[ARG] The Pizza Code Mystery

Black Mesa Archive The Cafeteria
#4221

Tempus omnia revela[n]t - Time reveals all things…

In Latin, tempus means time. However, in medieval Latin, tempus is also sometimes used to mean weather. And this is the origin of the word tempest, which means ‘a violent storm’. So, in a way, Tempus omnia revela[n]t could also mean “Storm reveals all things”, which is kind of amusing.

If this play on words was by design, it could mean that the Tempus omnia revelant page might hold everything we need to solve the puzzle. It kind of makes sense, because, by the time the clue appeared on the wiki, the trail had already gone cold and people had been crying out for more clues. And yet, here we are, three years later…

#4222

Flav, you win.

Okay, so so start back up again, what are we looking for in order to solve the HALOS file encryption? Let me lay out a few questions for us to solve / reiterate:

  1. Is the HALOS file encrypted? Most likely, yes.

  2. What encryption method is used? General consensus is split between AES or 3DES, with occasional points to Lucifer. (Also, to quote Storm, “Level 8 = OTR 4 - 128bit/256bit block cipher (AES or Rjindael or Twofish or Serpent)”)

  3. What is required in order to solve this encryption, according to the method used? A key (word, sentence, phrase) to decrypt the text. Also possible, an IV (“Initialization Vector”), but this might be optional depending on the mode used. Oh yeah, we need to know the mode (cipher block chaining, electronic codebook, etc.).

  4. What is the purpose of the “21 goes into 1” clue? Likely, this is supposed to point to a manipulation or a revelation of the key, but its context is still debated. With Flav’s insight, I suggest we look over Tempus Omnia Revelant again with this in mind.

  5. Is the HALOS text encrypted multiple times? I think that this might certainly be a possibility, given that one whiteboard contains the text “Use cascade ciphers only” and “1 AES, 1 2F, 1 Sp”. Is it possible that this is the order of cascading?

  6. What is the purpose of the grilledpizza.jpg image / puzzle?

#4223

-suddenly wakes up-

After looking over “The Tempus Omnia Revelant” has anyone noticed that the line “Report{BMRF-HALOS-AITR-0001,” has the AI portion in Bold. Worth a note, dont think its been mentioned.

Also the Tempus Omnia Revelant page revisits the first in game clue in the message. After putting in what i assume is correct it comes out as.

[INCOMMING TRANSMISSION - UNKNOWN SOURCE] OTR:~’//
Dr Horn~ Bonami, Not Bonami… {interrupt} KONami Code. Dr Horn Dont LET HIM find…us.
{Dr Welsh}~~ [Terminal.] ~~ [Transmission Ends]

Now this has been said before BUT i dont think people have put what is going on.

Dr Welsh is contacting Dr Horn, and warning him about, i assume, Dr Bottomley, as well as reminding us, the players about the first In Game Clue ( probably for newcomers)

Now the Terminal Page, isn’t written from Dr Horn or Dr Welsh, it’s Written by Bottomley the one who wants to find out what is going on. We are helping Bottomley. NOT Dr Horn/Welsh.

The in game clues, directed us to Storms website, or shall i say Dr Horn/Dr Welsh’s website, for us to use the login and the code from the 4 ingame clues.

which means that the files in the /pizzaisalie folder are what we need to use to decode the Halos.txt file or at least a step on how to do that.

Now the thing with the grilledpizza.jpg is that it how could be used with the Halos.txt file. My guess is that we need to put in the halos.txt letter by letter, number by number and pick out the numbers/letters that land or are shown by the Black Triangles. That might just give us the code that we need out of the halos code to get something else.

just a thought.

#4224

  1. The “AI” is part of the “He is watching - (He) is AI” message hidden in the text. (Or IS it?)

  2. Using the grilledpizza.jpg “grid” as an overlay makes little to no sense, as it’s 289 “triangles” large, but the HALOS file is 376 bytes (or 752 hex digits, or 3008 bits). And this brings up a few questions, as well:
    Do we offset the text by any amount?
    Do we have one bit per grid place, or one hex number, or one byte?
    And the big one is: If we ARE supposed to use the grilledpizza.jpg file as an overlay, as you suggest, then how do we know where to apply it? To the HALOS file? To the TOR page? To a whiteboard? The problem is that there are so many unknowns that it’s impossible to know if we are even stepping in the right direction, unless we simply run into a result that we think is the solution. (Although I’m sure that Storm is just waiting for someone to blurt out the answer, so that we may continue with the next chapter of this game.)

#4225

I happen to notice that “Tempus Omnia Revelant” spells out tor.

This does make wonder if there is a deep web aspect to this ARG and we might want to use the tor browser to access the deep web.

If i am correct about this and we are required to use the deep web to access some secure site i would advise everyone here do do a few things.

I have heard that it is not a good idea to use windows on the deep web and use an Linux distribution instead.

It is recommended to either do this on an old PC that you do not care about or do it in a VM ( virtual machine ).

The tempus page also mentions Vox populi vox Dei which is also in the game bio shock infinite so i am unsure if its related.

On a side note, the 21 into 1 page has been edited.

EDIT: Ignore the first part, it is highly unlikely that storm would be willing to do this considering what goes on in the deep web.

#4226

Wait, wasn’t 752 hex code thought to be incomplete?

If we take the hexadecimal code conversion from the binary code of grilledpizza.jpg:

02 20 22 74 66 65 78 69 72 6b 6c 63 72 6b 7a 66 65 6a 70 66 6c 6e 66 65 6b 79 76 47 5a 51 51 52 22 20 17 03

and slap it on the end of the 752 Hex code we get this:

B32B003A 35BADD66 577C24C1 4FC91906 4346D131 A7C54BB8 2FFE03E0 22615777 247923DC 21F62CD4 182E91C3 B267B545 ABCAEDAF 0261510D 4EEA1E87 CD33C7C7 7131309C C4280EB4 243D1154 F044F9CF 6296D9BF F7397E43 90987FE6 3203DA0D E40278B3 A54F5DDC 6975FA04 F749849E 1A62595A 9F630B07 95913DE0 153E3AAC 388C45FB 9D850CFE 913541D6 C08398F2 C88332A8 2FDF0028 1D62FCDC 4FE7E46A E90C51C5 C806B411 64E33AB9 2C96862E 068B0C16 C09990B8 381A00DA 7915B67F E4A20F59 9B0F1B6D 481913C7 B9538CEE 639144F4 1561BA92 E4FE751D 1E242CD8 8F51D695 51988713 6A7C15AA BD7B4004 49220141 30A91F17 0F66CCB3 C139463A 7E909A37 AA863FB2 7805FC97 31C09C8C 79067E79 930A4065 46B24C9A 629B26C2 CE2A4BE4 8F589A37 5FEB731F C4AB225C 11848CF8 9E291FB2 7133970C 06361847 4A892801 EDD68F54 698C5E5B 506746F6 765A6F7F 1225DEA4 DA1140FE B60F6507 45241C69 3695883D CB21E6FB FEFBB85A 29919480 36A52B5D 02202274 66657869 726B6C63 726B7A66 656A7066 6C6E6665 6B797647 5A515152 22201703
Not sure if anything can be gleaned from this but this out there for those that want to try.

But then again the thing about grilledpizza.jpg is that it decodes into “congratulationsyouwonthePIZZA”, and what do we know about “the PIZZA”? It’s a lie. We won a lie, so I’m not sure if it’s of any actual use.

#4227

I’m starting to think we should try sitting in the IRC channel and see if another IRC clue will appear…

#4228

Have we looked at the metadata for grilledpizza.jpg, i wonder if something in it could be useful.

#4229

I took a look at the metadata for grilledpizza.jpg and saw some interesting stuff, go take a look for yourselves.

In other news i went on another Wikipedia adventure today.

During this one i found some interesting stuff regarding element 21 including connections to military aircraft including jet aircraft.

#4230

I can’t help but think that this is a very bad idea. If you’re having to warn people to use a PC they don’t care about, it’s probably not something that we should assume is in the ARG–especially when we consider how Storm reacted to those who were attempting to take us to unsafe sites in previous posts.

#4231

The deep web is only unsafe if you seek out unsafe locations. There are forums that paranoid conspiracists(I swear that’s a word…) swap theories (more so than they already do on the regular web), sites dedicated to cat facts, and various other weird shit. Don’t download things, don’t go giving out your credit card info, and try not to specifically look for sites that seem uncouth. And if you are super paranoid about people figuring out the resolution of your monitor, don’t use the browser in full screen mode.

Best I can tell, the last major windows-specific tor attack was using a javascript weakness that was also present in the standard issue of Firefox at the time. That was 2 years ago. All other attacks I could find were across all systems, and merely attempted to de-anonymize users, which is only a problem if you are partaking in illegal services. As with ALL browsers, you should keep them up to date to patch potential exploits as they are discovered by the developers.

Regardless, I doubt they’d send us into TOR because of such presumptions of danger.

#4232

Yeah don’t suggest ANYONE even people who know what they are doing to touch that side of the internet.

As for the Gilledpizza.Jpg. I was thinking more about using it to pull out specific characters using the White/Black Triangles to find out what they are, starting at the top from the Red and working down.

For example the first 8 characters : B32B003A placed in the first 8 Triangles which are (W= White B = Black) WWWWWWBW, so if the black was the one we needed to remove, B32B003A would become B32B00A, taking out the 3. Obviously we would then have shift everything back 1 for every deleted character, once everything was all done, so the first 8 character would be B32B00A3, and so on.

Or on the other hand, the Black points could be the character we need so the first black is 3, giving us the base of a new hex code.

Worth a shot, might take a look later see what comes out.

#4233

Yeah, my deep web idea was just an idea that came spontaneously and now that i think of it, its highly improbable considering the shit that happens over there so scratch that.

As for grilledpizza.jpg, did one of us suggest the answer or something was the image itself?

Also, since the name for 1001085139140914.html is just codes A-D i wonder if storm has reused this in another part of the ARG or if it means anything.

On a side note, i wonder who is writing the story of this arg, is storm writing it himself or has he hired a story writer or perhaps are writing the story ourselves.

The same thing for puzzles, is storm or an expert creating them or perhaps we are?

#4234

If 21 goes into 1, does it follow that something should go into 2, and even 3?

If it’s a cascade of block ciphers, then maybe 21 into 1 is a clue to the first cipher in the cascade: Triple DES (as there are 21*8=168 bits that make up a Triple DES key).

The ciphers listed on the whiteboard are 128-bit block ciphers, but Triple DES is a 64-bit block cipher. What if we are dealing with a cascade of 64-bit block ciphers, instead of a cascade of 128-bit block ciphers?

AES supersedes DES, so in a way, they are related. The next cipher could be Blowfish due to its relation to Twofish. The third cipher is trickier, as I haven’t found a 64-bit block cipher that’s related to or mirrors the name of the Serpent cipher.

Mainly because of the “[ABORTIVE]” in HALOS.txt, and also because the code doesn’t fit the block size of the ciphers mentioned on one of the whiteboards. But it’s just one theory.

This is what Storm said as @0418_08151814 regarding the storyline:

#4235

A theory:

Those two ideas named in the quote above might be related.

Remember how 0418_08151814 was really just numbers-instead-of-letters for DR_HORN?
Let me just remind you about another clue: “BENALOHPAILLIER”.

B E N A L O H P A I L L I E R 02 05 14 01 12 15 08 16 01 09 12 12 09 05 18
if we assume A = 01, like before.

Well, this isn’t really that important/useful as is…

[spoiler]…unless you trim the zeros from the numbers that don’t need them…

B E N A L O H P A I L L I E R 02 05 14 01 12 15 08 16 01 09 12 12 09 05 18 2 5 14 1 12 15 8 16 1 9 12 12 9 5 18and then crunch them all together…

251411215161912129518

…Count the number of characters. 8| [/spoiler]

However, if we plug that in as a key, we still get nada from the decryption.
Unless we remember two other clues given to us at this stage:

  • 21 into 1
  • grilledpizza.jpg (“congratulationsyouwonthePIZZA”)

Remember how grilledpizza.jpg was solved?
After interpreting the triangles as bits in an ASCII format, the resulting message was [tt]␂ “tfexirklcrkzfejpflnfekyvGZQQR” ␗␃[/tt].

And then remember what the next step was?
ROT + 9 (i.e. increment by 9).

What if BENALOHPAILLIER needs to be ROTated, too?
Well, how would we know what the new setting should be?

… 21 into 1
OR
21 into 01 = U into A
Which makes ROT + or - 6 or 20

The only thing I don’t know for sure is if it should be + or - for that ROT. And which of the 2 values to use. I also am not sure if the numbers have to be converted from decimal into hex before using them as key possibilities. Guess it depends on the method and the required key length.
But that’s something we can start testing with.

#4236

Good idea Miles. That sounds crazy and out of the box enough to work.

#4237

You mean, outta the …

puts on shades

… Gearbox?

[sub]YYYEEEAAAHHH![/sub]

#4238

What about that computer monitor that had the math questions on it?

Or maybe the whiteboard with the encryption clue?

EDIT :

+6 ROT - VYHUFIBJUCFFCYL

  • 6 ROT - HKTGRUNVGORROKX

I think thats correct

U +6 = U in Possition 1 = A
U - 6 = U in Possition 15 = O

#4239

Here’s another question:

?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?++= ...... +==~~::,, ........ ::,,............ ........
We all know by now that this ASCII art is in the comments of the BMRF.us page (which, since the September renewal, redirects to bmrf.us/zero.html followed by a query string with a large integer, which use I have no idea as of yet).
Look at the characters used in making the art, though. I know that it’s meant to be a sort of gradient shading effect, but… I just can’t help but wonder, is there any particular meaning to the characters used?

This is probably grasping at straws, though.

#4240

The query string at the end is just something web developers do, it’s not related to the ARG at all.

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