Ten

Need someone who enjoys ciphers and codes to crack something. PM me.

Edit: See the following post - it summarizes everything found so far:

http://www.sluniverse.com/php/vb/323823-post845.html

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Joshua Nightshade

?

Iris Seale

Tenshi got a weird email. It was a weirdly coded web page with this text:

<div class="heading">Shanti is Coming.</div>
<div class="heading">

<img alt="cyan sunset" src="https://tor-proxy.net/cgi-bin/enc/nph-proxy_jap.cgi/111110A/687474703a2f2f7777772e7368616e74692d69732d636f6d69 6e672e636f6d2f6379616e2d73756e7365745f3030312e6a70 6567"></img></div>

<pre>VKDQW LZLOO FKDQJ HZKDW BRXWK LQNBR XNQRZ
DRSCS CDYYO KCIDR YEQRB SQRDM KOCKB GKCKM REWZ
DROXO HDVSX OCGSV VLOKW YBOGY BDRIM RKVVO XQO

GNNEZ WEXTE VGIIS EZEUE XIELF BZXII BNKEW

AEMSE ZKGOA DVXAT DADGK WXPEF BZMBZ EGNFB
ZMXAG BNXNL TDXII ENPEK XIKBL ZGNHM BZEBU
XIAGN E


IJKIR VHHJG HHHRS HHHRK XXRXA XXXRH MMMVK
AKWKS TTKTK OHACS HSJZN XIFHB QZBGA XWVKR

ASILN KRSIA FVNSK NDXSA NKMSC GVQVC FVHFD

VGHSX WQFDJ EDVKS KDLKD L ... SIQFD NV
</pre></div>

I ran it through the cipher clerk and didn't find anything, though.

Ten

Well I'm not even sure what it is, to be completely honest. I think it might be a code but that could be wishful thinking that someone's making a game. Let's just leave it at, I got a strange email and I'm willing to throw the screencap of the website text at anyone who will have a go.

Joshua Nightshade

What was the website?

Malachi

Certainly a good simulation of a human encrypted message, but given how little ciphertext there is, I doubt even the NSA could crack it.

Cocoanut Koala

Well, I do those in puzzle books, but they are simple letter substitutions. On this one, there are no two- or three-letter words, which leads me to believe it is not like those.

In fact, it is nearly all five-letter words. So if they are words, they aren't divided as words are.

coco

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Ingrid N

If someone offers you Snow Crash, don't take it. I hear it's bad for you. Gonna drain your fashionista skills and all.

I think someone's just yanking your chain.

__________________
liminal.: Skins & AOs! More fun than a subincision!

Eirik

Since they're all 5 letters long, could be a bunch of CD keys

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Lucifer Baphomet

Its common to break up words to encode them. makes them harder to crack.

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Siyu Suen

Poking my brain, I can see it's crackable, since the three letters in a row combos solve at least one of the letters, since we can tell it's been rearranged and those are articles mashed together. So it's likely X=A, or H=I. I could probably keep looking at it, it's definitely just letter replacement and not anything more interesting, so whoever sent it to you wants you to get the decoder ring out of your Fruity Pebbles and probably meet them underneath the Big Tree behind the neighbor's house

edit: actually, nevermind, this just seems like total gibberish in that case "HHHRS HHHRK XXRXA XXXRH MMMVK", letters just don't go that way together, but it doesn't lessen how much this situation reminds me of being eight. So no, my tired brain had a moment of deluding itself lol.

Now I'm convinced the biggest mystery here is how anyone could think "cyan sunset" was a good idea for a font color.

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"Your reality, sir, is lies and balderdash and I'm delighted to say that I have no grasp of it whatsoever" -Baron Munchausen

I'm attempting to bring about the end of the world to usher in a new era of mask wielding overlords. This is how!

Vaalith Jinn

Leads me to Shanti is Coming
which contains the same exact code.

Also, i'm poking it from all sides a bit, it is a very simple cypher and so far
this is what i got through Caesar's Shifts:

SHANT IWIL L CHA NG EW HAT Y OUTH INKYO UKNO W AOP ZP ZA VVL H ZFAO VBNOY PNOA J HLZ HY DH ZHJ O BTW A OLUL EASPU LZDP S SIL HT VY LDV Y AOFJ OHSSL UNL DKKB W TBU QB SD FFP B WBRB UFBIC YWUF F YKH BT X BJPB WHDLX ASUX Q AXA DH TU MBC Y WJYW BDKCY WJUX D YKU KI QA UFF B KMBH UFHYI WDKE J YWB YR UF XDK B FG HFO S EEGD EEEOP EEEO H UUO UX UU UOE J JJSH XHTHP QQHQ H LEX ZP EP GWK U FCEY NWYDX UTSH O XP FIK H OPFX CSKPH KAUP X KHJ PZ DS NSZ C SECA SDEP U TNC AG BA SHP H AIHA I ... PFNC A KS

Puzzles me as the first line makes it look like viral ad of some kind,
the rest?.. meh.

Siyu Suen

Hahahaha is this viral marketing for Heroes? That'd be so utterly tasteless and unnecessary.


(Heroes had the "Shanti Virus" as something rather important in its plot)

Oh, looked at the link... damn just some stupid SL thing. Yup, we're eight again. Hey guys, meet me at the clubhouse, I'll get my mom to make us some sandwiches and we can skip school and read comic books.

Lemme guess:

Shanti will change what you think you know about Second Life! A new amazing sim will be opening that will be full of awesome and ponies1!!11 Publicize this uberseekrit message so that our mediocre products will flourish in the wake of our shameless gimmick!

Vaalith Jinn

Oh, being one of those who didn't come around to watching Heroes yet i'll
refrain from looking that up

But, poking it at a substitution thingie, i just need to guess 11 more letters or,
if i had any idea on the frequency of specific letters in english, i could just look
at the frequency of specific letters in that message and compare and viola!

...only that i don't ^^

Ili Roviana

Heroes was what came to mind first, from the "shanti is coming" thing, and heroes 3 preview was just released recently. But i'm useless at ciphers.

Vaalith Jinn

I'm beginning to think that either the first line is written with different substitution alphabet
than the rest of the message, or that the rest of the message is gibberish.

Former would be clever, latter - annoying.

Siyu Suen

If you used a Caesar cipher, try progressing to the next number up, so instead of three inbetween the letters, four. I dunno, might work, if there's any rhyme or reason to the way that the phrases have been blocked. Also, there might be typos, there was one in the page source and I'm rather doubtful of the competence of our little mastermind.

Vaalith Jinn

OMG i love this (whoever made it) guy/girl/awesome person.
Each line seems different; example:

drscs cdyyo kcidr yeqrb sqrdm kockb gkckm rewz
droxo hdvsx ocgsv vlokw ybogy bdrim rkvvo xqo

>>

THISI STOO E ASY TH OU GHR I GHTC AESAR WASA C HUM P THE NE XT LIN E SWIL LBEAM OREW O RTH YC HA LLE N GE

Problem now being i'm back where i started, i know the next lines shouldn't work the same as previous,
but i have no idea what should so...back to substitution.
(also, this day is lost, lol)

Vaalith Jinn

Little bit of unrelated info:
See Underlying Data Results

The domain was created on 14-jul-2008

Post if that rings any bells.

Ili Roviana

Saw this extra bit in the page source...

Ili Roviana

Maybe a desteg? I don't have a prog on this pc.

Vaalith Jinn

Oh god, i'm an idiot!
I've read it as 'words'!

Dword - DWORD

Vaalith Jinn

Open the image as a .doc and you see, amongst lots of stuff, these two interesting things:
steghide extract -sf cyan-sunset_001.jpeg

and CDEFGHIJSTUVWXYZcdefghijstuvwxyzƒ which might be completely unrelated and part of jpeg.

but the first one is pretty, uh, easy.

p.s.: downloading steghide
....haha, it asks for a password; yay.

Ili Roviana

OOo. changed the pic to a txt file and i see "steghide extract -sf cyan-sunset_001.jpeg" amongst the gibberish. so must need to be destegged, right? need a pw...


edit: lol i shoulda refreshed first

Vaalith Jinn

The steghide encryption is (edit fuck knows what.

C:\new>steghide encinfo
encryption algorithms:
<algorithm>: <supported modes>...
cast-128: cbc cfb ctr ecb ncfb nofb ofb
gost: cbc cfb ctr ecb ncfb nofb ofb
rijndael-128: cbc cfb ctr ecb ncfb nofb ofb
twofish: cbc cfb ctr ecb ncfb nofb ofb
arcfour: stream
cast-256: cbc cfb ctr ecb ncfb nofb ofb
loki97: cbc cfb ctr ecb ncfb nofb ofb
rijndael-192: cbc cfb ctr ecb ncfb nofb ofb
saferplus: cbc cfb ctr ecb ncfb nofb ofb
wake: stream
des: cbc cfb ctr ecb ncfb nofb ofb
rijndael-256: cbc cfb ctr ecb ncfb nofb ofb
serpent: cbc cfb ctr ecb ncfb nofb ofb
xtea: cbc cfb ctr ecb ncfb nofb ofb
blowfish: cbc cfb ctr ecb ncfb nofb ofb
enigma: stream
rc2: cbc cfb ctr ecb ncfb nofb ofb
tripledes: cbc cfb ctr ecb ncfb nofb ofb


But the password must be somewhere there.