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12:43 AM
@ngn @Quintec How did you get black.mp4
 
ngn
@MilkyWay90 see the wiki
 
@ngn Where's the wiki, again
 
ngn
@MilkyWay90 see the pinned starred message to the right of this chat
 
ok
I got this
From the morse
 
ngn
what? how? which morse?
 
12:48 AM
-... .. - .-.-.- .-.. -.-- -..-. ..--- ..-. --.- --- - .-- .... / .- .-.. / -.-. .- .--. ...
which spells bit.ly/2fqotwh al caps
from the wiki
 
ngn
@MilkyWay90 you didn't make it all caps
 
I dont think urls are case sensitive
 
ngn
@MilkyWay90 domain names aren't, but paths are
 
@ngn right
Uh oh an ex file
*exe file
do you have Windows
I do, but my mom wouldn't allow me to download a random exe file
 
ngn
@MilkyWay90 i don't need windows :)
 
12:51 AM
Oh okay, but how would you run the exe file?
 
ngn
it's not a windows executable
some of the file extensions are misleading
you have to look at the actual content and guess
 
ohh
im guessing png
diocd fmqct zlgamqbltm
zjxqiailbuvm lghiqccfm
evadu oiefaucnu
hiitwzfsskuid waomsyfm
msavm xujjbjgfm
dvucltwmt bflcykuzjm
qydja dueok
bqmocihplb gpfsowmyfws
qafooiebabltm upyvcwfwubj
ucwlpvzr nidmiscd
uybzjwfm tjaqicok
qppyycupxuycok sccyc
pmmxfm godqmt zffnva
Qjlhlimsu wyg
twmyyihtqt apgaoiuu
 
ngn
if it has "PNG" near the start of the file, most likely it is. it might be corrupted though
 
@ngn its a txt file, actually
I think it's in Text
the programming language
 
ngn
i know. i searched all the files for clues, but couldn't find any obvious ones
 
12:55 AM
What cipher do you think it is
 
ngn
@MilkyWay90 i would guess there must be vigenere
 
I already tried
with the key "MatPat"
 
ngn
all ciphers so far have been trivial - caesar, atbash, etc
and the title "crypt" suggests there are more serious ones ahead
 
yeah
I tried casear cipher and it doesnt work
 
ngn
there must be a polyalphabetic one like vigenere somewhere in the middle
@MilkyWay90 i tried it with all 26 offsets
 
12:59 AM
Maybe we should decode it the slow way
 
ngn
@MilkyWay90 how?
 
Make a subsitution table
Since you are better at programming than me, I suggest you could make a script in K
Or I could brute-force it in Python
Oops accidentally hit the caps lock
 
ngn
@MilkyWay90 we don't even know the key length
 
oh yeah
Let's try 1?
 
ngn
we'll get an awful lot of possible decryptions
 
1:02 AM
right
26 * 26 only though, right
like replace a with c, b with l, or something like that
 
ngn
@MilkyWay90 if the key length is 2, yes...
but it's likely to be longer
 
oh yeah
cpnlulyl ipibsbz is the username of the person who made it
@ngn That link I sent you is likely to be an image
 
ngn
@MilkyWay90 it is, i know
 
okay
 
ngn
i already tried adjusting the brightness and contrast :)
 
1:06 AM
@ngn "cpnlulyl ipibsbz". After we're done, let's try decoding this
It seems to be something OTHER than alfredo tho
 
ngn
@MilkyWay90 are you familiar with how polyalphabetic ciphers work?
 
no, not AT ALL
 
ngn
@MilkyWay90 i suggest you read about them first
 
@ngn Okay, I think I know
 
ngn
in a nutshell, each letter is shifted by a different offset
so if 2 letters are the same in the ciphertext, that doesn't mean they are the same in the plaintext
 
1:09 AM
oh
 
ngn
take a look at the example from wikipedia:
Plaintext:  ATTACKATDAWN
Key:        LEMONLEMONLE
Ciphertext: LXFOPVEFRNHR
 
But we can't simply brute force 26 ** (26 * 26)
26<sup>676</sup>
 
ngn
the key LEMON is repeated to match the length of the plaintext
 
ngn
then it's like a letter-by-letter caesar cipher
 
1:12 AM
so should we also repeat the "LEMON"
 
ngn
@MilkyWay90 that's a really enormous number :)
 
@ngn exactly
 
ngn
@MilkyWay90 we don't know how long it will be
 
ohyeah
*Oh yeah...
 
ngn
we could try all 2-char keys, then all 3-char etc
but there will be many possible decryptions, and we can't afford to inspect them all visually
(and ofc, there's no guarantee that it will be a vigenere cipher at all...)
 
1:15 AM
yeah
maybe xor all the images?
or or them?
 
ngn
:)
 
Or outguess them?
 
ngn
@MilkyWay90 i tried that too with some of the files
 
@ngn I am actually serious with the above comment by me
OutGuess has been used for cicada before
no new Cicada updates for randomstuffonline.com
Try posting a comment on it
We may get a reply from Cicada
`swty.
|x
|x x x
| x x x
| x
|
| x
|
| x x
|_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _`
i found this
@ngn When putting at 100 brightness and 100 contrast, it seems to be a life-like cellular automation
@ngn If you get man.exe and process it as a png file, it's WEIRD
 
ngn
@MilkyWay90 getting a reply is unlikely
 
1:29 AM
@ngn Oh yeah
 
ngn
@MilkyWay90 in what way does it look like a cellular automaton?
 
I dunno, you can see individual pixels (which could also be cells?)
crow.txt is another cippher
Dwoaculvtbntift npl xucjvh ce nzja guc.
Nzf vfre zwx auyam ojtm hzn tf mbmj.
Agpl mone.
 
ngn
i know what the files are. i looked at all of them
i just don't know how to decrypt them :)
 
oh
maybe put them into one big file
 
ngn
@MilkyWay90 ok, if you think that might lead to something, why don't you try it?
 
1:35 AM
@ngn okay
 
1:48 AM
Couldn't find anything
Hi @forest
 
Hi
I'm just lurking. I don't even know what cicada is.
 
@forest Do you want to help us?
Oh
 
I mean I could try, but I'm not great with puzzles.
 
Is this some kind of CTF?
 
1:54 AM
@forest what is a CTF?
 
Capture The Flag challenge. A kind of security game.
E.g. an ASCII flag might be hidden via steganography in images, etc.
 
@forest Well, let's see!
I'm currently investigating that right now
The steganography in images
 
ngn
@forest we believe it to be something more serious, though we haven't seen any digital signatures in the challenge yet to confirm it
 
@forest gitlab.com/n9n/cicada/wikis/home is what we've got so far
 
Ah. That looks like a recruitment drive for some intelligence org then.
Or a game some very clever person came up with.
 
ngn
1:58 AM
nobody knows
they seem to be capable of guarding their secrets well
 
Wait is there an online version of audacity
 
The audio analyzer?
 
@forest Have you heard of the phrase "surely you wish to eat?" says the innkeeper?
@forest yeah
 
I doubt it, but I'm sure there are other online JS-based audio analyzers.
 
2:02 AM
@MilkyWay90 I have not heard that phrase.
 
oh okay, I found that on the rickroll youtube channel
im gonna download audacity
 
ngn
@forest you may want to read through what we know so far
 
What is the opinion of Puzzling.SE on this challenge?
 
@forest No opinion as of yet
Posted it on the general discussion but nobody replied
on crypto some people took interest
 
2:08 AM
I was one of the folks who saw the link in Crypto's chat.
Though it doesn't look much like traditional cryptography.
 
@forest It's like cicada 3301, what'd you expect?
But if you don't know what cicada is, then you have a very good excuse for expecting something different
Oh hi again @Quintec
 
I wrote a program a while back to brute force vigenere
 
@forest So before you came, the people who were working on this were ngn, Quintec, and me
 
what message am i decoding
 
@Quintec Nice! How fast does it run
 
2:11 AM
Well it's a "smart" brute force, so it . may not be right
 
Try bruteforcing anything you see here
 
it bases off letter frequencies
 
Is there any need for high-speed distributed brute force?
 
@forest for the vignere cipher
But we will probably get a key sooner or later, but in the case that we don't, we have the bruteforcer
 
ngn
@Quintec how does it work?
 
2:13 AM
You have an OpenCL implementation of it?
 
@forest What is OpenCL?
 
A language framework for GPGPU computation.
It makes it possible to do massively-parallel computation on GPUs.
 
It's not really a brute force, the only brute force part is key length
 
Oh
 
@Quintec oh
@forest Good
 
2:15 AM
It's just caeasr cipher with mod split up
public static String vigAttack(String msg, int l) {
msg = onlyLower(msg);
String[] mods = new String[l];
for (int i = 0; i < l; i++) {
mods[i] = "";
}
for (int i = 0; i < msg.length(); i++) {
mods[i % l] += msg.substring(i, i+1);
}
String ans = "";
for (int i = 0; i < l; i++) {
mods[i] = decrypt(mods[i], findFrequencies(SAMPLE_TEXT));
}
for (int i = 0; i < msg.length(); i++) {
ans += mods[i % l].substring(i/l, i/l+1);
}
return ans;
}
 
The lack of indentation support on the chat just gave my eyes cancer.
 
Oof
 
I know there is something here
 
what is this
 
Too much noise
 
ngn
2:17 AM
@Quintec some of the files have (deliberately) wrong extensions
 
@Quintec Seems something image-y
 
this seems to provide possible decoding tips
 
That's just hex.
> mntrRGB XYZ
It's an image.
 
@forest Nice
 
I think it's monitor RGB.
 
2:18 AM
@forest Can you run it and see what the image is
 
Obviously the text file has all non-printable characters escaped as hex.
Probably a photoshop file.
 
Oh, changing to .png gives a stock photo of a durian
Might be steg involved not sure
 
I don't have a computer capable of running it right now (not allowed to by policy to open it on this computer). Only able to do online stuff.
@Quintec If it's PNG, it could have hidden layers.
 
@forest Oof
 
Btw, you might like this: fotoforensics.com
Excellent site for information and testing of images for forensic traces.
 
ngn
2:20 AM
@Quintec i bet there is
 
Can find signs of modification, hidden layers, metadata, etc.
@Quintec To PNG? But it's a JPEG file.
 
@forest Nice! Thanks!
 
It has JFIF in the header.
Is it possibly a polyglot?
 
@forest haha i know nothing about this
 
@forest What if it's a polyglot?
Oh oof
 
2:21 AM
lol
Tbh I've never seen a JPEG/PNG polyglot before.
 
Always assumed the standards were too strict to let that happen.
 
No idea what this means xD
 
@Quintec The site has a FAQ page which explains how to analyze it.
 
@Quintec Ah! That's... weird
 
2:22 AM
It also has several examples and mini "challenges" to learn with.
 
ngn
@Quintec wtf
 
It's a professional image forensics tool.
 
ngn
that's just the outline of the fruit
 
I just plugged it into the website lol
 
Guys I think I see morse code
in the mp3 file
 
2:24 AM
@Quintec See fotoforensics.com/tutorial.php for general information/tutorials.
 
see the very first part
 
@Quintec See fotoforensics.com/tutorial-ela.php for ELA specifically.
 
This is proving to be much bigger than I expected, although still no PGP
 
@forest @Quintec @ngn Has anybody found anythinf?
 
I haven't. I'm not much of a puzzle person, I just know digital forensics.
So anything from me will be from that perspective.
 
2:27 AM
@forest Since you already know fotoforensics, could you try feeding in some images to it?
 
ngn
@MilkyWay90 no
 
It bans my IP (I'm on Tor).
 
There's so much noise in the mp3 I'm not sure how to analyze it
 
@forest like from here
 
The song also sounds familiar
 
2:27 AM
So it lets me view results, but not upload new images.
Apparently some people have uploaded child porn to it under Tor.
So they had to ban it.
 
Any reason you're on tor?
 
@forest Can you view it without TOR?
Or are there complications
 
I can only use Tor, and only a browser, on this computer.
Maybe when I'm back at my normal computer I can get some proxies for it.
 
ouo Why?
 
Policies.
 
2:30 AM
Oh
 
You do live like a billion light years away according to your profile :P
 
Hey you live there too!
 
@Quintec wait wut
 
ngn
@forest what's the difference? just imagine you found these files on a criminal's hard disk
 
Laniakea is a galaxy iirc and it just sounds far away idk where
Or it's a cluster idk
 
2:31 AM
Laniakea is a supercluster containing the Virgo cluster, which has the Milky Way.
 
@Quintec Well another galaxy would be far
@forest oh
*Virgo supercluster
 
Virgo is no longer considered a supercluster.
Since it does not intersect at cosmic filiments.
 
Since when? I remember growing up knowing it as a supercluster
Hey guys, maybe the pngs are jpeg polyglots?
Maybe change the file format to something different
 
Run binwalk on it.
 
What is binwalk? And is it for windows too?
How do I use the spectogram in audacity?
 
2:35 AM
No idea if it is. It's a binary file analyzer that attempts to locate hidden inner files, or detect file formats from corrupted or mangled files.
 
oh'
 
It would be able to tell more easily if it is also another format.
Think of it like a super advanced version of strings.
 
And I'm curious, when did Virgo become considered a cluster? Or was it just always considered a cluster?
And what is strings? Pardon me for my knowledge of things like this
 
I think it was re-defined due to not intersecting with a filament or something.
 
2:37 AM
strings is a *nix utility that simply dumps all printable strings from a binary.
 
ngn
$ binwalk durian.txt

DECIMAL       HEXADECIMAL     DESCRIPTION
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
0             0x0             JPEG image data, JFIF standard 1.01
382           0x17E           Copyright string: "Copyright (c) 1998 Hewlett-Packard Company"
@forest ^
 
Yeah so it looks like it's a standard JPEG then.
> A 2014 study indicates that the Virgo Supercluster is only a lobe of an even greater supercluster, Laniakea, a larger, competing referent of Local Supercluster centered on the Great Attractor.[2]
 
oh
okay is binwalk a built-in on Unix or is it an application which I have to download?
 
It's a forensics application that you'd have to install.
Probably under apt-get install binwalk or whatever your package manager is.
 
2:39 AM
oh
What would it be for Mac OS?
 
Never used OSX. Doesn't it have a package manager called "brew"?
 
That's Homebrew
 
Yeah that's what I'm using to install binwalk right now
@Quintec is right
 
From a quick search, macappstore.org/binwalk.
No idea if that site is reputable.
 
I appreciate the beer analogies far more than I should
 
2:41 AM
@Quintec Why?
Apparently I'm getting an outdated XCode error when installing binwalk
Apparently XCode 10.0.0 is too outdated for 10.1.0
@ngn How do I go into spectograph mode for audacity?
 
ngn
@MilkyWay90 on the left there should be a dropdown labelled 44kHz
 
ya
oh found it
 
ngn
also, i noticed it's much better if you change "window size" from the spectrogram settings
 
okay
 
ngn
to something larger than 256
 
2:47 AM
okay, I'll do that
 
ngn
it's a shame we haven't solved the rickroll yet :(
 
yeah
It really is
But at least we are ahead of that
No morse code in camel.mp3
@forest Will you come back here tomorrow/after that?
Or was this just a one-time thing
 
Dunno. Maybe if I have time.
 
anyways gtg bye
@forest K
 
I doubt I'll be highly active in any case.
 
2:53 AM
goto go sleep see ya @ngn @Quintec @forest
 
cya
 
We're amassing quite a team with unique skills :) oh wait I have no skills
 
ngn
@Quintec but you have shazam :P
i wanted to check for hidden meaning in png sizes. here they are, just in case somebody notices something that i can't see:
 40 x 146  badger
 56 x 143  panda
100 x 147  polarbear
144 x  56  ant
147 x 151  koala
151 x 154  cat
151 x 156  hippo
154 x 143  dog
155 x 141  worm
157 x 155  fly
157 x 155  wasp
157 x 164  fox
157 x 170  mushroom
164 x 145  lion
164 x 162  flamingo
600 x 608  man.exe
 
Could also be other metadata, e.g. checksums.
Try CRC with various polynomials, for example.
 
ngn
@forest what would that give us?
 
3:02 AM
@ngn Actually, I didn't even use shazam, because that failed xD I used other online sites :P
 
@ngn If there's some hidden meaning, it could be encoded in checksums.
After all, it's trivial to modify the source so the output CRC is whatever you want.
 
ngn
$ cksum *
905630622 19752 ant.png
679042719 308 ape.exe.txt
3793455027 16961 badger.png
2648137714 10922664 camel.mp3
465860241 27604 cat.png
3207275303 89 crow.txt
2024960582 56412 dog.png
2426218622 33499 durian.txt
3576345207 63812 flamingo.png
3678057249 23683 fly.png
544813474 72401 fox.png
1733470783 134 gazelle.txt
212159863 67654 hippo.png
1362366143 63000 koala.png
2282360193 67895 lion.png
3913485320 486997 man.exe.png
1246183160 77805 mushroom.png
2311828499 122 ox.txt
323065205 22967 panda.png
the first colon is the crc
i don't know how to change the polynomial
 
The cksum utility uses the polynomial 0x04C11DB7.
So see if the sums you get mean anything.
 
ngn
i'm still staring at png sizes - i think i noticed something...
 
But I dunno what kind of clues this Cicada group leaves.
 
ngn
3:11 AM
most animals' dimensions are about 1/4 of man.exe
 
I just know that this is the kind of thing you might see on a CTF.
 
ngn
@forest here's a video with past puzzles and solutions
i wonder if man.exe can be tiled with the other pngs in a unique way
actually, the area of man.exe doesn't match the sum of the other areas :(
gtg. cya
 
 
10 hours later…
ngn
1:06 PM
crow.txt solved
 
 
2 hours later…
2:49 PM
Nice work!
 
ngn
3:03 PM
@Quintec thanks. i'm getting more and more skeptical about the origin of these puzzles though. we haven't seen any pgp signatures yet
 
Same
@ngn decoding ox.txt with bibulus key gives "rose." still no idea what to do with the grid
gazelle.txt gives:
Sycamorbid
Ampersandstorm
Lexiconscience
Perplexicon
Databaseless
Nonstoptimistic
Artichokehold
Heartbreakdown
Confiskateboard
 
ngn
@Quintec nice :) i thought this might work for other txt files but got carried away researching the history of 3301
 
Works for all others, it seems. shrimp.txt:
tot -> upu
was -> ycu
hex -> khx
pop -> tst
defenestrate -> hijiriwxvexi
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
pxp -> ??? -> ???
Wolf.txt:
dimension
dimension
dimension
dimension
dimension
dimension
 
ngn
@Quintec do you mind if i mention your username in the wiki?
 
Sure, go ahead
 
ngn
3:10 PM
i think giving credit there might encourage more people to collaborate
 
Well, have you advertised the repo anywhere?
Someone want to try outguess?
 
ngn
14 hours ago, by ngn
@MilkyWay90 i tried that too with some of the files
@Quintec ^
 
I guess nothing then?
 
ngn
@Quintec you never know...
actually, i tried only some of the files, not all
 
ngn
3:43 PM
interesing pattern in shrimp.txt
why the x in khx is special and why the 5th line consists of -4s instead of -5s - i don't know
 
hm
 
 
6 hours later…
9:55 PM
canis lupus familiaris
hippopotamus amphibius
musca domestica
phascolarctos cinereus
ursus maritimus
lumbricus terrestris
felis catus
ailuropoda melanoleuca
pseudomasaris coquilletti
arctonyx collaris
agaricus bisporus
phoenicopterus ruber
vulpes vulpes fulvus
Ppanthera leo
solenopsis geminata
@ngn @Quintec These are all animals, I put some of them in Google Translate
Also, we may need a different chat.
Users that don't have any rep over 20 on Stack Exchange (and I'm sure recruiting outside members won't), cannot chat here
 
10:51 PM
Discord?
 
ngn
11:04 PM
guys, i think at this point it's already clear that this is a fake
the challenges have been fun but, if they had anything to do with 3301, we must have seen a pgp signature by now
i'm thinking of deleting the repo and wiki at gitlab. if anyone wants me to transfer ownership, i'll be happy to do so
 

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