[ARG] The Pizza Code Mystery

Gunsrequiem · November 25, 2018, 4:39am

“I am so sorry. I shouldn’t have done that. Everyone should know the truth that Nonimportantuser is me. He and I are the the (sic) same person. Don’t trust him.”

Why you gotta be weird?

Pianownd · November 25, 2018, 4:39am

You’re really not funny, dude.

error404notfound · November 25, 2018, 4:39am

Isn’t it fun to drive someone into insanity?

Nonimportantuser · November 25, 2018, 4:39am

Dude, what the fuck?

Guys, what he said is entirely false, he is trying to impersonate me.

This guy is a troll (not surprised).

TextFAMGUY1 · November 25, 2018, 4:39am

We’re fed up of this nonsense. You’re not driving anyone into insanity. You’re being annoying. It’s not clever. It’s not funny. It’s not even deceitful; nobody buys it or even really cares. You’re just wasting everyone’s time.

This has happened a few times too many now. So guess what? I’m normally a pretty nice, laid back guy when it comes to moderation, but I’m now going to start to be really harsh on people who try and subvert this ARG by being cryptic or impersonating Chris. Do it once, you’re banned and done. First offense, and that’s it. And we’ll get your other accounts too.

To all the people who are legitimately trying to solve this ARG, if in the future you see someone doing this again or impersonating Chris, please submit a report aimed at me. I will deal with it immediately.

Thanks a lot, Black Mesa.

Nonimportantuser · August 11, 2020, 11:25am

Alright, now that error404notfound has been terminated lets focus a little on this.

This ARG has used similar tactics that the portal and portal 2 ARGs so it is likely that stormseeker has been inspired a little by them.

According to the wiki on those two ARGs one thing used in it was the use of very brief and quick flashes of images so fast you would need to slow the video to see them.

In that ARG it was use in some of valves YouTube videos for portal two so then i thought maybe some similar is used in in launch_trailer.mp4 from the bmrf.us website perhaps.

I looked at it frame by frame in windows movie maker for a good part of it and saw some interesting stuff that i could not exactly make out but where still interesting.

I think we should take a closer look at this as we only have looked at the audio.

Also, i would like a copy of that .mp4 file that was just audio that we have found on the kxbm.net website because i would like to take a look at it for myself.

On a side note, i have spent 251 hours on the steam release of BM and have taken over 2,163 screenshots in the steam release of BM.

Pianownd · August 11, 2020, 11:25am

Nonimportantuser:

Alright, now that error404notfound has been terminated lets focus a little on this.

This ARG has used similar tactics that the portal and portal 2 ARGs so it is likely that stormseeker has been inspired a little by them.

According to the wiki on those two ARGs one thing used in it was the use of very brief and quick flashes of images so fast you would need to slow the video to see them.

In that ARG it was use in some of valves YouTube videos for portal two so then i thought maybe some similar is used in in launch_trailer.mp4 from the bmrf.us website perhaps.

I looked at it frame by frame in windows movie maker for a good part of it and saw some interesting stuff that i could not exactly make out but where still interesting.

I think we should take a closer look at this as we only have looked at the audio.

Also, i would like a copy of that .mp4 file that was just audio that we have found on the kxbm.net website because i would like to take a look at it for myself.

On a side note, i have spent 251 hours on the steam release of BM and have taken over 2,163 screenshots in the steam release of BM.

Just download from this link. I agree with maybe looking over what in particular is said in the trailer. Maybe we should write up a transcript of the dialogue and examine it?

EDIT:

BLACK MESA TRAILER:

{Doctor Eric Segurtson}

Oh!

Hello, my name is Doctor Eric Segurtson, head of weapons and materials research, here, at Black Mesa Research Facility.

Our first rate associates have always designed, developed, and manufactured specialized equipment for an amazing array of advanced scientific disciplines.

But don’t take m~[garble noise]~y word for it!

Let’s see what one of our many satisfied buisiness partner have to say.

{Military Guy}

Thanks, doc!

The Navy and Marine Corps needed a weapon system that offered single-target force projection that allows an operator to eliminate a threat at an extreme rate.

The XVL-1456 meets those particular requirements, and then some!

Thanks a lot, Black Mesa!

[Laughing in the background.]

{Doctor Eric Segurtson}

Of course, a~[garble noise]~ll the research would be useless if we couldn’t test our weapons properly.

Thankfully, Black Mesa has a variety of decommissioned areas that we have been able to repurpose for our needs.

From outdoor storage sites to temperature-controlled indoor facilities, we can provide testing in almost any environment imaginable.

At Black Mesa, we continue to deliver the futur~[SHUT IT DOWN!]~e. [garble noise]

[IT’S NOT… IT’S NOT SHUTTING DOWN] [garble noise]

[AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH]

Did it to the best of my ability. I couldn’t make out the last itty-bit where the dialogue get’s really messed up though so check it out yourself if you wanna give it a shot.

Miles07 · August 11, 2020, 11:25am

Nonimportantuser:

Alright, now that error404notfound has been terminated lets focus a little on this.

This ARG has used similar tactics that the portal and portal 2 ARGs so it is likely that stormseeker has been inspired a little by them.

According to the wiki on those two ARGs one thing used in it was the use of very brief and quick flashes of images so fast you would need to slow the video to see them.

In that ARG it was use in some of valves YouTube videos for portal two so then i thought maybe some similar is used in in launch_trailer.mp4 from the bmrf.us website perhaps.

I looked at it frame by frame in windows movie maker for a good part of it and saw some interesting stuff that i could not exactly make out but where still interesting.

I think we should take a closer look at this as we only have looked at the audio.

Also, i would like a copy of that .mp4 file that was just audio that we have found on the kxbm.net website because i would like to take a look at it for myself.

On a side note, i have spent 251 hours on the steam release of BM and have taken over 2,163 screenshots in the steam release of BM.

While you’re at it, take a look at the KXBM.net video, too.

Flavrans · August 11, 2020, 11:25am

Here’s a list of all audio/video assets I know of:

These are probably not ARG-related:
https://www.blackmesasource.com/video/1.mp4
https://www.blackmesasource.com/video/2.mp4
https://www.blackmesasource.com/video/2.ogg
https://www.blackmesasource.com/video/2.webm

Pre-launch counter video:
https://www.blackmesasource.com/video/3.mp4
https://www.blackmesasource.com/video/3.ogg
https://www.blackmesasource.com/video/3.webm

KXBM.net:
https://www.kxbm.net/assets/background.mp4
https://www.kxbm.net/article/assets/RGllLi4ueW91IGFsbCBkaWUuLi55b3UgYWxsIGRpZS4uLg==

bmrf.us:
https://www.bmrf.us/assets/background.mp4 (same as the one on kxbm.net)
https://www.bmrf.us/assets/launch_trailer.mp4
https://www.bmrf.us/assets/launch_trailer.ogg
https://www.bmrf.us/assets/launch_trailer.webm

Steam version of the launch trailer:
https://cdn.akamai.steamstatic.com/steam/apps/2038996/movie480.webm

EDIT: Apparently, this is the guy who made the KXBM.net/localdesertsingles.com sites: https://rzurad.github.io/

Nonimportantuser · August 11, 2020, 11:25am

Weren’t you the one who discovered that .mp4 audio file on the kxbm.net site?

Anyway, back to the analysis of the launch trailer i did notice a few things when i looked at it.

I did notice a few things like numbers as well as what looked like, at least to me, creepy faces.

I didn’t look at it for very long because i did this during school so i did not have time to look at in great detail.

I did that a few days ago, but i will take a closer look at the launch trailer as well as the other audio and video assets later.

Pianownd · August 11, 2020, 11:25am

Hey guys, have we ever looked at this website really? Apparently the only other website the registers for it (Crowbar Collective), according to =CROWBAR+COLLECTIVE&none[]=’]reversewhois, is bmrf.us.

All it shows is a simple logo for Crowbar Collective. Maybe this is the “Secure site.”

EDIT: Also, forgot to say that the website was apparently uploaded on 2012-11-04, the same day we got IRC clue 4.

I mean, that’s suspicious because that clue was also about some type of Prime Site.

Miles07 · August 11, 2020, 11:25am

Here’s the source code for that page:

[code]

[/code]Nothing unusual. No script code, javascript or otherwise. It uses only one image in the [url='https://crowbarcollective.com/images/']images[/url] directory. But take a look at the other images in that folder.

Nonimportantuser · August 11, 2020, 11:25am

I took a look at it and here is what i found.

https://crowbarcollective.com/cman/

https://crowbarcollective.com/media/

https://crowbarcollective.com/images/

I don’t think these are related as well as the main website itself.

Some of the images are of who i think is the main person behind the black mesa video game.

I actually found this same website a while back, but i didn’t really dig around as much as i did this time.

I do not think this is related.

Miles07 · November 25, 2018, 4:39am

NSFW WARNING regarding that /media folder!

Nonimportantuser · November 25, 2018, 4:39am

Yeah, i forgot about that. Sorry. I looked through those images quickly so that one might have not registered in my mind.

Flavrans · August 11, 2020, 11:25am

I believe it’s Dr. Eric Sigurdsson (or Sigurdson), or possibly Dr. Erik Sigurdsson. Just like Dr. Arne Magnusson, he appears to be of Swedish descent.

I know I discovered it not long after I started analyzing the site, but I wasn’t the one who first reported it on the forums.

The mp4 audio file is played on a loop when the morse code is playing, making the static noise you hear in the background in the morse code transmission. It’s also possible that it’s part of the audio mix in background.mp4.

@CPU thought he saw some weird lines at the bottom of the spectrogram of this audio file. I remember looking into it, and saw those lines, but they seemed to disappear when I changed the spectrogram settings, so they might have just been artifacts of the spectrogram/FFT algorithms. But I’m no expert. However, what I did find was a lot of 60 Hz hum harmonics.

Also, regarding the background.mp4 file: @CPU was able to clear up some of the audio in that file, enough so that you could hear something that sounded like a voice. But it was still impossible to make out what was being said. So, this is something that still remains unresolved, and the question is if there’s a voice transmission in there that’s meant to be unscrambled.

Tuqz · November 25, 2018, 4:39am

I’ve reconstructed the logo from the crowbar collective - in the images folder there were several .gif files which fit together. It appears to carry little meaning, but perhaps that is ignorance on my behalf. Maybe it is useful, maybe it is not.

Flavrans · November 25, 2018, 4:39am

I was thinking a bit about BENALOHPAILLIER and whatnot, and something occurred to me: BENALOH is seven characters, PAILLIER is eight characters. 7*8 = 56, which is the same as the number of keybits in a DES key.

“The password to its area” made me think of the area of a square, or a rectangle. What if BENALOH and PAILLIER are transposition keys for a 8 by 7 binary transposition matrix?

2 3 6 1 5 7 4 B E N A L O H 7 P . . . . . . . 1 A . . . . . . . 3 I . . . . . . . 5 L . . . . . . . 6 L . . . . . . . 4 I . . . . . . . 2 E . . . . . . . 8 R . . . . . . .
The numbers are indexes determined by the position of the letters in the alphabet, forming a transposition key.

However, we’ve already ruled out DES because a 56-bit key is too weak and can be brute forced. But Triple DES using a 168-bit key is still considered secure, so maybe we need fill three of these matrices, or expand it into an 8 by 21 matrix (21 bits goes into 1 line?).

So, what to fill such a matrix with. In the matrix above, we can either fill eight 7-bit ASCII characters, or seven 8-bit ASCII characters.

Maybe “level seven cases” means 7-bit ASCII. If the password is BENALOHPAILLIER, and we need to bring pizzas, then maybe “congratulationsyouwonthePIZZA” has something to do with it. It has always bugged me how the string is sort of split into a lowercase part and an uppercase part: “congratulationsyouwonthe” and “PIZZA”. Interestingly, “congratulationsyouwonthe” is exactly 24 characters, and 24 * 7 bits = 168 bits.

I think DES/TripleDES is still very much on the table. If DES is the descendant of a demon, then it too must be a demon (or at least half demon). Therefore, the Satan/demon references might just as well apply to DES as Lucifer.

thewizard99 · November 25, 2018, 4:39am

flavrans9:

I was thinking a bit about BENALOHPAILLIER and whatnot, and something occurred to me: BENALOH is seven characters, PAILLIER is eight characters. 7*8 = 56, which is the same as the number of keybits in a DES key.

“The password to its area” made me think of the area of a square, or a rectangle. What if BENALOH and PAILLIER are transposition keys for a 8 by 7 binary transposition matrix?

2 3 6 1 5 7 4 B E N A L O H 7 P . . . . . . . 1 A . . . . . . . 3 I . . . . . . . 5 L . . . . . . . 6 L . . . . . . . 4 I . . . . . . . 2 E . . . . . . . 8 R . . . . . . .The numbers are indexes determined by the position of the letters in the alphabet, forming a transposition key.

However, we’ve already ruled out DES because a 56-bit key is too weak and can be brute forced. But Triple DES using a 168-bit key is still considered secure, so maybe we need fill three of these matrices, or expand it into an 8 by 21 matrix (21 bits goes into 1 line?).

So, what to fill such a matrix with. In the matrix above, we can either fill eight 7-bit ASCII characters, or seven 8-bit ASCII characters.

Maybe “level seven cases” means 7-bit ASCII. If the password is BENALOHPAILLIER, and we need to bring pizzas, then maybe “congratulationsyouwonthePIZZA” has something to do with it. It has always bugged me how the string is sort of split into a lowercase part and an uppercase part: “congratulationsyouwonthe” and “PIZZA”. Interestingly, “congratulationsyouwonthe” is exactly 24 characters, and 24 * 7 bits = 168 bits.

I think DES/TripleDES is still very much on the table. If DES is the descendant of a demon, then it too must be a demon (or at least half demon). Therefore, the Satan/demon references might just as well apply to DES as Lucifer.

I mentioned this when i said about the Kryptos Statue. Its the same way they did it for that.

also the Pizza had extra info in it,

Hashes of grilledpizza.jpg

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.
DigestbitsResult
[table]
[tr]
[td]MD5[/td]
[td]128[/td]
[td]47dba39227afdcd69963a77fd06da7f5[/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td]SHA-1[/td]
[td]160[/td]
[td]bf112cd90db119e276f6f07a8a7a5b7bb06f0fc7[/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td]Tiger[/td]
[td]192[/td]
[td]54a25ac619b9d69944ac3d994bf821ce8387f4aedeccaa9b[/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td]SHA-224[/td]
[td]224[/td]
[td]02180d675a44f14edf2fc87c2d26e81cb1450442651b149f8b31d552[/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td]SHA-256[/td]
[td]256[/td]
[td]1f9715bbb3a46698b038b8cb210630518cc0ac0e9d9845bf9583868c53b515d5[/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td]SHA-384[/td]
[td]384[/td]
[td]50ca9a3e5399efd49ba1125e19e308dea1f6c9da8ab58a31407c98fffd73920eff911b6afda59f9dcf674583f1e67220[/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td]SHA-512[/td]
[td]512[/td]
[td]119bcaab817532a89466fb403420c08c013050fb9db67be1748629f5ec13d683ded060588e58ad6b60b182a81a4933615c07bee009e76aac77be4e8978955227[/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td]Whirlpool[/td]
[td]512[/td]
[td]a35aebe6aad00ae058ff6e2a5351464801305178e95d7a8bac2292a4382a5ef611c1fbfa2d4f7105f82dac77a755e763c8699a30cf336c4043d7682a77dc1d55[/td]
[/tr]
[/table]

EDIT : 21 goes into 1 would make sense if you use a hex base for it, 0-9, A to F + Benaloh is 21!!

Miles07 · August 11, 2020, 11:25am

If casing is important, then what about “ThEpIzZaIsaLiE”? I mentioned that the case is not switching on every other character, making it look deliberate (or was it an honest mistake on Storm’s part?). If the point were every-other-character-gets-a-capital-case, then it would read “…IsAlIe”, but it’s “…IsaLiE”.