unforum

[starlajo]

Arthur Ramone - ARG agent recruitment

[Nik_Doof]

A post of the email will be nice, see what he says

[starlajo]

Dear my name,


Would you like to play a game? We are led to believe you would enjoy
this one. We are now recruiting for an alternate reality game, with a
twist (haven't they all?). The game will commence with a brief web-based
training for 5 days next week. Successful trainees will go on... to what
we cannot say. Intrigued?


my personalised url, which seemed like a random jumble of letters and numbers.com was in here. i have now learnt this is base64 encoded


This is your personalized training site. After successful completion of
training you will be introduced to other trainees. Training will consist
of your being taught to unlock the secret message hidden in the random
seeming domain name you have been given. Can you do it?


Your first step is to visit this site to confirm you accept this
mission. The site is password encoded. Your user name is your first
name. Your password, the city in which you were born. Visit as soon as
possible to confirm your interest. Tell no one.


We need you. Please come. Quickly. If successful you'll realize just how
important this is. 'Life' is only one of many alternative realities. Our
one needs your assistance.


----
Game: On.

[starlajo]

These were the emails I received today:

Dear my name,


Our week of training commences. Thank you for taking part, this mission
is more important than the word game implies. Please visit your training
site:

url

For today's training. Remember your login is your first name and the
city in which you were born is your password. Tell no one, delete this
email, and clear your cache afterwards.


----
Game: On.


...I took a while to login for my exercise, so I received this:

Dear my name,


It appears you did not complete Day 1 of training. Perhaps you missed
the notification email, were unable to find the time or had a problem
with the website? We are able to extend training by 1 day so you may
complete it today if you wish. However if you are no longer interested
in participating please reply to this email with "GIVEUP" as the subject
so we may assign your space to a new recruit as spaces and time are
limited. If you have had a technical issue please feel free to email
myself with any queries. Your training site again:


url


Remember, your login is your first name and the city in which you were
born is your password. Tell no one, delete this email, and clear your
cache afterwards.
----
Game: On.

[starlajo]

So, I logged in and here was my exercise:


Day 1

I am glad you have decided to join us. First a little more on this week's training. Each day's task will take 10 to 20 minutes. The overall task for the week is to learn how to decode the message hidden in this website's URL. We will take you through it set by step. You may already know some/all of what we will go through. Or you may need to do a little internet research. Either way we will provide you with some information then test you on a fact(s) in that day's lesson to ensure you can go to the next stage. Ready?

Firstly let me tell you something about the code we are using as an example. (my url name) is missing something, an = sign. It is more correctly (my url name)= . To some this will instantly give something away. The = sign is used in many similar looking character jumbles at the end, it indicates they have been Base64 encoded. Base64 encoding is a way of representing data (for example binary code, such as images) that would not normally be printable. It is used extensively in sending images as attachments in email for instance as the email protocol only allows the transmission of printable characters.

In our case the encrypted phrase we are working on is not an image, but it requires Base64 to display it due to the actual enciphering method employed. This is related to the ASCII character set, commonly used by computers to represent text and other printable characters. Each letter, number and symbol on your keyboard has a corresponding ASCII number value. (You can find an ASCII chart on the web.). If you look at an ASCII chart you'll see that a number of the characters it represents are things like line feeds, or the computer bell and other things that are not printable. So when using some enciphering methods that cause these ASCII characters to occur, the result needs to be Base64 encoded so that it may be written down, sent via email and so forth.

The decimal ASCII values of our base64 string decoded are: (ascii values - i deleted 'em for this post). If you look them up on an ASCII chart you will see while some are printable letters some are characters you could not write down.

You may wish to do some further reading on ASCII or Base64 if you are not familiar with the concepts.

Today's comprehension test to move onto the next stage is to translate the word "starla" (all lower case) into its dec(imal) ASCII values. Enter them below with a comma between each value (no spaces).
starla in ascii:

Then it had a box and I entered the correct ASCII values and got a page with something like well done, expect another training exercise, etc.

[chippy]

okaayy, so who is Arthur Ramone then?

edits:: or whats the website? (the beginning, without the personalised bits)

[starlajo]

I was hoping one of you would be able to tell me!

[Nik_Doof]

Interesting, i wonder where this will head in the future.... maybe training up a elite ARG force to RULE THE WORRRRRRLLLLLDDDD


or maybe not

[starlajo]

Who knows?! I will keep you all updated, anyway.

[Nik_Doof]

As chippy said, the URL would be nice to look at (without your personalised bits obviously)

[rowan]

Or even how you received this in the first place. This person had to get your email address from somewhere. Have you signed up anywhere new lately?

[Phaedra]

Training...exercises...?

[Nik_Doof]

[Phaedra]

[L.Boomer]

This sounds a bit strange to me and I might suggest you be very careful with any personal information that you provide to this "training exercise" until we are a bit more clear on what exactly this is.