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 Forum index » Archive » Archive: Perplex City » PXC: General/Updates
[UPDATE] Caine blog - Cracked! 30th june '06
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Scribe
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Joined: 09 Jun 2006
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Location: Brighton, UK

 		A more structured, explanatory approach might certainly be useful, yup.

Maybe a brainstorm is also a good idea to try and move us forwards a little bit. Restrictions of the commands aside (such as them avoiding certain directions), here's an initial list of how the system might be broken:

* Processing goes into a loop (oh, cool, we already have that one...)
* Processing goes off the edge of the grid
* Processing gets confused about which way to go, i.e. has soe kind of choice
* Processing does something funny with the RUN command in a particular place

Hmmmm. Too early. Not enough tea yet.
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PostPosted: Mon Jul 10, 2006 6:33 am
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UKver2.0
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 		Has anyone found a path that uses 24 commands (25th being run)? Maybe that borks it. Or 25 without run (provided that it forms a complete command chain)?

PostPosted: Mon Jul 10, 2006 11:26 am
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Antony C
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Joined: 19 Jun 2006
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 		Got an 'n'

E Z Sw - -/ - Ca Pr Mo -/ - -Ro Fl Zo/ - -Ro Ro Pr/ - - Ro Z Z

so that's apostrophe h and n. hmmm

Ant

PostPosted: Mon Jul 10, 2006 6:41 pm
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SteveC
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 		fwiw - that's:

end zone switch mount zone flush rotate zone pread zone zone rotate rotate rotate cache

First sighting of a useful flush I think?
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PostPosted: Mon Jul 10, 2006 8:13 pm
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Scribe
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 		Another(?) N
I get the same output if I replace the Flush with a Copy, so don't think either's doing much here. Haven't had a chance to play with this much the last few days, but will have a quick go now...

Addendum: This config gives me an 'n', although I don't know if it's the same 'n' as before... Smile

En Mo - - - / - - Sw - - / Pw Zo Zo Zo Pr / Ro Pr Ro Ro Ca / - Ro - - -

Command path is: En Mo Sw Zo Zo Zo Pw Ro Pr Ro Ro Ro Pr Ca

I'm currently only running on 2 theories:

1. The number of Zo/Sw/Ro affects the output as normal, but we need a certain Pr config to see it (as with the Klebold output)
2. The location of the Prs affects the output somehow. However, the config above is mostly the same as the one for the 'h', so I'm not convinced on this.

I'll post the work-so-far to the wiki...
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PostPosted: Tue Jul 11, 2006 3:18 pm
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UKver2.0
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Joined: 09 Feb 2006
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jbd wrote:
'rotate' does something different depending on where it is executed: [EDIT: actually, it's even weirder than that. I'll have to play a little more. Relative direction entered seems something to have to do with it, but it's very very strange.]
Code:
 e  e  e  e  s
 s ne  n  n  s
 e  n ne  n  s
ne  n ne  n  s
ne  n ne  n  n


The same goes for 'zone':
Code:
e e e w s
s w w n n
e e e n w
n w w n n
n w w n n


I know this is pretty much over, but where on earth did this idea come from? It's posted this way in the Wiki too. The rules for what direction a command goes is very straightforward with no special cases for what square you are in/what direction you enter. There is simply a preferred direction followed by a secondary and tertiary, etc... I keep trying combinations waiting for something different to happen and the grid always follows the much simpler scheme. Please give me an example that supports the square specific idea. Incidentally, coding a brute forcer is very easy since the rules are very straightforward. (Don't bother flaming me. It's already done and I purposely stopped short of gaining new information – this was only a learning experience for me seeing as until this Backdoor thing came up, I didn't really know what a script was, let alone how to write one.)

Now please deflate me with your counter examples cause you know that's the only reason I posted this.

PostPosted: Fri Jul 14, 2006 9:26 am
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jonc
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UKver2.0 wrote:


I know this is pretty much over, but where on earth did this idea come from? It's posted this way in the Wiki too. The rules for what direction a command goes is very straightforward with no special cases for what square you are in/what direction you enter. There is simply a preferred direction followed by a secondary and tertiary, etc...


Indeed, I did think it was a bit odd that people seemed to think that they went different directions depending on which square they are on. Especially as some we listed as having preference of east, then se, then s, then sw etc. Additionally it would be annoying to program loads of arbitary rules, and also inelegant.


I guess that this should decouple the idea of where the various commands on the grid from the order that they are executed, and hence allow better analysis of the commands executed.

Brute forcing is probably an option (not one that is as enjoyable to take), but I would like to understand what the "idea" behind each command is. We'll probably end up manually brute forcing it anyway once we've figured out how everything works...

I did muse a theorical framework of the "Switch" being to switch between hard disks, "Zone" being to switch between HD platters and "Rotate" to be rotating the platter.

Pread and write being to read and write to a "pipe", so that you have to write to the pipe before you can read from it (maybe in a FIFO or Pop-push basis).

Cache would be to cache whatever you're pointing at, and your screen simply looks at the local cache (which is why most commands end in a cache)

Flush clears the cache (perhaps so you can re-use it for some pipe jiggery pokery)

Mount mounts the filesystem (like in Linux/unix land)

Anyway have any more thoughts?

jonc

PostPosted: Fri Jul 14, 2006 9:45 am
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jbd
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UKver2.0 wrote:
Now please deflate me with your counter examples cause you know that's the only reason I posted this.


Keep in mind two things:

a.) It was written when we were still utterly baffled how the Backdoor worked -- we weren't even sure it was a single pointer being kicked around at the time, or if the direction entered from made a difference (and it did, kind of), or if there even was a pointer at all. Every direction given on that chart has occured at least once. That was a good enough start at the time. (Should it go off the wiki now? Probably.)

b.) Sometimes the pointer will try to avoid jumping off edges, commands already given, etc. Sometimes it does not. (Mount is one command that seems to not care about edges.) The rules on this (especially on when it will go into an infinite loop, and when it won't) are still nebulous.

PostPosted: Fri Jul 14, 2006 10:28 am
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Scribe
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UKver2.0 wrote:
The rules for what direction a command goes is very straightforward with no special cases for what square you are in/what direction you enter. There is simply a preferred direction followed by a secondary and tertiary, etc... (snip) Please give me an example that supports the square specific idea.


I was under the exact same thoughts and was all ready to remove the ROTATE and ZONE grids from the wiki (see my edits above them), but here's an example that doesn't fit the/my pattern:

Usually, ZONE goes (W, N, ...) - that is, it'll try going West and then go North if it can't. Can't remember what it does after that. Hence, the position of RUN in this config produces a "useful" error (i.e. tells you where the code goes next):

FL - - - - / FL RU - - - / PW ZO - - -

Or, in processing order, FL FL PW ZO -North- RU

But now try this config:

FL - - - - / FL RU - - - / FL ZO - - - / RO - - - -

That (should) be: FL FL FL RO ZO, and then north onto the RU. But doing this just gives me the usual "Invalid command grid" error. In fact, you have to put the RU to the *south* of the ZO in order to get a "useful" error.

This isn't a grid location thing - you can do the same with any number of FL's down the left hand side.

Possible explanations?

* Ro -> Zo produces different behaviour in Zo...
* The Zo is actually being ignored, and the Ro is going East instead (having tried N and NE), but meh?

So far, Zone is the only one I've noticed doing this. However, just looking at the example we can see that the wiki table is wrong anyway. Remove them, I say. But don't asume your reconstruction is entirely accurate.

So far it hasn't been too much of a bother, as it's easy enough to work out where the next step is. However, if the behaviour *does* change, we can't be so sure that commands we expect to get processed are actually being so.
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PostPosted: Fri Jul 14, 2006 10:30 am
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Antony C
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 		Scribe - You don't need the top flushes in that config. Sequences can start from anywhere on the left.

Ant C

PostPosted: Fri Jul 14, 2006 1:26 pm
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Scribe
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 		Very true. Looks like the behaviour is the same even without them (i.e. 1 x Fl (to block the Zo), Ro, Zo then goes South).
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PostPosted: Fri Jul 14, 2006 2:55 pm
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SteveC
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 		In fact, not going to go into details because it's all getting rusty now, but ZONE has a lot of very weird tendencies... It's certainly not explained simply by a directional preference...

Though, gotta admit - without the ability to write a simpler interface to their system (it would take too long to document the directional preferences), I've given up on this.. gonna wait for Caine or Kurt to hit on something for us...
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PostPosted: Fri Jul 14, 2006 5:17 pm
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jonc
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 		So, anyone still working on this, or do we think that we've got all we need from it?

Anyone had a response from Kurt about the suggestions for tagging?


jonc

PostPosted: Wed Jul 19, 2006 4:58 am
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Scribe
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 		Well, we still haven't managed to get that second crash. Maybe this is like "Petals Round the Rose" - we now know too much about how it works, and aren't dumb enough to break it?

/me reverts to primal caveman state and hits crypto GUI with stick aflame.
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PostPosted: Wed Jul 19, 2006 11:18 am
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