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 Forum index » Archive » Archive: General » ARG: Acheron
SOLVED: Second email from Caretaker
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Geist
Veteran


Joined: 04 Mar 2003
Posts: 120
Location: Scotland

 		When I was looking at http://cfrg.us/mirror/pad.html, mirror used in the address stood out so itried differentt hings usingt hat.

If you add up all the numbers in the first line you get 393 which is a mirror number. Doing the same for the second line gives 787 which is another mirror number. However for the next few lines I never got a mirror number However it may be the start of something.

1st line 393
2nd line 787
3rd line 1276 (take away 55 which is a mirror number gives 1221 another mirror number)

after this does not seem to work

4th line 684 (+2 gives 6860)
5th line 1051 (-50 or +500 gives 1005 or 1551)
6th line 1164 (-53 or +497 gives 1111 or 1661)
7th line 688 (-2 gives 686)
8th line 1087 (-86 or +794 gives 1001 or 1881)
9th line 1529 (-22 or -308 gives 1551 or 1221)
10th line 1080 (-79 or +801 gives 1001 or 1881)

Only stuff that stands out is that lines 4 and 7 when added are pretty close likewise is 8 and 10. In line 6 you can add 497 you get a mirror number while in line 8 you add 794.

If you look at the number on the attachment caretaker sent (hcrdmemo.gif ) it has the number 1581051 which put a 0 where the 8 is is or 8 insteadof a 0 and we have another mirror number. Even if im wrong it does seem pretty strange.
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PostPosted: Tue Sep 16, 2003 9:35 pm
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AnthraX101
Entrenched

Joined: 18 Mar 2003
Posts: 797

 		I would say that graphic you posted does not contain stego. The body of it is all 0x00's.

AnthraX101

PostPosted: Tue Sep 16, 2003 10:40 pm
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jamesi
Sentient Being


Joined: 25 Sep 2002
Posts: 2195
Location: Canadia

 		What a solve this was. Hats off to the PMs for this one.

Spoiler (Rollover to View):
Apparently, the Nibbles in the email was the giveaway -- nibbles (or nybbles) are half-bytes. Therefore, we should be looking either at the pad.html or the pad.jpg in a hexadecimal editor/viewer to see what hex digits are represented in each byte of the file. I chose pad.jpg (the right choice) and used WinHex to view the file.

The file has 2099 bytes, or 4198 half-bytes (nibbles). each byte is represented by a hexidecimal value (00 to FF, as I understand it). When you open up the .jpg in the hex viewer, you see a number of hex values. I've uploaded a screen cap called hex.jpg to show you how it looks. Now, each two digit hex value then becomes 2 seperate nibbles. Ergo, the 1st byte ( in this case, FF) has two nibbles -- 1st nibble is F and 2nd nibble is also F.

Now comes the fun part -- look at the number values at pad.html. These are the coordinates, if you will, to find in the 'hex code'. Finding the 16th nibble gives you '6' (the second half of the 8th byte). Finding the 8th nibble gives you '8' (the second half of the 2nd byte) and so on. Locating what character each nibble had occupying it was an arduous process to be sure. But I did it.

Then, I had 11 strings of what appeared to me to be garbage. 687474703A, 2F2F636672, 672E75732F -- what are these strings good for? Well, people in #acheron (katya was one of the first) picked up on it -- they are ascii code. apparently, 687474703A is ascii code for http:, and at that point we all knew we were on the right step.

Once we had all of the strings decoded through ascii, we put them together and got: http://www.cfrg.us/mirror/parascope/ds/articles/verd22.pdf


Apparently, this is the solve. I'll be emailing the caretaker momentarily to give him the good news. If anyone wants to emulate my results, I've included the .txt file I used to find my coordinates.

Huge props to #acheron for the help tonight. As with many puzzles, the first inclinations were correct, and having looked through the logs to the beginning of this puzzle's discovery, I found the nibble reference and couldn't get off of it.
caretaker.txt
Description 
txt

 Download 
Filename  caretaker.txt 
Filesize  1.6KB 
Downloaded  150 Time(s) 
hex.jpg
 Description   
 Filesize   150.34KB
 Viewed   153 Time(s)

hex.jpg
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PostPosted: Wed Sep 17, 2003 12:13 am
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MageSteff
Pretty talky there aintcha, Talky?


Joined: 06 Jun 2003
Posts: 2716
Location: State of Denial

 		Great Job!
Great Job Jamesi!
And kudos to AnthraX and DocVego for the assist in deciphering it.

Time to e-mail Caretaker....

Jamesi, isn't this the character you hate? Wink
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PostPosted: Wed Sep 17, 2003 12:19 am
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dishboy
Unfettered


Joined: 02 Sep 2003
Posts: 399
Location: Atlanta

 		Nice job jamesi, but a little correction ... there's a typo in your solve. Here's the corrected location:

Spoiler (Rollover to View):
http://www.cfrg.us/mirror/parascope/ds/articles/sverd22.pdf

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PostPosted: Wed Sep 17, 2003 12:26 am
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jamesi
Sentient Being


Joined: 25 Sep 2002
Posts: 2195
Location: Canadia

 		Sorry... bad paste from #acheron i guess
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PostPosted: Wed Sep 17, 2003 12:28 am
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vpisteve
Asshatministrator


Joined: 30 Sep 2002
Posts: 2441
Location: 1987

 		Re: Great Job!
Magesteff wrote:


Time to e-mail Caretaker....

Jamesi, isn't this the character you hate? Wink


No, that would be me. Wink

PostPosted: Wed Sep 17, 2003 12:30 am
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LazarusLong
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Joined: 20 Mar 2003
Posts: 453
Location: 93 miles SW of Ted Kaczynski's cabin

 		Just cleaning up a few loose ends here.

The file found at:

Spoiler (Rollover to View):
http://www.cfrg.us/mirror/parascope/ds/articles/sverd22.pdf


was apparently a scan of a fax of a telex message, two pages long. It was heavily redacted in large sections. There were two apparent redactions, labeled (b)(1) and (b)(2) in the margins of the document. The first page was numbered "75" in the lower right hand corner, the second was numbered "76"

The number 8305022133 appeared on both pages at the very bottom, although it was partially obscured on the first page. Attempts to call that number (830 502-2133) resulted in the "your call cannot be completed as dialed" message. The 830 area code is in Texas.

Here is the text of the message transcribed (it looks better in a monospace font):
Code:
MSGNO 11 (MIIR)  ISG  *17/02/82*  *03:09*
ZCZC  08:07:58Z  (MI)

CONFIDENTIAL

[LARGE REDACTED SECTION]

R 0818507  FEB 82

[LARGE REDACTED SECTION]

EZ1:
CONFIDENTIAL
EZ2:
SUBJ IR [REDACTION] USSR/SVERDLOVSK, ALLEGED CHEMICAL
ACCIDENT/(U)
THIS IS AN INFO REPT, NOT FINALLY EVALUATED INTEL
1.  (U)  COUNTRY: SOVIET UNION (UR)
2.  (U)  IR NO:  [2 LINES REDACTED]
3.  (U)  TITLE: SVERDLOVSK [REDACTED] ALLEGED CHEMICAL
ACCIDENT (U)
4.  (U)  DOI: 8010??

[LARGE REDACTED SECTION]

A CHEMICAL
FACTORY IN SVERDLOVSK HAD EXPLODED. THEY MENTIONED THAT A CERTAIN

[NEXT PAGE]

MSGNO  11 (MIIR)  ISG  *17/02/82*  *03:09*
NFI CITY SECTION WAS BLOCKED. RESIDENTS OF THAT AREA WERE EVACUATED.
A LAYER OF SOIL WAS REMOVED AND REPLACED BY A FRESH EARTH COVER.
[REDACTED] WAS UNABLE TO PROVIDE ANY INFO RE THIS ACCIDENT; HOWEVER, HE
WAS CERTAIN THE ENTIRE CITY WAS NEVER RESTRICTED. NOTHING WAS
APPARENT IN SVERDLOVSK WHICH WOULD INDICATE A MAJOR ACCIDENT HAD
OCCURRED AND NO POLICE CHECKS ON APPROACH TO CITY WERE OBSERVED
DURING TIME OF ALLEGED ACCIDENT. [REDACTED] KNEW OF ONLY ONE RESTRICTED
AREA IN SVERDLOVSK AREA: APPROX 15 KM EAST OF CITY, BETWEEN
(404500N-575030E) AND [REDACTED] A SECONDARY ASPHALT ROAD
WHICH BRANCHED OFF SVERDLOVSK-BAZHENOVO [REDACTED] HWY AT
[REDACTED] AND RAN WEST WAS RESTRICTED AFTER 1974. A SIGN
JUST WEST OF HWY STATED "POSITIVELY NO ENTRY." A ROAD BLOCK W/MIL
GUARD WAS LOC ABOUT 300 M WEST OF HWY. IT WAS RUMORED THE U/I
ISOTOPE RESEARCH WAS CONDUCTED IN THIS AREA.
X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X
9A.  (U)  DETAILS:  NONE

[TWO LARGE REDACTED SECTIONS]

X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X
IR NO [REDACTED]
X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X
REVIEW ON: 00 FEB 2002
        NNNN
NNDD


This ties in with the documents we received from the first solve. Where we go from here now is up to the caretaker...
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PostPosted: Wed Sep 17, 2003 1:34 am
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ramiles
Unfettered

Joined: 28 Aug 2003
Posts: 362
Location: Chicago

 		Great SOLVE JAMESI!!!

WTG..... NICE WORK>..

ABout time we solved that one..

Now where do we go from here

Just emailed caretaker... Lets see where we go from here.
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PostPosted: Wed Sep 17, 2003 7:59 am
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Caterpillar
Unfictologist


Joined: 25 Sep 2002
Posts: 1887
Location: cem's otherbody

 		jamesi....is this going to become a habit? Laughing

For whatever reason I cannot view the page. It's giving me the same error as when I try to view java applets. (My java's broken/old news)

So anyway, is what you posted, Laz, the contents of the page(s)?

PostPosted: Wed Sep 17, 2003 8:25 am
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MageSteff
Pretty talky there aintcha, Talky?


Joined: 06 Jun 2003
Posts: 2716
Location: State of Denial
ramiles wrote:

Now where do we go from here

... Lets see where we go from here.



Tunguska. Mount St. Helens. The World Series Earthquake. Three Mile Island.

/me step back from the board.

I think I am going to use most of my clock time to look at the positions we have so far before I move a piece again.
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A small group of thoughtful people could change the world. Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has. - Margaret Mead


PostPosted: Wed Sep 17, 2003 8:29 am
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LazarusLong
Unfettered


Joined: 20 Mar 2003
Posts: 453
Location: 93 miles SW of Ted Kaczynski's cabin
cemgate2002 wrote:
jamesi....is this going to become a habit? Laughing

For whatever reason I cannot view the page. It's giving me the same error as when I try to view java applets. (My java's broken/old news)

So anyway, is what you posted, Laz, the contents of the page(s)?


It's a PDF file, so you could just right-click and save it to your drive, then use Acrobat Reader to open it.

And, yes, the text I posted is the visible content of both pages of the PDF file.
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PostPosted: Wed Sep 17, 2003 10:43 am
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LazarusLong
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Joined: 20 Mar 2003
Posts: 453
Location: 93 miles SW of Ted Kaczynski's cabin

 		Sverdlovsk Info
Just a little bit of info on the city of Sverdlovsk:

Quote:
Sverdlovsk
SYLLABICATION: Sverd·lovsk
PRONUNCIATION: sfrd-lôfsk
See Yekaterinburg.

Yekaterinburg
SYLLABICATION: Ye·ka·te·rin·burg
PRONUNCIATION: y-ktr-n-bûrg
VARIANT FORMS: or E·ka·te·rin·burg (-kt-)
VARIANTS: Formerly (1924–1991) Sverd·lovsk (sfrd-lôfsk)
A city of west-central Russia in the eastern foothills of the Ural Mountains. Nicholas II and his family were executed here (1918) after the Russian Revolution. Population: 1,350,861.


Sverdlovsk was also the site of a suspected Anthrax outbreak in 1979, due to it's proximity to a suspected bio-weapons laboratory.

Quote:
In April and May of 1979 an Anthrax epidemic broke out in humans in the city of Sverdlovsk in the former Soviet Union. While Soviet officials attributed this outbreak to contaminated meat, the US Government maintains its position that the outbreak was due to a leakage from a biological weapons facility. This case seeks to explore the sources of the anthrax spores as well as the methods of treatment used by the Soviets according to both US and Soviet sources.

http://www.nbc-med.org/SiteContent/MedRef/OnlineRef/CaseStudies/cssverdlovsk.html
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PostPosted: Wed Sep 17, 2003 10:54 am
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terminalskeptik
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Posts: 351
Location: Onboard the Groovy Purple Derigible

 		going to http://www.cfrg.us/mirror/parascope/ gives a new page with some working links to content, and some links that bounce to the cfrg.us site "page not found".
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PostPosted: Wed Sep 17, 2003 11:35 am
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teeman11
Kl00

Joined: 05 May 2003
Posts: 42

 		Nice work! I don't know how you guys/gals do it!



Quote:


The number 8305022133 appeared on both pages at the very bottom, although it was partially obscured on the first page. Attempts to call that number (830 502-2133) resulted in the "your call cannot be completed as dialed" message. The 830 area code is in Texas.



It looks like the number on the first page is 8305022132

PostPosted: Wed Sep 17, 2003 11:51 am
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