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 Forum index » Diversions » TimeWasters
Puzzle Experiment #2
Moderators: Giskard, ndemeter, ScarpeGrosse
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Omega
Unfettered


Joined: 07 Mar 2008
Posts: 430
Location: Utah

 		Puzzle Experiment #2
Jasper-Tech Industries
Jasper-Tech Industries, a small business specializing in CPU chip design, has devised plans for a new processor that would be 20% faster, 4% smaller, and would have 13% less internal heating than current models on the market. The impressive design has Jasper-Tech's stockholders buzzing with enthusiasm. Unfortunately, a recent snag has befallen the company: copies of the technical diagrams and specifications for the processor model have been stolen! Minutes after the disappearance, an anonymous letter was sent to Eric Jasperson, the owner of Jasper-Tech Industries:

Letter - 04/18/08 at 3:15pm wrote:
Contact the police, and the processor specs will be mailed to every chip designer in the U.S., understood? You're a reasonable man, Eric, and I have a reasonable request: $50,000. I will tell you where to deposit the money in one week. Until then, be a good boy.


The tone of the letter has led Eric to believe that someone at Jasper-Tech is responsible. In an attempt to resolve the issue on his own, Eric went snooping through the office after hours last night and discovered several bits of evidence that have left him scratching his head:

Zip File
"Found a memory card lying on the floor near Nate's office," says Eric. "There's a weird zip file on it that's password protected. Computer says it was created on the 18th, right around when the specs went missing. I don't know, might be nothing."

Log File
Eric sighs, explaining, "I wasn't expecting to find anything, especially not on Michael's computer, but I noticed a file shredding program installed on his machine. I assume Michael has it installed for a reason... Anyway, there was a log file that the shredder got hung up on, crashed or something, and so it never got deleted. It's scrambled pretty bad, though. The log is dated Friday afternoon. Strange..."

CPU Designs
"There it was, sitting smack-dab in Jonathan's waste basket: a print-out of the new processor model." Eric shakes his head. "I guess there's nothing questionable about it, considering Jonathan's position in the company. But, we never just throw important documents in the trash. Good way to go out of business if you do that."

Timecard
"Someone punched out two hours before the theft," starts Eric, "which I find to be suspicious. The timecard was on Elizabeth's desk, which is normal, except... Well, I was in my office that entire day, but I didn't really notice Liz at her desk much." Eric takes a deep breath. "I think at this point, even a thumbtack would look incriminating to me."

(See attached archive for clues.)


Jonathan, Nate, Liz, and Michael appear to be the only suspects:

Jonathan
"Our biggest competitor in the area is a company called Back-End Labs," begins Eric. "Jonathan did research there for eight years until quitting over a dispute with his manager. Despite the argument, he came to Jasper-Tech with high recommendations, very qualified. I hired him to lead our R&D group, a decision I've yet to regret. Even though Jonathan and I don't see eye-to-eye on everything, I've never had any major issues with him."

Nate
"I recently hired Nate to train under Michael's management. Kid shows some real potential. He's inexperienced, but he's picking it up. My biggest problem with Nate is that he's a perfectionist. Being a perfectionist isn't so bad when it comes to his work, but Nate takes everything too seriously. Everything needs to be just right for him." Eric laughs. "Kid needs to loosen up a bit."

Elizabeth
"Elizabeth is the secretary," says Eric. "Warm gal, really easy to talk to. She certainly has her hands full here. Lot of paperwork to run a company, lot of phone calls. I imagine that can be stressful work at times, but she seems to handle it okay. In the three years that she's been working for Jasper-Tech, I haven't once seen her crack under the pressure."

Michael
Eric continues, saying, "Michael's a stand-up guy. I used to work with him back when we were employed at NuWave Designs. When I left to form Jasper-Tech Industries, I offered him a job and he took it. We've been working together for over 12 years now. It's hard to think that Michael would be involved in the theft; we've always been on good terms. Although, he was a bit upset a week ago when I turned down his request for a raise. Budget concerns and all. I told him it would have to wait until after the new processor designs went through. He's overdue for a raise, I know, but, business is business."


You are Eric's good friend. Eric, seeking your opinion, has confided in you and told you everything he knows about the situation. Eric says he will pay the $50,000 ransom if he is unable to determine who the culprit is before the one-week deadline (April 25th). "Better than losing the whole company," he adds. "With all the investors we have, if the schematics were leaked, Jasper-Tech Industries would cease to exist." Eric is confident that one of the aforementioned employees is behind the theft, but he is unwilling to risk approaching any of them unless he is absolutely certain. "Help me," he asks.


Meta Notes: Guessing who did it is NOT acceptable. The evidence must be convincing in order to solve.
PE2_Clues.zip
Description  Clues for Puzzle Experiment #2
 zip

 Download 
Filename  PE2_Clues.zip 
Filesize  225.04KB 
Downloaded  158 Time(s) 
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Puzzle Experiments: #3, #4, #6

PostPosted: Sun Apr 20, 2008 7:14 pm
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faeryqueen21
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Joined: 25 Sep 2007
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 		Unfortunately I cannot open the zip and the log file is gibberish. I think they're not compatible with my Mac. So...yeah...can't do much with this one.
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PostPosted: Sun Apr 20, 2008 10:44 pm
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mapmaker
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Joined: 26 Sep 2005
Posts: 608
Location: Providence, RI, USA
faeryqueen21 wrote:
Unfortunately I cannot open the zip and the log file is gibberish. I think they're not compatible with my Mac. So...yeah...can't do much with this one.

Er...I think that's the point?

PostPosted: Mon Apr 21, 2008 2:56 am
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Big_Larry
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Joined: 28 May 2007
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faeryqueen21 wrote:
Unfortunately I cannot open the zip and the log file is gibberish. I think they're not compatible with my Mac. So...yeah...can't do much with this one.


Yeah, I'm on a MacBook and I have the same problem. Thankfully, I have Parallels Desktop on my system. If your Mac can run it, I would suggest you grab a copy, and then you can run any flavor of Windows on a virtual system on the Mac.
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SPENGLER: According to this morning's PKE sample, the current level in the city would be a Twinkie 35 feet long weighing approximately six hundred pounds.
WINSTON: That's a big Twinkie.

PostPosted: Mon Apr 21, 2008 3:35 am
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Tenchizard
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Joined: 22 Sep 2007
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 		I'll use spoiler for my progress...

Spoiler (Rollover to View):
So, after trying some passwords for the zip, I tried to use a cracker to do it for me, but it did only tell me it was 9 letters long with a zab in the middle. After fiddling a bit, I tried Elizabeth for password and it worked. In there, I haven't seen anything in the pics (no stegging soft in this computer right now), but the list is curious as it's the typical things a woman would buy with, let's say, $50k. The problem is I don't really believe all this. The password being an anagram of iTheBlaze is too typical, and too much of a coincidence to be found there. Also, the "shopping list" is for just half the ransom... so I'm thinking this has been staged by two people, maybe Elizabeth and someone else, with this someone else trying to frame Elizabeth without her knowing it. Maybe Michael, as the log was in his computer.
By the way, I don't know what to do with that log... it's been difficult just to extract it, as there are some symbols windows will not allow to be as a filename... I still don't know how I made winzip to extract it, but it's there and I don't know what to do with it.


PostPosted: Mon Apr 21, 2008 7:58 am
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MrToasty
I Have 100 Cats and Smell of Wee


Joined: 03 Aug 2004
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Tenchizard wrote:
it's been difficult just to extract it, as there are some symbols windows will not allow to be as a filename... I still don't know how I made winzip to extract it, but it's there and I don't know what to do with it.

If you can, try WinRAR - it opened it fine for me whereas WinZip would not.

PostPosted: Mon Apr 21, 2008 11:32 am
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Nighthawk
I Have 100 Cats and Smell of Wee


Joined: 14 Jul 2007
Posts: 4751
Location: Miami, Florida, USA, Earth

 		WinRar works fine; it will re-name it or something.

Still haven't had a chance to see what it all means, though.
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PostPosted: Mon Apr 21, 2008 11:47 am
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MrToasty
I Have 100 Cats and Smell of Wee


Joined: 03 Aug 2004
Posts: 4310
Location: Des Moines, IA

 		Looking at the log in hex, the first characters are FF FE, which might indicate Unicode, but not having any luck with that either.

PostPosted: Mon Apr 21, 2008 11:56 am
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Rogi Ocnorb
I Have 100 Cats and Smell of Wee


Joined: 01 Sep 2005
Posts: 4266
Location: Where the cheese is free.

 		Another curiosity about the log, when viewed in hex:
The ASCII values for 0D-Carriage Return and 0A-Line Feed (Windows/DOS line breaks) appear throughout the file. But in each case where the pair appears, there is another character between them,
So, I'd guess there were two halves of data melded together like you'd shuffle a deck of cards.

Edited for clarity
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I'm telling you now, so you can't say, "Oh, I didn't know...Nobody told me!"


PostPosted: Mon Apr 21, 2008 2:30 pm
Last edited by Rogi Ocnorb on Mon Apr 21, 2008 2:44 pm; edited 2 times in total
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Nighthawk
I Have 100 Cats and Smell of Wee


Joined: 14 Jul 2007
Posts: 4751
Location: Miami, Florida, USA, Earth
Rogi Ocnorb wrote:
Another curiosity about the log, when viewed in hex:
The ASCII valued for Carriage Return and Line Feed (Windows/DOS) line breaks) appear throughout the file. But in each case where the pair appears, there is another character between them,
So, I'd guess there were two halves of data melded together like you'd shuffle a deck of cards.


That's standard Unicode/multi-byte text; each character is represented by two bytes, or a "word". First byte is the index in the character set, second byte is the character set.

For that second byte, "00" is English (Latin-1, to be more specific).
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PostPosted: Mon Apr 21, 2008 2:37 pm
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Rogi Ocnorb
I Have 100 Cats and Smell of Wee


Joined: 01 Sep 2005
Posts: 4266
Location: Where the cheese is free.

 		That's one of the reasons I love this place so much. All the learning opportunities it affords me. Unicode is an area I need to work on as all my "day jobs" have dealt with plain old ASCII in its various flavors.
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I'm telling you now, so you can't say, "Oh, I didn't know...Nobody told me!"


PostPosted: Mon Apr 21, 2008 3:09 pm
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faeryqueen21
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Joined: 25 Sep 2007
Posts: 1348
Location: Pasadena, CA
mapmaker wrote:
faeryqueen21 wrote:
Unfortunately I cannot open the zip and the log file is gibberish. I think they're not compatible with my Mac. So...yeah...can't do much with this one.

Er...I think that's the point?



It's non-coded gibberish. It's got symbols that mean it just can't show it. And the zip file won't open because it can't be supported. It doesn't ask for a password.


Big_Larry, I'm going to run Windows, I just have to find myself a free copy of Vista. I'm not paying for something when I'm only going to really use it to view ARGs on....and watch Netflix movies....
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PostPosted: Mon Apr 21, 2008 5:41 pm
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Big_Larry
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Joined: 28 May 2007
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Location: Not there... maybe somewhere else.

 		Off-Topic (Windows Rant)
faeryqueen21 wrote:
Big_Larry, I'm going to run Windows, I just have to find myself a free copy of Vista. I'm not paying for something when I'm only going to really use it to view ARGs on....and watch Netflix movies....


Let me speak from years of technical support experience. Get XP. Stay away from Vista unless you have a mission-critical software (i.e., whatever is used to watch Netflix movies) that requires Vista. My wife bought a laptop several months ago with Vista on it and it has been the most horrible computer experience either of us have ever had... and I started on a Commodore VIC-20, so I've had my fair share of horrible operating systems.

Let's put it this way. While Vista is more stable than Windows ME, it's just as slow, just as troublesome, and has just as many compatibility problems. Stick with Windows XP.
_________________
SPENGLER: According to this morning's PKE sample, the current level in the city would be a Twinkie 35 feet long weighing approximately six hundred pounds.
WINSTON: That's a big Twinkie.

PostPosted: Mon Apr 21, 2008 6:43 pm
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redct
Entrenched


Joined: 20 Jun 2007
Posts: 1233

 		It'll unzip on a mac.

Applications>Utilities>Terminal

For me:
Code:

[~/Desktop]$ unzip pe2_clues.zip
Archive:  pe2_clues.zip
  inflating: CPU Designs.pdf         
  inflating: iTheBlaze.zip           
  inflating: timecard.jpg           
error:  cannot create W????<?{ﵫpd? 04-18-08.log


Works for me.
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someone in IRC: see, sometimes instead of a man and woman loving each other, men and men love each other. this usually happens in prison, but sometimes in real life


PostPosted: Mon Apr 21, 2008 6:50 pm
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faeryqueen21
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Joined: 25 Sep 2007
Posts: 1348
Location: Pasadena, CA

 		Big_Larry, I've head that before. With Netflix it's either Vista or XP Service Pack 2. I just figured Vista would be easier to get my hands on. Thanks for the info!

Redct, I can download the files, it's the zipped one (iTheBlaze) that won't open. Says something about "Operation not permitted"

Soo...sorry for taking it so OT. Anyone have any educated guesses as to the culprit? I'd guess Nate because he is new, but I can't see some of the evidence so my guess is just that, a guess.
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PostPosted: Mon Apr 21, 2008 9:49 pm
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