unforum

[SteveC]

Is there any chance of branching this topic?

There's two obvious paths people want to take.

1/ The assumption that all is as it seems, this is an ascii encoding of a binary file that is encoded using rc5-64 with 64 bit blocks and 12 passes. As a result, we need to find out what the key is and pump it into rccrypt to decrypt it. These could be typefied as "geeks".

2/ The assumption that those people who know nothing about encryption have a right to exist and chat too. Although they may not have any idea for answers for this, they would like to pad out their existences with random ramblings. These could be typefied as "Dan Brown readers".

Could we possibly start a thread that bans the second group, and allows the first group? We could then officially hand this thread over to the second group, and ban the first?

I wouldn't mention it, but I'm interested in throwing my weight behind this (and I'm 14st+, so that's not inconsiderable) and find it impossibly (or at least highly improbable) to read through 350+ posts.

[hamatoyoshi]

[donstobbart]

SteveC wrote:

[sherbet]

elo,

ive had this card a couple of weeks now, and have been working through some ideas, and have now worked through the posts.

i have to say most of the posts have been very interesting, but some have been unpleasant. many of the unpleasant posts seem to have been posted just to make others feel inferior, and i think thats very sad and tragic.its also sad that this seems to happen in most topics i have read through, not just this one.

i had stayed away from these forums for a while because of such people, because i felt it was a waste of my time.but you know what, my ideas are just as valid as anyones. i will choose when and where i post, and when i have some info on this card, i will post it, and no one can stop me!ive never read dan brown, and am not a geek.(but i do have a thing for some geeks!) im sure there will be a medical card at some point, which i will be able to provide info about, of course i wont post in a manner which is intended to intimidate those who know nothing about medicine et al.

btw, hear hear don! and well done on that hideous ARG card!

[x]

Google has almost nothing on the 13th labour. ... I found a few short stories, one dealing with ganymede and hercules (pr0n)... and another about a russian teacher, something about malaria and a word problem on a blackboard refered to as the 13th labour.

But really all the rest are perplexcity links. ... Neither of these stories seem relevant.

This is unfortunate. No clues to any kind of KEY for decryption.

If it turns out this was supossed to be brute forced, ill be very sad. ...

It seems like i read several posts recently. One mentioned that this form of encryption is weak. I believe this is why this specific encryption isnt used. Also ive seen that brute forcing this with certian conditions limits the ammount of time a brute force would take.

Perhaps its half and half. Maybe brute force is the answer but not from scratch. Maybe we need to refine the brute force to exploit the weakness in this encryption, along with limiting the characters used to decrypt. ...

(ie only lower case characters for output) ... some wiki i read mentioned that if only lower case characters are used, brute force may only take 200+ days. ... ... if both upper and lower are used its more like 700+ years. ... if all ascii is used its more like 20 million years.

[x]

Don,

His point is this thread has gotten so confusing and filled with such scattered information, that solid work on brute force, or ... just focusing on one possibly solution isnt possible currently.

I think he just wants to consolidate information into like categories. General concepts and ideas and Focused effort on rccrypt, and genuinely trying to break this code.

Focusing all the decryptyion information and ideas into a single spot for only those types of ideas can isolate people into like groups and allow them to focus on just what they excel at.

Decrypters and Information Dredgers. ... The infomation and ideas you come up with arent bad or wrong. They are just misplaced. Focus isnt a bad thing.

His method of asking to focus may have been brash, but dont let yourself fall into the trap of saying he is or isnt calling people names. Ignore that fact and move on to something constructive. Take his idea with a grain of salt eh, instead of throwing it away because of his approach.

Lots of people have abrasive personalities, they may be mean in general. This does not make them bad people or stupid people. Its up to you to be the better person and not mention it and move on.

Conflict begets conflict.
Only by letting go can we achieve and all move on together.

Yes? ...

[CoolCats712]

Well, after slogging my way through 25 pages, I have to admit this thread is getting a little bloated. I can see how creating a new one to concentrate purely on decryption could ease things a bit.

That said, let me contribute my Dan Brown ramblings:

I think the "13th Labour" bit may just be misdirection. From what I've seen, it's more of an idiom for any significantly Herculean undertaking (the distributed.net projects come to mind). I've seen the idea that the "64/12/8" may be a date, but has anyone considered it might be Perplexian years? I.E. 264 (Earth year 2000), or possibly just 64 (1800). I've done a little digging, but haven't come up with much yet. The Perseids meteor showers were on Aug. 12, 2000. Come to think of it, have there been any cards yet that require Perplexian information?
On the "Five Cows" bit, I don't believe that anyone has pointed out that the staff reviewer who awarded Cracking DES the cows is named "Davehart." This could be a case of overlooking the easy answer. "JGilmore" might also be worth a try (editor of the book).

Ahhhh... Nicely padded, indeed.

[CoolCats712]

I just found a bookseller near me that supposedly has a copy of Cracking DES. I know people have looked into the page/line/word before, but it doesn't look like they've gone much further than that. If there are any 8-letter words in that book, I shall find them!

[SteveC]

[SteveC]

Right, for those of you who don't feel they have the skills required to approach the encryption side of this, but do feel they want to contribute (which is a good thing, a very good thing), I have a suggestion.

When you've done all your research into davehart, life, the universe and everything, pop over to:

http://www.connected.ltd.uk/pxc/

and type your guess into the little engine that could.

If you type into the left hand box "plaintext" it will turn that to ascii, pad it with zeros to the left if it's less than 8 characters, try it in upper, lower and capitalized cases and try to decrypt using it. Type into the right and it will assume it's hex, pad it with zeros if necessary and try to decrypt using it. It will give you a brief report on each line of success/failure.

If you get something like

[hally]

I just got this:

Promising: the decoded file for key '00bovine' is DBase 3 data file

Any good?

[hally]

Found some more - all cow related:

Promising: the decoded file for key '000jones' is \

Promising: the decoded file for key 'EMCCUBED' is shell archive or script for antique kernel text

Promising: the decoded file for key '00bessie' is DBase 3 data file with memo(s) (2064405094 records)

Been working from this as well:

http://www.aurochs.org/cows/famous/
[url][/url]

[SteveC]

Right, as hally is adeptly demonstrating, a pretty high percentage of completely random characters can often result in something that some computer somewhere might recognise as being something useful!

To be honest, unless it comes out as a 8086 executable, image file, audio file or ascii file, I think it's unlikely to be useful.

However, when I find some time I'll modify the page to allow you to have any questionable decode emailed to you. Why email you ask? Well, frankly hosting this is a security can of worms, trust me, it makes me feel a little happier knowing that it's running that way

In the meantime, had a look at all the "possibles" so far and they all seem to be red and fish like.

[Jakeo]

[maevey]

Most probably useless, but typing in "hhhhhhhh"(don't ask, I was frustrated) gives the reply:

Promising: the decoded file for key 'hhhhhhhh' is SysEx File - Kawai

Searching for Kawai and five cows shows that there is a veterinary scientist called Kawai but I can't find anything relevant related to it.

Also a nice little story of a man and his five cows if you're bored:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/927665/posts