TITCD Investigation

George Edison

18:57

We need to hold Jorge hostage until he tells us what the secret of thisisthecountdown.com is.

3

Marco Ceppi

@GeorgeEdison You need to hold the ubuntu advert team hostage :)

I suspect it's a small ARG

George Edison

Hey!!!!

I just discovered something.

jrg

@GeorgeEdison Tell me please?

Then I can drop it into the IRC channel as we try to solve this.

George Edison

I'll pastebin it.

jrg

K

htorque

19:00

viral marketing only works if it contains hot babes :D

George Edison

Hmmm... they've employed some tricks to make copy-paste-difficult.

Time to crack the Chrome Inspector.

Roland Taylor

or i<InsertRandomCrapHere>

jrg

@htorque They tried that with Warty Warthog. Didn't work.

htorque

what about the nude wallpapers?

jrg

Yeah.

htorque

19:01

wasn't there something like that? i'm getting old, forgetting things

George Edison

Here you go:

pastebin.com/TeGC4q2R

jrg

Oh, that? Got it from here, right? - hackertyper.net/wsa/tip.txt

George Edison

It's ROT13 encoded!

I recognize it.

jrg

@GeorgeEdison What do to next once the rot13 has been decoded?

George Edison

Just random chit chat and the message:

> "Pine Lake seems to have received some more transmissions of some sort."

I'll update the post.

Marco Ceppi

19:10

Yeah, this smells exactly like an ARG

jrg

Oh, I was talking about the part in between <---begin transmission--> <--end transmission-->

George Edison

I didn't do that one

jrg

it's not rot13.

George Edison

Not that one.

All of the other entries in the IRC log are.

jrg

Side note: If you want to see what Pine Lake looks like, this is what people find: - eol.jsc.nasa.gov/scripts/sseop/…

George Edison

19:12

Use this tool to find the right offset.

jrg

@MarcoCeppi Yeah, I think Pinwake (dude behind all this) went over the top.

George Edison

Good idea.

jrg

OK, I'm here.

George Edison

So we have:

BJGGK ANJJP CIAOP BCOCO PN6IO
HCPPC IA6PK IJ5KR NPTKX JNKHJ
A6BJN PX5NK HPN6I OHCPP JNUJO
CAI6P JUQBC O6ACP P6NCC OP6IU
EWJ6N PBQCP CXJIO 5KNCI QKHCI
AU6P6 PN6IO HCOOC KIFJJ LNJQJ
CSCIA 5KNGK IAJNP B6IJ6 NPBOJ
QKIUO LGJ6O JU6P6 PN6IO HCOOC
KITCG GEJJJ

Marco Ceppi

Incoming blob of text

George Edison

19:16

Does that look familiar? Some form of encoding?

jrg

Rot12 according to the IRC logs.

George Edison

Where does it say that?

jrg

@GeorgeEdison I'm going to quickly pastebin the IRC logs so people can stay up-to-date on what they're doing there.

George Edison

Just paste it here.

It's not going to bother anyone.

jrg

All 5 days worth?

George Edison

19:17

5 days?

jrg

I've got everything since day one.

George Edison

Are we talking about the same thing?

Ooooooh.

Yeah, Pastebin is better.

jrg

(I think it's been five)

George Edison

Lol:

@CNN Maybe this countdown will make the television... http://thisisthecountdown.com #ubuntu

Tweeted by ThisIsThe on October 1, 2011 at 7:39 PM

Marco Ceppi

← 35 messages moved from Ask Ubuntu General Room

jrg

19:19

@GeorgeEdison lol nice.

htorque

what am i doing here?

George Edison

@htorque Conspiracy theories.

Marco Ceppi

@htorque You like TITCD?

YOU KNOW YOU DO

jrg

Ok, I don't have joins/parts filtered, but I've got everything since monday.

gist.github.com/a05085e7cd447c4799c7

George Edison

@jrg Great

jrg

19:20

@GeorgeEdison I'll update as stuff happens.

George Edison

So... what encoding is that first block of text?

Did we figure that out yet?

htorque

TIT CD? is this a rated R room? :>

jrg

Here's the encodings we have total:

11:55 h00k: so far, we have hex, base64, rot13, rot12

Marco Ceppi

room topic changed to TITCD Investigation: thisisthecountdown.com (no tags)

htorque

is rot the same as caesar chiffre?

Marco Ceppi

19:22

@htorque yes

htorque

so char+something?

ok

Marco Ceppi

I'm going to bail on this one guys. ARGs messed me up when I was younger

jrg

@MarcoCeppi Can you add the question to the description?

htorque

> A whole new computer.

Marco Ceppi

@jrg I'll jut make you an admin

htorque

19:23

maybe they are going to sell a whole new computer.

jrg

@MarcoCeppi That'll work.

George Edison

I'm already one :)

Feeds

Marco Ceppi has added jrg to the list of this room's owners.

jrg

Can I do use markdown in the description?

htorque

validator.w3.org/…

jrg

19:25

All they're complaining about is using outdated stuff that works in IE, and experimential stuff.

room topic changed to TITCD Investigation: Investigating thisisthecountdown.com. Question here: askubuntu.com/questions/64284/…, IRC logs are here (from #awholenewworld on freenode) (no tags)

Marco Ceppi

@jrg nope.

jrg

Wait, nevermind. Guess not. :(

room topic changed to TITCD Investigation: Investigating thisisthecountdown.com. Question here: askubuntu.com/questions/64284/…, IRC logs are here: gist.github.com/a05085e7cd447c4799c7 (from #awholenewworld on freenode) (no tags)

Ok, I'm done.

George Edison

Someone in the IRC logs pointed out the /robots.txt file.

It's interesting.

Marco Ceppi

@GeorgeEdison It's a Dalek

Roland Taylor

my heart sped up when I saw investigation O.o

I literally read "you have been warned to join a room"

Marco Ceppi

19:29

Roland Taylor

>_< so what are we up to?

George Edison

Trying to find clues.

Start here:

7

A: What does thisisthecountdown.com count down to?

It was created by the Ubuntu Adverts team to build up some hype in advance of the 11.10 release. The counter expires at midnight 11th October in the UTC-5 timezone (US Central time). This is 6am on the 12th October in the UK. The release of 11.10 is expected on the 13th in the afternoon UK time. ...

htorque

dr. who who?

jrg

Also, I have it on good info that we have 2 different clues here - we have to do the first one before we can do the second one.

(don't ask how I know)

htorque

or maybe they want you to belive that!

George Edison

19:32

@jrg What is the first one?

jrg

No idea.

htorque

i'm a scavenger hunt noob. :-(

A Whole New World

"A Whole New World" is the Oscar winning featured pop single from the soundtrack to the 1992 Disney film Aladdin. It was composed by Alan Menken with lyrics by Tim Rice. The song is a ballad between the primary characters Aladdin and Jasmine about the new world they are going to discover together. The original version was sung by Brad Kane and Lea Salonga during the film. They also performed the song in their characters at the 65th Academy Awards, where it won Best Song. A single version of the song was later released that year and was performed by Peabo Bryson and Regina Belle. knockin...

i'm sure that's important!

:D

George Edison

worldspaceagency.org/security

htorque

i think they've stolen that image!

i remember seeing it before.

George Edison

@htorque tineye.com/search/eb88ccb78b966ba12d691bc11dc0509e0ab25df8

htorque

19:37

:-)

this reminds me of

where does the adverts team live? :-)

George Edison

@jrg: Try unminifying this.

It looks like it listens for key presses.

Marco Ceppi

@GeorgeEdison That's just cloudflare ~~nvm~~

jrg

that's just cloudflare, nothing that you won't find on my sites.

George Edison

@MarcoCeppi That file is linked on this page.

@jrg So it's not a CDN?

Marco Ceppi

@GeorgeEdison Yes and no - but that looks like the file for the CDN not a client file

George Edison

19:40

Ah, never mind then.

Back to the source for the page...

jrg

Yeah, they brought that up early on.

George Edison

The markup is awful: <table> and <font>...

jrg

OHOHOOHOHOH.

IRC log update in about 30 seconds, read the bottom part.

gist.github.com/a05085e7cd447c4799c7

Ignore my jab at you IRC phobes. :P

htorque

i'm on irc all day

just not in that room :P

Marco Ceppi

Hum

IBM

a22p

Space

Shuttleworth

OMG, THIS MUST BE ABOUT UBUNTU!

jrg

19:44

NAH REALLY

Marco Ceppi

cracked it.

jrg

can't decide if we're all silent because we think you're joking, or if we're all silent because we know you're joking. :P

htorque

i'm silent because i'm thinking about what useful things i could have done the past 15 minutes :D

Roland Taylor

I'm remaining silent because I need to do that more often. room applauds

htorque

@RolandTaylor stop being all emo already!

:P

Roland Taylor

19:48

emo? I'm not emo! I'm black enough :D

I knew someone was going to star that :D

pats his invisible psychology book

George Edison

Did anyone figure out what this means:

> "START: CynOnoceiomemdRhlnnpctiDisssunr1tooaLdoatsRgurrdsedeemaiiifiseornp&Ournlo:cotsOt‌a:tetentr:amengYncuvZ"

It's appended to the end of the 'maintenance.gif' file.

jrg

No one has been able to figure it out (yet).

htorque

what's that: ?

Roland Taylor

It's an Illuminati handshake.

Marco Ceppi

@GeorgeEdison CORDROOYZ ?

htorque

19:51

well, it's likely no rot ;)

Marco Ceppi

maybe it's scrambled?

htorque

yeah, let's play scrabble!

Marco Ceppi

Cry Rod Zoo

maybe not

George Edison

Let's consider the ':' the delimiter.

jrg

dl.dropbox.com/u/541672/console.txt

htorque

19:53

where's john nash when you need him?

jrg

(perhaps unrelated)

Marco Ceppi

CORDRO:O:YZ ?

Maybe another ROT cipher?

George Edison

@MarcoCeppi Nope.

Tried all ROTs. No dice.

Marco Ceppi

Okay, maybe it's not just the caps

George Edison

Maybe the capital letters mean something.

Tokenization reveals:

Cyn
Onoceiomemd
Rhlnnpcti
Disssunr
1
tooa
Ldoats
Rgurrdsedeemaiiifiseornp
&
Ournlo
:
cotsOta
:
tetentr
:
ameng
Yncuv
Z

Marco Ceppi

19:57

NYC

Come Die Moon

htorque

:D

new world → die moon!

Marco Ceppi

I Code Me Mono

Let me try another set.

Ldoats = As Told ?

Maybe each set needs to be unscrambled, then the whole sentance rearranged?

maybe not - these sets aren't making sense

George Edison

I tried cracking open the other GIF files: nothing.

@MarcoCeppi I took the capital letters and put them into Google - nothing.

Marco Ceppi

ameng = Nag Me or Nag 'Em

jrg

Someone just floated the idea of putting that into a ham radio program and seeing what callsigns come out.

George Edison

20:04

If you don't mind ads, you can use this to unscramble some words.

Roland Taylor

42

George Edison

There's 101 characters total.

htorque

so LOL is the code!

►

jrg

Lame, it's not HTML5 enabled.

George Edison

@jrg What IRC channel is this on?

jrg

20:14

@GeorgeEdison #awholenewworld

(on freenode)

George Edison

Thanks.

htorque

i wonder if "&" is the delimiter

i wonder if i just should watch tv instead >:P

Roland Taylor

iMe

Marco Ceppi

I need to leave this room. I'm never going to the this setup

George Edison

@MarcoCeppi Yeah :P

@jrg: What is the URL of the MP3?

jrg

20:18

Wrong one

Right one - worldspaceagency.org/bg.gif

jrg

20:30

Wait, what'd you do? :P

George Edison

?

jrg

someone removed Roland and htorque's messages.

htorque

i meant the bg gif plays just noise

not that rolands messages are noise :D

jrg

oh, haha

htorque

isn't that suspicious too?

no appended stuff

Roland Taylor

20:36

I was also kicked I think

I don't even remember what I said

oh well bye all

htorque

cya!

worldspaceagency.org/console

what's thaaaat?

i don't know morse code

jrg

@htorque it's this - hackertyper.net/wsa/tip.txt

htorque

ah, i see

jrg

which has been decoded here - paste.ubuntu.com/703574

htorque

how has the stuff between begin/end transmission been decoded?

jrg

20:50

qrz.com/db

htorque

lol, i'm useless for that kind of things

i'll guess it's easier to wait for the zero ;-)

jrg

hehe yeah

htorque

and you're sure that qrz thing is right?

jrg

line 1471 in the logs

htorque

but what does it do? and why? will there be a tomorrow? :D

good night!

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