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 Forum index » Archive » Archive: General » Old News & Rumors
[Spy.org] WTF is this link???
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sauceykat
Decorated


Joined: 10 Jul 2003
Posts: 251
Location: BC>Canada

 		[Spy.org] WTF is this link???
Hi, don't know if this is already known...feel free to trout me...but i just stumbled upon www.spy.org which seems very strange to say the least. Check out the source code.

D-

Edit by Addlepated - changed subject line for clarity.

PostPosted: Sat Jul 17, 2004 3:13 pm
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MageSteff
Pretty talky there aintcha, Talky?


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

 		No fault in your Technique. Very Happy

I noticed a strange effect when switiching between the page and another window, the keys do this funky "cutout" effect before reappearing. Does that mean we need to pull each key and look for stegging?
[edit]
Lordy we have gifs on top of gifs. There is the background gif of the keys, then there are gifs of each key... Then there is another gif that looks the same as the page and does the quick flash of the keys...

/me's head starts to spin
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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: Sat Jul 17, 2004 4:03 pm
Last edited by MageSteff on Sat Jul 17, 2004 4:09 pm; edited 1 time in total
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sauceykat
Decorated


Joined: 10 Jul 2003
Posts: 251
Location: BC>Canada

 		Hey Steff,
yeah I noticed that too...weird, huh? I'm trying to use that Camera/Shy program but I don't know how it works Wink

D-

PostPosted: Sat Jul 17, 2004 4:08 pm
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AnthraX101
Entrenched

Joined: 18 Mar 2003
Posts: 797

 		This may be a little behind the curtian, so spolierfied:

Spoiler (Rollover to View):
www.spy.org appears to be run by one Scott D. Yelich. Works for/with the Santa Fe Institute. Has an interest in security going back to 1991 on the internet. Gained access to the Los Alamos National Laboratory at one point. Hosts files for zaurus at [url]zaurus.spy.org[/url]


Page appears to be dynamicly generated each time you view it.

AnthraX101
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ll----ll--ll--ll----l---ll---llll---ll--l--ll---llll-ll-l-ll-llll--l-.

PostPosted: Sat Jul 17, 2004 4:12 pm
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qasimodo
Greenhorn

Joined: 23 Jul 2004
Posts: 5

 		Hmm. it is interesting to say the least. I see some kind of pattern, tho I do not know if it means anything or it's just the paranoia acting up again.

Spoiler (Rollover to View):

If you see the code, the path for the images is http://www.spy.org/images/keys/. There, you will see that there are images named from key1 to key18, both r and l (I would believe that's for "right" and "left" - and if you check the image it makes sense: they're both for the same key but one key points to the right and the other to the left) and one last image, which is the background. Now, we have 18 keys in total, but the background has only 17 keys on it. One would think there's one key missing (more on that later). Also, all of the background keys (from key1 to key 18) point to the right. (Yes, there are only 17 keys on the background, but there is a mistake with the naming of the keys, which lends itself to all of the keys being invoked in the background)

So here is what I worry about: the naming of the image-file-keys. There are some mistakes with that, and I do not know if these mistakes are indeed human mistakes of if they're part of the game (again, if there is a game after all). key4l.gif and key5l.gif are the same image (or at least they seem to, I haven't hexed the files to see if there's any clue in them) and so are key4r.gif and key5r.gif (as I post this, the images are the same). This explains why there are 18 images instead of 17, just like in the background image, and why the last key in the background matches the one named key18r, instead of key17r. That would be a logical explanation if this is a human mistake. But is it really? And if it's not a human mistake, but rather, part of the enigma, then what does it mean?

There seems to be another "mistake" in the next two files: key6l.gif and key6r.gif are the same image as well. Both point to the right. Does it mean this is the "right" key?

I have a small issue with the images in the foreground on my browser, for some reason they do not load at all, which is why I haven't been able to test a little theory I have: there should be a time when the images (or one image at least, maybe key6.gif) match(es) the exact position of the image(s) in the background. The link on that image should be the correct link. Should it open something? I don't really know, but unfortunately, I cannot test.

Speaking of the links, they change each time the page is loaded, as anthrax said before. I looked at them for a while. Copy/pasted some of them, compared them, reloaded the page, looked at them some more. I might have found another pattern, but I am not so sure about it. I took a random image link: "key9r.gif". First loading of the page: the image key9r.gif appeared 4 times. Two of those four times, the images pointed to the same link. Reloaded again. (unfortunately, didn't count the reload time, there might be some time based random function to crack) The image key9r.gif appeared 5 times. Two of those 5 times, the images pointed to the same link (but all of the links where different to the four that first appeared). Did a final reload. Searched for key9r.gif. It appears 162 times. Every time with the same link. It's a long string, and I don't know if it means something. I don't know if it's a coincidence, or the random function misfired. I didn't check any other links, since I cannot click on them manually (the images do not load on my browser, I have to check them in the code).

I resized my browser window so the background is only shown once. But there are FAR more than 17 images loading in the page, so I don't know if that will take me somewhere.



Anybody else has some more ideas? Something they want to share?

thanks.

-q

PostPosted: Sun Jul 25, 2004 2:48 am
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baldgeek
Kilroy

Joined: 25 Jul 2004
Posts: 1
Location: Riverside, CA

 		Newbie, here. I've been lurking ARG sites for a while now. Figured I'd try to jump in on this one.

I've noticed everything loads properly in Mozilla(images and all links are
clickable), but doesn't in IE.

My $0.02. Enjoy!!

PostPosted: Sun Jul 25, 2004 12:11 pm
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tatter2323
Boot

Joined: 30 Sep 2002
Posts: 34

 		The skull is the source code reminds me of the sig file of a newsgroup troll from a while back.

check it out: at google groups

[Edited to TinyURL the URL -SpaceBass]

PostPosted: Sun Jul 25, 2004 4:53 pm
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dmon_man
Veteran

Joined: 20 Jul 2004
Posts: 140
Location: Sacramento, CA

 		an interest in security
An interest in security, hence all the keys that may open a lock somewhere. The differnet pages always seem to favor one key over another (it will appear more frequently that is) especially towards the bottom.
Could a clue be in the spacing. I was thinking the dots and dashes of morse code, but I'm sure that isn't right.
However with this guys interest in security, and I assume that is IT security, there is probably hacking material somewhere here or a demon-stration of how secure the site is or something along those lines.
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PostPosted: Thu Jul 29, 2004 8:59 pm
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mst3k_freak
Boot

Joined: 29 Jul 2004
Posts: 28

 		qasimodo, your post got me thinking, and here are the results. I'm not sure if this counts as a spoiler or not (as this is my first post), but here goes:

Spoiler (Rollover to View):
You are right on about the key4 and key5 gifs, as well as key6r and key6l being the same gif. Here are some other things I noticed:

The background picture is an assembly of the 17 keys, at least before you've clicked through anywhere. All the keys pictures are in their "r" picture, so the first key is key1r, the second is key2r, etc. However, not all the teeth of the keys are facing right. On keys 2, 9, 10, and 18, the teeth face left. Keys 7, 15, and 17 have teeth on both sides, but the "r" gif points down and left on all these keys, and the "l" gif is the opposite. Then, of course, there is key6r.gif and key6l.gif being the same pic. Maybe the keys that face opposite of the r/l convention are significant.

Another problem is key 18. I refreshed the page 5 times, and every key came up at least once except key 18. I haven't seen key18r.gif or key18l.gif on the spy.org website as a link yet. At least it's not listed as either of those files in the source, and I haven't found it visually yet. Maybe it is the real key, and only pops up at specific times. Also, the teeth of the key are forked, making it unique. It's also very dark, which makes it harder to find. And it's one of the left-facing keys, so who knows?

Someone mentioned the fact that keys tend to repeat themselves toward the bottom of the page. What's interesting is that the long string of numbers in the link also repeats at about halfway through the page. On the top half of the page, the few numbers I checked are unique on the page. At about the halfway point in the source, the repetition in the numbers starts. Then the number in the link is repeated to the end of the page, even when the key gifs are different, although most of the key gifs are the same. It happened five times in a row when I refreshed the page. Sometimes the repeated number appeared scattered in the upper half of the source too, and sometimes it didn't. The repeated number always dominated the bottom half of the source though, and was different each time. Sometimes there were indents in the HTML marking the point where the numbers repeated, and sometimes there were no markers.


I think the key lies in those long strings of numbers in the links

PostPosted: Fri Jul 30, 2004 1:39 am
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Cyfre
Boot

Joined: 25 Oct 2003
Posts: 63
Location: Tampa FL

 		All i can add at this point is that the numbers in the source code are 100 digits each. I also noticed that the numbers repeat themselves near the later half of the source code document. Because the pages are different (extensively if you look at the numbers on the first half of the source code), i have to assume there is something behind this. It's just too bad i have absolutely no clue where to look. Perhaps there's a pattern in the earlier lines of numbers. I don't think the repeating lines have any significance other than to fill out the page. But why so many?
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PostPosted: Sun Aug 01, 2004 4:01 am
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v3lvetpresley
Boot

Joined: 02 Sep 2004
Posts: 21
Cyfre wrote:
All i can add at this point is that the numbers in the source code are 100 digits each. I also noticed that the numbers repeat themselves near the later half of the source code document. Because the pages are different (extensively if you look at the numbers on the first half of the source code), i have to assume there is something behind this. It's just too bad i have absolutely no clue where to look. Perhaps there's a pattern in the earlier lines of numbers. I don't think the repeating lines have any significance other than to fill out the page. But why so many?


Anyone found anything further about this?

Thanks.

PostPosted: Wed Sep 08, 2004 7:32 am
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Astaldo
Boot


Joined: 29 Oct 2003
Posts: 17
Location: Germany

 		anyone looked at the background image?
OK forget about that. just keys1-18R

PostPosted: Wed Sep 08, 2004 9:01 am
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DarkProdigy
Greenhorn

Joined: 04 Sep 2004
Posts: 9

 		It looks to me like all of the links are copies of the first page. Just incase, attached is a .html that makes it easier to browse the random links. (The duplicates have been removed)

PostPosted: Wed Sep 08, 2004 8:19 pm
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The Watcher
Unfettered


Joined: 29 Jul 2004
Posts: 493

 		yeah, if you notice, none of the links are actually valid. It is simply a value that is passed on to a script, to be displayed in the title bar.
For example, http://www.spy.org/?unfiction will still yield a valid randomly generated page.
SPEC:
Spoiler (Rollover to View):
I think we need to find the correct word to put in after the ? mark that will take us to a different page...


EDIT: It seems that the webmaster wants us to look at the list of keys. http://www.spy.org/images is not viewable, but /images/keys/ is. So, what is it about those keys?

EDIT 2: By the way, his personal page had the same content
http://www.scottyelich.com/

But, if anyone wants to e-mail him, feel free.
scottSPLATscottyelich.com

PostPosted: Tue Sep 14, 2004 8:48 pm
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kelsey_requiem
Veteran


Joined: 15 Sep 2004
Posts: 106
Location: .hu

 		To me it seems perfectly random, BUT:
Another thing: if you check it, the url-s in the source code tend to repeat themselves after a while. So after a certain point it's _almost_ always the same (though there are some inserts sometimes).

Dunno how far we can get with this...

PostPosted: Thu Sep 16, 2004 9:08 am
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