In regards to the hex code, there is something that is really bothering me, and it took me down a very crazy path.
First and foremost, I analyzed the occurrence of bytes in the entire hex representation. My result was 196 unique byte instances. In other words, B3 has 3 instances, 2B has 2, etc.
Needless to say, this took quite a bit of time (about 2 hours), but I was nonetheless surprised by the results. First of all, 196 unique instances seems kind of low for something that we are assuming is some sort of AES-like cipher. Considering that the total possible unique instances of bytes in hex representation is 255, the number of unique bytes in our code is 59 shy of the total possible number of unique hex bytes. Thatâs an offset of about 23%. Now, I donât have the keenest mind when it comes to cryptography, but that seems a bit odd to me. Nonetheless, it could simply be how the encryption method turned outâluck of the draw, as they say.
Anyhow, I wasnât convinced, so I did a bit more digging. I recalled that Storm mentioned in May of 2013 that someone was close to finding an answer. So, I went ahead and looked through all the posts between the time we discovered the hex code and when he said that. This post stuck out to me as one that was seemingly brushed over without much discussion: Go to post
In the post, the user Jess notes how this ARG has been very similar to the Cyber Security Challenge that was sponsored in the UK. Well, I obviously knew that Storm was from the UK, so I went ahead and checked out the contest.
The part that interested me was the very last decryption attempt, in which the solver was given a hex code with 56 distinct hex pairs. Since the solution included numbers and other symbols, itâs likely that the puzzle only included one alphabet of 26 letters, those letters that were capitalized in the message (they have distinct hex codes), and then the additional characters and numbers filled in the remainder.
Now, if we apply the same technique to our puzzle, we have a bit of an issue. We can assume that only capital letters are included in the message, which is the form of the last gate solution and some of our IRC decryptions, but this leaves us with at least 7 different alphabetical representations in hex bytes. If we instead assume that the solution to this puzzle is like the one mentioned in that contest (this is possibly backed up by the capitalization included in the IRC clue that led to the HALOS file: âThEpIzZaIsaLiEâ), we still have a problem. Even if every single capitalized forms of each letter are used, we are still looking at almost 4 different alphabetical representations in hex bytes.
This definitely discouraged me, but there are two other clues that still lead me to believe this could be a lead.
First, the message we received on the âgrilledpizzaâ puzzle was âcongratulationsyouwonthePIZZA.â If you read that description of the Cyber Security Challenge, the author distinctly notes the following:
âSubstituting in the space characters meant that the first word would have to be 15 characters long! At this stage, I guessed that this was probably the ârealâ part of the challenge, and so the encrypted text was likely to be some kind of congratulations message⊠hang on, âCongratulationsâ has 15 characters!â
That is a very uncanny coincidence in my book. Furthermore, the author eventually realized that, even though he had figured out the puzzle using substitution methods, he could have simply used a bitwise rotate-left on each byte three times. This reminded me of all the references to Latin we have received throughout this stage of the ARG, especially those noted on the Tempus page. A Caesar shift is similar to what we are dealing with here, and Latin was the language of the Romans. Furthermore, the Tempus page that was provided to us as an aid was posted only five days after Jess posted the forum response regarding the Cyber Security Challenge. Perhaps Storm noticed that it was passed over without comment, and wanted to help point us back in the right direction. Also, he did say at one point that encryption may have nothing to do with this, in response to complaints that you had to be an encryption guru to solve these puzzles.
Now, I have attempted to perform a bitwise rotation on the first few bytes, to no avail. I donât think itâs going to be as simple as that if it truly is some sort of substitution cipher, but it does add up. Not only could using multiple representations make the puzzle challenging, but it would also create high entropy, which the hex code seems to have.
To assist with the puzzle, we could assume that âcongratulationsyouwonthePIZZAâ is the first part of the message, as it was in the case of the Cyber Security Challenge.
On a final note, I get that this completely goes against what we have assumed thus far. However, it has been four years since weâve made any progress, and this seems to fit with the multiple clues given to us like a glove.
