ZOMGWTFBBQ: Eon8-New

Eon8 is over

snowfox090@forums.unfiction.com — Sun, 15 Apr 2007 04:12:48 +0000

I was watching Eon8 for quite a while, and like most people I thought it was an ARG. Apparently not. Since I found this link that explains what it really was while delving into one of the Eon8 threads, I thought it would be good to give it its own thread so anyone passing by into this section would know what happened.

{eon8} Complete
As of July 1st, 2006, the E8 Project has completed.
The purpose of this project was to determine the reactions of the internet public to lack of information.
History
The domain eon8.com was chosen, as it is short, easily remembered, and eon9 was already registered.
It was originally posted on www.msfn.org, but was promptly removed as 'spam'. It was enough time for it to be copied to other forums throughout December 2005.
Results
We were amazed to discover that the site was instantly linked with terrorism, simply for the fact that it seems mysterious. Evil was the number one first impression people had of the site, in spite of the fact that there are no threats on the site. The only thing Eon 8 says is "We don't want you here". Nothing else.
Other less disappointing opinions were social experimentation (which was correct), James Bond movie viral marketing, and promotions for video games.
For many people, being faced with a countdown timer was an instant reason to try to shut down or hack the site. This is a worrying reaction, that if someone doesn't understand something they must destroy it. As a result, the servers have been hit quite hard these last few days, but luckily 99% of the 'hackers' could easily be described as 'l4me n00bs'.
Another worrying example of paranoia was how quickly people would jump to conclusions, such as telephoning the registered owner of a dog seen in a photograph on a server that hosts a page that links to eon8.
Surprises
The folks at Unfiction.com were the most resourceful and inventive, they successfully managed to decrypt several of the 'codes' on the site, forcing them to be re-encrypted using more secure methods.
FAQ
What about eon5.com?
Nothing to do with us. Pure coincidence, but worked in our favor.

What about the 8th eon being the end of the world?
We picked Eon 8 because Eon 9 was already taken. We didn't know about the significance of this. Eon is a cool sounding word!

Why July 1st?
We didn't know how long it would take to get the word out using our subtle promotion methods. We allowed over 6 months.

What do the codes on the site mean?
They're mostly randomly generated integers encrypted with md5, but with certain letters removed and replaced. The Logs page is simply based on the current timestamp, encrypted and modified. You can't decrypt them, they really are random numbers.

What is the Deployment Map?
They're dots placed over major cities and several random locations, it was done mostly from memory. The random gif filename is an added touch to force a slight delay on loading, which looks more impressive in Internet Explorer, but not as much in Firefox.

What's the password?
There isn't one. If you did somehow manage to get in, you'd see an empty folder with a single text file that says "This is a decoy folder. Please connect to the internal secure network".

Can I see your website statistics?
Yes, click here.

Are you anything to do with Scientology?
Did you see anything talking about a Free Personality Test or Xenu? Use your brain.

Who are you, really?
The most I can tell you is I am a 23 year old web designer from Florida named Mike. I can't narrow it down anymore than that. When I say 'we', I really mean 'me'.
Conclusions
People take things too seriously and panic over the most trivial things. But at the same time there are many people out there who think things through without jumping to conclusions. You can't let pointless speculation rule your lives and force you to live in fear.
In Closing
Thanks to everyone who kept things interesting, especially to the folks at unfiction. Sorry there is no ARG for you to play, but at least you had fun while it lasted.

Click here for one Final Message from Eon 8

BE HAPPY
THE END
Sincerely, x21b

Happy birthday, mtcaptain. From 'ls224' (aka x21b). Yes that really was me in the #eon-8 channel

[EMAIL] Aon8

Phaedra@forums.unfiction.com — Mon, 17 Jul 2006 04:54:15 +0000

Here we go again...

Eon8crack

More options 15:39 (1 hour ago)

You all know Eon 8. Most of all, you know the feeling that brought most of us together.

Eon 8 is now over, however a community still lives and tells about the eon 8 fiaso, and more....

After Eon8

http://www.aon8.net

Unite. Share.

Eon8 Moderated Chat with ls224

e_nygma@forums.unfiction.com — Sat, 08 Jul 2006 00:46:58 +0000

There will be a moderated chat with the Man Behind Eon8, ls224, on Thursday, July 6th at 10PM EDT. Come join us for what is sure to be an interesting conversation on Eon8 and the results of the experiment.

Celina63

[META] mike interview

AmberJoy@forums.unfiction.com — Thu, 06 Jul 2006 03:03:20 +0000

Hey everyone here at UnFiction!

My name is Asahel, or asahel14, or whatever, I just wanted to say that I interviewed Mike, and you can see it at my blog at http://www.diaryofasahel.frih.net and the link to the page is on the right called "Eon8 interview" This ain't an advertisement, just thought you might want to look at that piece of information. Later.

Topic tagged. --Phaedra

[META/SURVEY] Opinions

Azati_Prime@forums.unfiction.com — Mon, 03 Jul 2006 10:23:25 +0000

So, what was your opinion on the conclusion of eon8?

I personally think it's a great experiment and I'm happy to have been involved. Watching it was fun!
Though, I feel sorry for the guy's bandwith...

EDIT: Topic tagged. --Phaedra

[META] PM Apology

Hobo-Dragon@forums.unfiction.com — Mon, 03 Jul 2006 10:16:45 +0000

How sweet, he apologised to unfiction! :D

EDIT: Changed/tagged topic. --Phaedra

Sunshine?

Ehsan@forums.unfiction.com — Mon, 03 Jul 2006 05:21:02 +0000

To told us to go play in the sunshine? What in the world is that?

[Update] StonerSmurf169 IM (Eon8 Cont. #4)

StonerSmurf169@forums.unfiction.com — Mon, 03 Jul 2006 04:32:03 +0000

Mountain Girl and StonerSmurf169 IM

A few things, in no particular order:
You were probably talking to a bot with a randomized delay timer programmed into make the responses more realistic. I've been working on one that's really close to being able to go through the entire conversation that you had. It looks like certain keywords were used to trigger pre-made responses as well as shifts in the conversation.

You forgot to mention some things during your chat. You should have asked if it was a launch of a program, a movie, a book, a company, etc.

Just because there is a login prompt doesn't mean that you can actually login. Why would there be a login if a single brute force cracker program could easily get through?

War does not always involve guns, missiles, or viruses. For example: the war on poverty and the war on drugs, just to mention a few.

Edit - added the "IM" part to the topic title for clarification - celina63

EON8 REVEALED (for those that couldn't get in)

Giskard@forums.unfiction.com — Sun, 02 Jul 2006 00:27:00 +0000

When Eon8 was finally revealed; it turned out not to be an ARG or viral advertisement of any kind, but a mere test on internet reactions to a "don't look here" site.

Just figured I would pull this off of the site

Surprises
The folks at Unfiction.com were the most resourceful and inventive, they successfully managed to decrypt several of the 'codes' on the site, forcing them to be re-encrypted using more secure methods.

congrats to all that decrypted the hashes, even though they revealed nothing![/quote]

[EDIT] Moved to Eon8 forum --Gisk

[ PWNED ] ... omgwtfpwned.

AmberJoy@forums.unfiction.com — Sat, 01 Jul 2006 18:02:49 +0000

Sorry.

I... felt it needed to be said.

I think it was a pretty good end, and I'm really not that disappointed. Unfiction got special mention!~

And... sorry for making the post that started all this. I know the forums died around here 'cause of that thread. T_T.

IRC Chat - eon8 as it goes live

colin@forums.unfiction.com — Sat, 01 Jul 2006 01:08:20 +0000

Forums lagging? Come and join chat to talk 'real time' about eon8 as it launches!

You can use this interface , or join with your own IRC client:

irc.chat-solutions.org
port 6667
#eon8

Forum guidelines and general info - READ THIS BEFORE POSTING

SpaceBass@forums.unfiction.com — Fri, 30 Jun 2006 18:46:15 +0000

Ok, first, welcome to unFiction to a lot of newcomers! I have no idea what Eon8 is, but many of you have found the unForums as a base of operations to discuss it.

Because of this, both forum performance and clarity have taken quite a hit. As we want to try and limit the impact on both as much as possible, I'd like to ask you all to abide by a few simple posting guidelines:

Please, please, please, [search] the forums before posting, as you may well be asking a question or posting information that has already been posted
If you create a new thread, tag it so that it reflects its content, i.e. [QUESTION], [UPDATE], etc.
Try and keep discussion of the same puzzle(s) in the same thread as much as possible
Please be kind to each other and don't taunt or insult other players. There are enough posts already, and we don't need half of them being flamewars against eachother

[ARG?] Eon8 - First post updated.

SpaceBass@forums.unfiction.com — Fri, 30 Jun 2006 18:42:38 +0000

I can't seem to find much information about this elsewhere 'sides for a few other forums, but people seem to think it's an ARG.

http://www.eon8.com/

Deployment logs have got me most interested. Umm. Comments?

EDIT: Alright. This thread has really gotten too large, so I'm going to start compiling useful things here.

====
ONE: Don't Brute Force.
TWO: Don't dDos it.
THREE: ... Please don't.
====
SUMMARY:

eon8 is basically counting down to July 1st. No one knows why, no one knows who's behind it, and no one knows what the password and username for the project pages is.

A site that you might want to look at is www.eon8.com/security. This isn't accessible from the eon8.com page, so I just thought I'd put it up. This site lists referrers. Earlier, there was some whacko war between YTMND and 4Chan or something. Beats me.

And yes. If you press Ctrl+A, it will highlight text down the bottom of the page.

Yes. You can adjust the time on your computer clock to alter the countdown on the page, but it won't get you anywhere.

The Digit Dreams link led nowhere (it was found on the security page, only a page containing "moo" linking to eon8 and an images folder containing one image), however it only gave us the name "OSCAR" (a dog) and a number, which was kind of unclear. I think someone called it already, but nothing happened.

The Deployment Tracker page changes, yes. Yes, some logs are in different colors. ItWasn'tMeISwear posted:

I believe, as most others have already said, that the letters/numbers in the "Deployment Tracker" are simply our IPs encrypted.

And, since the "Log" matches the "Tracker" I would assume that the same applies to that as well (only that the "Log" gives a small portion of the "Tracker" information... possibly just the lastest IPs to visit).

As such, the site logs everyone's IP, browser, etc. when you access it -- don't panic.

eon8 has been around for 85 days. At least one of the servers is located in Dallas, Texas if you look up whoIs. The site is running MySQL on an Apache System and a PHP setup. If you stumble upon it, the PHP manual is not important.

At one stage, eon8 had pages mocking a few forum members, or something like that. Those pages are long gone, however they didn't have much on them except an image and quotes.

AND. Oh yeah, how could I forget to mention? YES. Looking at the security certificate will give you security@eon8.com. Please don't point it out again. People are going to scream.

Also, AIM messages have been exchanged lately. There have been messages sent out from "Eon8Countdown". There are also various people pretending to be the creators, but nothing is concrete so far.

====
RELATED SITES:

- eon8theinvestigation.ytmnd.com - not a parody, but a sort of summary... I guess?
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/July_1 - events that have occured on July 1st.
- eon8whatthehellisit.blogspot.com/ - URL kind of sums it up.

====
IRC CHANNELS

irc.chat-solutions.org port:6667
channel: #eon8

====
THEORIES:

Serge wrote:
"Please immediately consult C22:S13 of your handbook for further instructions."

C22:S13 could mean: Chapter 22 Section 13 in the bible:
Revelations 22:13

I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End

Scienceguy wrote:
But the reference to X13600 triggered off some sparks in my mind. X13600 is a dunce gene found in the common fruit fly or Drosophila melanogaster.

--
- Virus.
- Viral marketting.
- Terrorism.
- Something to do with WarGames (that movie). http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086567/
- It's related to Infinium Labs.
- It's a psychology experiment.
- It's just for fun.
- Nuclear launches.
====
PAGES OF INTEREST

eon5.com
eon2.com

====

Did I miss anything? Heh, probably. Just send me a PM, or IM me on AIM.

THANKS: Aydoo. Yep.

** Still Updating, I'm only up to page 11 here, and this is just through combing. **

[ARG?] Eon8 (Cont. #1)

SpaceBass@forums.unfiction.com — Fri, 30 Jun 2006 18:42:30 +0000

looks argy but I don't have time to look at it in detail right now. There are some secure areas and something to do with deployment. It says Project Z-Theta9 is now deployed. Leads me to think it isn't a company. If it is it's pritty messed up.

[ARG?] Eon8 (Cont. #2)

SpaceBass@forums.unfiction.com — Fri, 30 Jun 2006 18:42:27 +0000

But where's the fun in that?