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Aberrant String
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ads123
Veteran

Joined: 12 Nov 2012
Posts: 85

 		Aberrant String
Weird Twitter account
I have recently been followed by a weird Twitter account @Aberrant_String. It appears to be tweeting out base 64 at first glance but there are some characters that are not in base 64.

My instincts were that this was just a spam bot for multiple reasons, most of the people it follows are not ARGers (and the ones he has followed are pretty much inactive I.e. Me) and it has also followed one of my personal non-ARG related friends for some reason.

However there are several main reasons I don't think this is the case. 1: Most spam Twitter accounts try to accomplish something, such as sending spam links 2: It doesn't tweet that often 3: It has a profile image that seems like it could mean something, it's not just a random image of a person or the default Twitter egg and 4: Aberrant apparently means "departing from the normal type". So an aberrant string could for example be a string that seems like base 64 but has extra characters...

I am more than confident that something is going on here the whole thing seems to planned however I currently don't have the time to look into it hence my not posting on here and my 5 minute quick look hasn't really told me anything. Just wondering if any of you could find anything of interest because I have no time but am 100% curious. I have not been playing ARGs for a while now so my trailhead senses could be off but I am certain that is what this is.

PostPosted: Sat Apr 23, 2016 9:15 am
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_Burgundy
Boot

Joined: 23 Apr 2015
Posts: 18

 		There's a lot of twitter bots which post things like this (my favourite is CollectObserve ), so it's entirely possible that this is just someone's pet project. I can't make any sense of the text strings in any kind of base64 decoding, and if it's some other form of cipher it's unlikely we'll be able to crack it without more information.

PostPosted: Mon Apr 25, 2016 7:52 am
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ads123
Veteran

Joined: 12 Nov 2012
Posts: 85
_Burgundy wrote:
There's a lot of twitter bots which post things like this (my favourite is CollectObserve ), so it's entirely possible that this is just someone's pet project. I can't make any sense of the text strings in any kind of base64 decoding, and if it's some other form of cipher it's unlikely we'll be able to crack it without more information.


But if it was a bot surely it would tweet more regularly and at least have some point beside posting random characters, the account you linked for example. I think it may be that someone tried to start an ARG and only followed (from what I can see, including me) 2 inactive ARGers and got frustrated when we didn't bite and so gave up, hence the lack of information. This post was to get them to continue more than anything but I was also not sure if there was something I've missed particularly to do with the photo.

PostPosted: Mon Apr 25, 2016 8:31 am
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Dandelion212
Greenhorn

Joined: 28 Mar 2012
Posts: 7

 		Dang, what kind of code is this? I can't seem to get anything out of any of these. Either we need a cipher with a password or its just a bot.

PostPosted: Mon Apr 25, 2016 9:09 pm
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bobdamnit
Boot

Joined: 06 Dec 2013
Posts: 66

 		Puppet master is on Reddit and appears to be giving clues a for those participating.

https://m.reddit.com/r/AberrantString

It's not just a Twitter bot, guys!

PostPosted: Mon Apr 25, 2016 10:11 pm
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Dandelion212
Greenhorn

Joined: 28 Mar 2012
Posts: 7

 		Oh, wow. Tons more stuff on there.

PostPosted: Mon Apr 25, 2016 10:51 pm
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ads123
Veteran

Joined: 12 Nov 2012
Posts: 85
bobdamnit wrote:
Puppet master is on Reddit and appears to be giving clues a for those participating.

https://m.reddit.com/r/AberrantString

It's not just a Twitter bot, guys!

I knew there was something I was missing. I was sure this was an ARG! Excited to see where this leads.

PostPosted: Tue Apr 26, 2016 7:59 am
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_Burgundy
Boot

Joined: 23 Apr 2015
Posts: 18

 		Alright, count me wrong (and glad of it)! Looks like Reddit has started decoding some of these already, although there hasn't been a huge amount of progress. I'll have a look over myself.

PostPosted: Tue Apr 26, 2016 2:38 pm
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_Burgundy
Boot

Joined: 23 Apr 2015
Posts: 18

 		I took the first string on this post and rearranged it to isolate the segments which go "6x6" or "6x7 (6e6, 6f6, 6c7 etc):


492061
6d2
0
6e6

f742061
2073637269707420
6b6
96464696520
6e6

f722061
6d2
068617669
6e6

72061
2073657a69757265206f
6e2
074686520
6b6
57962
6f6
17264
2c2
0746865736520686176652061

207369
6d7
0
6c6

52073
6f6
c757469
6f6
e2061
6e6
42061

207369
6d7
0
6c6

52061
6e7
3776572

As you can see, there's several segments with the format "6 digits, 6xx string, 0, 6xx string", one of which repeats twice. I can't make head nor tail of it apart from this. I've put it through base32/64, hex, and some basic Caesar shifters and got nothing.

PostPosted: Thu Apr 28, 2016 7:45 am
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Hunter_Omega
Unfettered


Joined: 24 Jul 2014
Posts: 305
Location: Iowa, USA
Quote:
I am not a script kiddie nor am having a seziure on the keyboard, these have a simple solution and a simple answer


Hm.

PostPosted: Wed May 25, 2016 10:25 pm
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