of an earlier clue. It’s possible they’re supposed to be used again for the hex code, but I doubt it.

If i remember rightly someone mentioned before regarding the Kryptos puzzle and how it similarly has some of the methods to encrypt the clues this ARG shares. Now with the Kryptos puzzle, 3 out of 4 of the sections where complete, and in 2014 a hint was given to the last section and the last 2 words were translated to “Berlin Clock”

Now the whole “Time will reveal all” is also kinda linked. The Sculptor behind the Kryptos Puzzle, Jim Sanborn, gave the CIA a Letter to be opened on a certain date and time if no one had successfully translated the last section ( Sounds like us and Halos at the moment )

Now looking back over the whole Mystery and the similarities of the Kryptos Puzzle, i want to say we are not as far along as we thought, and we are actually only starting the 2nd section. Let me explain.

Part 1 is all of the internal game clues that were found ( Code A, B, C, and D)

Code A is probably the first one we had to find, a Pig Pen Cipher, pretty simple once you know what it was, and leaded up to find the First Clue of the First Section. (1001)

Code B was the the Three Paintings in the Reception Area in the Office Level, and would have been the Second clue we would find for the First Section (0851)

Code C was the one i beleive was found “outside” of the game and not actually inside it, which makes me think we have missed something to lead us to this area ( obviously we need No Clip for it to work ) but it gave us the Third Clue to the First Section (3914) as well as a hint for Code D

Code D was found in one of the labs and was hinted by Code C, and lead us to the HALOS.TXT file, as well as the grilledpizza.jpg.

Moving on to Part 2 i believe this is actually the IRC Clues 1-6

IRC Clue 1 was intended for a mend to Code A, and i believe error in Bonami, was meant to be link to Kyptos, as Jim Sanborn told the onlinecommunity omitted a X to denote separate sentences when he built it.

IRC Clue 2 was the ones with the Location Data, again link to Kyptos as that also had Longitude and Latitude

IRC Clue 3 was again a location clue but also gave other hints as well as Story Elements, such as the Holloman Air Force Base and the White Sands Missile Range, as well a Nobium and the X01/02 Rooms.

IRC Clue 4 was the note regarding that the Prime Site was Compromised and that we neeed to Return to BMRF and Login Halos, again probably story related and hinting towards us having to revisit BMRF in game

IRC Clue 5 is the one that really started to link the Kryptos to the ARG(to me anyway) the majority of the message is story related but gave us the BENALOHPAILLIER. Now when i looked back over the Kryptos, Passage 1 and Passage 2 used “Keywords” to unlock them.

Now as a side note in Kyptos, with Section 1 one Decrypted, the Text was a subtle way of giving out the clue to decode the next one, and both Sections used a Vigenere Method with a Keyword Added to the Start ( being Kryptos) and then the other Keyword each letter of that added to start of each line to “Pad” the code out to fill the boxes on the Vigenere Sheet.

Now Vigenere Method requires both parties to know the “Keyword” so when the message in IRC Clue 5 was sent to Dr Horn it was telling him to remind him of the Password or “Keyword”

If our Keyword or “Password” is BENALOHPAILLIER, then Dr Horn would use that with the Vigenere Method to “Decrypt” the Halos.txt file.

Now this is where i got my thinking hat on. A normal Vigenere Table only uses 26 Letters by 26 Letters and no Numbers. So our table would be bigger adding in 0-9.

The Message you wish to Encrypt would have to be all together with Zero Spaces, much how it original came out of the HALOS.txt file, and how BENALOHPAILLIER does not have a Space as well.

Basicially using the Vigenere Table, and using your “Password” you are able to encode a message, where only the two parties sending the messages know the Password, and without, it is unable to be decoded.

Worth a shot i think

[Gunsrequiem]

We’ve run through the idea of appending the ciphertext in some way, and I like your line of reasoning here. I don’t think a Vigenere cipher would work per se, mainly because our ciphertext is not composed of letters, but the concept of appending the ciphertext to somehow alter the bit size and whatnot might hold some water. If the use of a keyword to alter the text is going to be used, however, I expect it would come in the form of an IV. This would allow the first block of the cipher to be XOR’d in a very specific way, and each following block would be contingent upon that first one–thus ensuring that the IV must be used to get the correct output.

[thewizard99]

Yeah, i assume something along those lines would work. Though is it possible that it could still be used and to “change” the Halos Code to allow us to decode it, kind of a 2 step encryption? Possibly more?

Though your Talk of IV reminded me of the grilledpizza amendment i saw on the wiki

“If the pizza is a lie, then the above message is congratulating you for winning the lie, i.e. nothing. Perhaps it is just a red herring, and the actual “key to all things” is the JPG itself. For example, 384 bits from SHA-384 provides 256 bits for a key, and 128 bits for an IV when using AES-256.”

That stood out at me, we have a link to a IV using the Jpeg itself. Is it not possible to use that infomation gained from that?

EDIT : That would also be a link to the IRC Clue 5 and the “Bring Pizzas”. Now call me daft but have we ever used the grilled pizza in a Inverted format, would that possibly result in a second set of “hashes”

[Gunsrequiem]

We have yet another reference to Latin. The quote used to solve the one-time pad was from Giordano Bruno, the Italian philosopher. I think we’d be silly to exclude all these red, blaring arrows.

[Pianownd]

@thewizard99

IRC Clue 5 is the one that really started to link the Kryptos to the ARG(to me anyway) the majority of the message is story related but gave us the BENALOHPAILLIER. Now when i looked back over the Kryptos, Passage 1 and Passage 2 used “Keywords” to unlock them.

Now as a side note in Kyptos, with Section 1 one Decrypted, the Text was a subtle way of giving out the clue to decode the next one, and both Sections used a Vigenere Method with a Keyword Added to the Start ( being Kryptos) and then the other Keyword each letter of that added to start of each line to “Pad” the code out to fill the boxes on the Vigenere Sheet.

After digging into Kryptos, I eventually wandered upon this WIki page. I couldn’t find it being brought up in this ARG thread before after a search for it, so maybe it has a relation to the HALOS code.

[Gunsrequiem]

I’m under the impression that we may just need to give this a little more time. Storm is obviously busy, and he distinctly said multiple times that “time will reveal all” (or some variation thereof) and he even called the HALOS.txt file a “holding puzzle.” Now, he mentioned that he wouldn’t give us an unsolvable puzzle, but that doesn’t technically mean that we have any chance in hell of actually solving it. The fourth portion of Kryptos, for example, is a puzzle with a solution, yet no one in the general public has solved it for almost 25 years. Perhaps Storm is waiting for the 25th anniversary of Kryptos not being solved (Nov. 3, 2015) to give us another clue? Time reveals all, y’know.

[Nonimportantuser]

Does anyone else think that something very important and significant is going to happen soon like happened on new years last year?

[thewizard99]

@Pianownd

@thewizard99

IRC Clue 5 is the one that really started to link the Kryptos to the ARG(to me anyway) the majority of the message is story related but gave us the BENALOHPAILLIER. Now when i looked back over the Kryptos, Passage 1 and Passage 2 used “Keywords” to unlock them.

Now as a side note in Kyptos, with Section 1 one Decrypted, the Text was a subtle way of giving out the clue to decode the next one, and both Sections used a Vigenere Method with a Keyword Added to the Start ( being Kryptos) and then the other Keyword each letter of that added to start of each line to “Pad” the code out to fill the boxes on the Vigenere Sheet.

After digging into Kryptos, I eventually wandered upon this WIki page. I couldn’t find it being brought up in this ARG thread before after a search for it, so maybe it has a relation to the HALOS code.

I was the one that mentioned the Clock deal with Kryptos thing awhile back ( over 100 + pages probably ) i can’t remember what exactly i said, but it don’t think it was important at all and was just spitballing ideas.

EDIT - HOLY SH*T, am i going nuts or could the Enigma Machine be the answer we are looking for, something stupidly simple. Time Reveals All, Clocks, Clock (Crptography) which is what the Enigma Machine used partyly. It seems to be adding up to me!

@Nonimportantuser

Does anyone else think that something very important and significant is going to happen soon like happened on new years last year?

Well Guns Mentioned about 25 Years for Kryptos on November 3rd, Half Life was released on 8th of November. So both dates are rather close so ill be staking out those days on here and on the IRC just incase.

[Pianownd]

@thewizard99

was the one that mentioned the Clock deal with Kryptos thing awhile back ( over 100 + pages probably ) i can’t remember what exactly i said, but it don’t think it was important at all and was just spitballing ideas.

Can you find the date on that when you find time? Maybe you’d have said that before Storm said “Someone is very close.”

P.S. Before someone else rolls around to police ya, please use the edit button on a post to add something to avoid double posting.[/size] [/size]I mean, there’s enough posts to shuffle through already on here, haha.[/size]

[Gunsrequiem]

I think thewizard99 started posting in this thread in January of this year, so it probably wasn’t before Storm mentioned that someone was close. I am going through every post since the reveal of the HALOS.txt file up to Storm’s comment and compiling the data. I’m looking for anything concrete, but also ideas that are at least supported by some evidence. I’ll check in if anything stands out.

These two posts by faed interest me:

@faed

Here is the OTR//4.0 message with the hex converted to raw data.

Also, it could still be a 1-bit (monochrome) or 8-bit (grayscale) bytestream of pixel values. 376 bytes is evenly divided by both options.

For a grayscale image, the possible resolutions are:
1 x 376
2 x 188
4 x 94
8 x 47

And for monochrome:
1 x 3008
2 x 1504
4 x 752
8 x 376
16 x 188
32 x 94
47 x 64

@faed

I tried out my pixel array theory, but all possible combinations just look like television static.

Have you done any further examination of these, faed? With all the TV references and static-y images, I have to wonder.

Also, this post by Matherunner helps clarify some of the workings of the cipher theory (in the likelihood that it is not a simple image encode):

@Matherunner

TL;DR: The hex is probably not an image, as demonstrated by faed, Flafla2, etc.

@pointless

Why is everyone talking about images? When I first saw this, I thought it could be a block cipher.

I’d second that. It’ll be a better idea to focus on decrypting the hex using a modern block cipher rather than treating it as an image. Even with the 4-byte RGBA pixel format the result is garbage (well…you might consider it as some form of art).

The hex is likely not encoded using some simple substitution cipher or things similar to Ascii85. What’s unusual about this hex is that its entropy is higher (i.e. more random) than that of a typical English text and all other codes we’ve deciphered so far in this entire ARG. This implies that the hex can be a multimedia data, or a ciphertext produced by ciphers with good diffusion property (which is characteristic of modern ciphers). We can also rule out all classical ciphers, since most (all?) of them work only with uppercase alphabets.

Naturally, things become nastier when we got into modern encryption. For instance there’re several different modes of operation for block ciphers, some of which require an additional “Initialisation Vector” (IV). And the possible “password” we got (“BENALOHPAILLIER”) doesn’t have 128 bits (a typical key size), which adds another layer of uncertainty. Keep in mind that in a typical crypto implementation the actual key used for encryption is not the user’s password itself; instead, the actual key is generated from the password using some hash function, so that the length of the generated key exactly fits the key size of the block cipher in question. This is to avoid problems like the password length being too long or too short. However I’d think that Storm isn’t going to complicate matters to this extent. Besides, we aren’t even sure whether all the characters in the password should be uppercase, as pointless noted.

Main point: there’re more nasty bits (literally) than ever for this code.

There’re quite a few more block ciphers with 64-bit block size. Think CAST-128, IDEA, or some other obscure ciphers you can find in Wikipedia. We might want to try all of them, so having programming skills would be a big plus. You won’t want to try things like RSA or any other public key ciphers as you’d need the recipient’s private key to decrypt it, and the private key (which is typically a large number) isn’t supposed to be exposed or shared (not even with the sender).

The decrypted data is probably an English text. It’s less likely an image (but not impossible) since its size would be too small to convey useful information.

Useless post maybe. Just my 2 cents.

Seriously though, is programming actually needed to have fun with this ARG? I think we should backtrack a little before we went too far…

EDIT: I was doing some digging into the IRC clues, namely HAFB and the White Sands Missile Range (WSMR). What most interests me is that HAFB is smack dab in the middle of the test range. Check out these two maps for comparison:

What is also intriguing is that both of these locations are referred to as “sites.” In the Storyline page of the wiki, I posted my own interpretation of the events of the ARG. One portion had this:

"In the same clue that identifies HAFB as being compromised, the message identifies the White Sands Missile Range as “no longer viable”, then suggests that the message’s receiver move to the main site. The next IRC chat message then states that access was detected at the personal site, the security therefore compromised. It identifies the HALOS project as being under threat, then states that the site is offline as a response. There was an embedded message as well:
prime site compromised return bmrf login halos"

In the grilledpizza.jpg image, the message included this portion: "Perhaps I should hide it on the secure site, perhaps that would be best. I’ll find them though and they will pay, they will definitely pay."

Now, this could be a double entendre in that the usage of “site” refers to both a physical location and a website. Whatever the case, I think we should look for another installation close by that might serve as a “personal site,” which may lead us to discover where Horn has gone–and where we can focus our direct efforts.

EDIT 2: Another reference–check out this article: HAFB

Here’s a very interesting excerpt from it:

“Features at Holloman include a biological laboratory with a complex known as the Advanced Primate Research Biocontainment Facility, part of the legacy of the base’s work preparing the “astrochimps” for pre-manned space flight.”

Is it possible that, after having to evacuate BMRF, Horn was looking for anywhere he could set up shop to replicate or continue the HALOS project. If so, that means something is hunting him down and trying to stop him. Perhaps he’s trying to take out the original project (that got out of control) with another project–fire on fire?

[Pianownd]

Well, I was sifting through game files, and started thinking maybe there’s something hidden with the rocket in relation to HAFB on the rocket(like how the Nasa logo was on the Half Life 1 rocket originally), and I did happen across something interesting.

For those that can’t read the small text, it’s actually some coordinates, N32°12’4.25" W-106°10’41.00" to be exact. And what’s interesting with this is the fact that it’s just south of HAFB/WSMR.

I know this probably has no ties to the ARG, but if anything I find it an interesting, and appreciated, attention to detail.

[TornadoAP]

@Gunsrequiem

I think thewizard99 started posting in this thread in January of this year, so it probably wasn’t before Storm mentioned that someone was close. I am going through every post since the reveal of the HALOS.txt file up to Storm’s comment and compiling the data. I’m looking for anything concrete, but also ideas that are at least supported by some evidence. I’ll check in if anything stands out.

These two posts by faed interest me:

@faed

Here is the OTR//4.0 message with the hex converted to raw data.

Also, it could still be a 1-bit (monochrome) or 8-bit (grayscale) bytestream of pixel values. 376 bytes is evenly divided by both options.

For a grayscale image, the possible resolutions are:
1 x 376
2 x 188
4 x 94
8 x 47

And for monochrome:
1 x 3008
2 x 1504
4 x 752
8 x 376
16 x 188
32 x 94
47 x 64

@faed

I tried out my pixel array theory, but all possible combinations just look like television static.

Have you done any further examination of these, faed? With all the TV references and static-y images, I have to wonder.

Also, this post by Matherunner helps clarify some of the workings of the cipher theory (in the likelihood that it is not a simple image encode):

@Matherunner

TL;DR: The hex is probably not an image, as demonstrated by faed, Flafla2, etc.

@pointless

Why is everyone talking about images? When I first saw this, I thought it could be a block cipher.

I’d second that. It’ll be a better idea to focus on decrypting the hex using a modern block cipher rather than treating it as an image. Even with the 4-byte RGBA pixel format the result is garbage (well…you might consider it as some form of art).
The hex is likely not encoded using some simple substitution cipher or things similar to Ascii85. What’s unusual about this hex is that its entropy is higher (i.e. more random) than that of a typical English text and all other codes we’ve deciphered so far in this entire ARG. This implies that the hex can be a multimedia data, or a ciphertext produced by ciphers with good diffusion property (which is characteristic of modern ciphers). We can also rule out all classical ciphers, since most (all?) of them work only with uppercase alphabets.

Naturally, things become nastier when we got into modern encryption. For instance there’re several different modes of operation for block ciphers, some of which require an additional “Initialisation Vector” (IV). And the possible “password” we got (“BENALOHPAILLIER”) doesn’t have 128 bits (a typical key size), which adds another layer of uncertainty. Keep in mind that in a typical crypto implementation the actual key used for encryption is not the user’s password itself; instead, the actual key is generated from the password using some hash function, so that the length of the generated key exactly fits the key size of the block cipher in question. This is to avoid problems like the password length being too long or too short. However I’d think that Storm isn’t going to complicate matters to this extent. Besides, we aren’t even sure whether all the characters in the password should be uppercase, as pointless noted.

Main point: there’re more nasty bits (literally) than ever for this code.

There’re quite a few more block ciphers with 64-bit block size. Think CAST-128, IDEA, or some other obscure ciphers you can find in Wikipedia. We might want to try all of them, so having programming skills would be a big plus. You won’t want to try things like RSA or any other public key ciphers as you’d need the recipient’s private key to decrypt it, and the private key (which is typically a large number) isn’t supposed to be exposed or shared (not even with the sender).

The decrypted data is probably an English text. It’s less likely an image (but not impossible) since its size would be too small to convey useful information.

Useless post maybe. Just my 2 cents.

Seriously though, is programming actually needed to have fun with this ARG? I think we should backtrack a little before we went too far…

EDIT: I was doing some digging into the IRC clues, namely HAFB and the White Sands Missile Range (WSMR). What most interests me is that HAFB is smack dab in the middle of the test range. Check out these two maps for comparison:

What is also intriguing is that both of these locations are referred to as “sites.” In the Storyline page of the wiki, I posted my own interpretation of the events of the ARG. One portion had this:

"In the same clue that identifies HAFB as being compromised, the message identifies the White Sands Missile Range as “no longer viable”, then suggests that the message’s receiver move to the main site. The next IRC chat message then states that access was detected at the personal site, the security therefore compromised. It identifies the HALOS project as being under threat, then states that the site is offline as a response. There was an embedded message as well:
prime site compromised return bmrf login halos"

In the grilledpizza.jpg image, the message included this portion: "Perhaps I should hide it on the secure site, perhaps that would be best. I’ll find them though and they will pay, they will definitely pay."

Now, this could be a double entendre in that the usage of “site” refers to both a physical location and a website. Whatever the case, I think we should look for another installation close by that might serve as a “personal site,” which may lead us to discover where Horn has gone–and where we can focus our direct efforts.

EDIT 2: Another reference–check out this article: HAFB

Here’s a very interesting excerpt from it:

“Features at Holloman include a biological laboratory with a complex known as the Advanced Primate Research Biocontainment Facility, part of the legacy of the base’s work preparing the “astrochimps” for pre-manned space flight.”

Is it possible that, after having to evacuate BMRF, Horn was looking for anywhere he could set up shop to replicate or continue the HALOS project. If so, that means something is hunting him down and trying to stop him. Perhaps he’s trying to take out the original project (that got out of control) with another project–fire on fire?

Is it possible that Holloman was compromised because aliens were able to successfully reach it or no?

[Donaldduck8]

Since you’re looking at the term “site” in particular again, this might be interesting for you:

@faed

I just noticed that the Proxyhost part of the last IRC clue is different than the others.

ProxyhoSt@-84-9-I23-345.dslgb.com

Note the capitalized S in proxyhost, the I instead of 1 in -I23-, and the final part of the pseudo-IP/hostname is 345, which is outside of the range of legal IP numbers.

So with this in mind:

[[ProxyhoSt@-84-9-I23-345.dslgb.com//closed.proxy.accepTEd//?OTR,3,4,?OTR:[INCOMING TRANSMISSION]ThEpIzZaIsaLiE…HALOS[Transmission Ends]]

All out of place capital letters are: SITE TEIZILE

It was posted somewhat shortly (ca. 3-5 pages or so, can’t remember) before storm mentioned someone was already close, so it falls within the range of data you’re interested in. I didn’t bother looking whether or not this was already looked into, as I stopped reading through the pages after getting to storm’s aforementioned statement on page 73. I wouldn’t know what to do with this information, but it’s obviously intentional given the outrageously low chance of this happening unintentionally and storm’s ingenuity.

Either way, regarding faed’s other posts: Has someone attempted to make a binary sequence out of the monochrome 1x3008/3008x1 images and see if that leads to anything? I also already checked whether or not any of the listed resolutions match up with the images of static as presented in static 1.jpg and static 2.jpg in this post (I’m aware that this user ended up trolling and posing as an imposter, but the files still exist inside the game, right?), and none were a perfect match, so I doubt visual cryptography is involved with those images in particular. (I’m not discarding that idea entirely though, especially for other TV static images, it’s certainly worth giving a second look.)

[TornadoAP]

Holy shit I just realized this.

@faed

SITE TEIZILE

How many letters are in each word.

SITE: 4
TEIZILE: 7

It’s fucking 47 again.

[Miles07]

@Pianownd

Well, I was sifting through game files, and started thinking maybe there’s something hidden with the rocket in relation to HAFB on the rocket(like how the Nasa logo was on the Half Life 1 rocket originally), and I did happen across something interesting.

For those that can’t read the small text, it’s actually some coordinates, N32°12’4.25" W-106°10’41.00" to be exact. And what’s interesting with this is the fact that it’s just south of HAFB/WSMR.

I know this probably has no ties to the ARG, but if anything I find it an interesting, and appreciated, attention to detail.

I knew there was a connection!

[thewizard99]

Wasn’t there a section in IRC5 that talks about triangulation? With White Sands and HAFB, and this 3rd Location. You could technically Triangulate a 4th Location.

EDIT - I used https://www.geomidpoint.com/ and used the 3 Long/Lat points we had

There is a base of some sorts, and not far from that point there is a Religious Activity Centre, as well as 3 buildings that look like the letter H from above.

This is the top right of the first image, notice the Templar Cross. That’s a link back to Dante’s Inferno.

[Pianownd]

We need to find the name of this place then! It’s pretty odd, to say the least. Maybe Google the closest city to it and try to find this place’s info? I would but I’m on mobile atm unless you want to give me the full coordinate output from the triangulation so I can slap it in Google Earth.

[Ammat_the_Ankh]

@Pianownd

We need to find the name of this place then! It’s pretty odd, to say the least. Maybe Google the closest city to it and try to find this place’s info? I would but I’m on mobile atm unless you want to give me the full coordinate output from the triangulation so I can slap it in Google Earth.

I managed to find it by working backwards from “Wsmr S Rt 252”. It’s just outside of Orogrande NM.

Otero County NM
32.434109, -106.178230

E: from what I understand, part of the area around Orogrande is used as a training site under control of Fort Bliss.

[thewizard99]

Sorry totally forgot to add the L and L for the Triangulation. It’s basically in the middle of all of the other locations. Ive looked for a name and could not find anything, i assume its Military which is why the first image has no roads etc, either that or it’s private.

[Gunsrequiem]

Weird.