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 Forum index » Archive » Archive: MetaCortechs » MetaCortechs: Puzzles
[PUZZLE] Character ID's from hacker transcripts
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Marl64
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Joined: 04 Oct 2003
Posts: 456
Location: Prisoner of Zion

 		Re: So...we have the following transcripts
xnbomb wrote:
It looks to me like Bounce could be lhp or qm2, but I don't think we can be sure yet.


If you can definitely narrow it down to those two, I can narrow it down to one;

When caesar names bounce he is asking "Bounce, Tex, Scratch, you driving on any of this?"

But when he does this qm2 has already submitted his results. In fact he's the only one who has.
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PostPosted: Tue Oct 28, 2003 3:53 pm
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xnbomb
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 		Re: So...we have the following transcripts
Marl64 wrote:
But when he does this qm2 has already submitted his results. In fact he's the only one who has.

Good point. I'm guessing Bounce is either .qm2 or .lhp precisely because those are the only two participants in unjust who we have not named (unless .mp3 could be Bounce and not Statik for the reasons described above). You're right, .qm2 posts about 18 minutes before Caesar writes that, so Caesar must have seen that post ... .qm2 cannot be Bounce.

So, we're down to .lhp (or .mp3 if we think .mp3 is not Statik).

PostPosted: Tue Oct 28, 2003 4:06 pm
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Marl64
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 		I was adding numeric prefixes to my silvia files to keep them in posting order when I noticed something...

I didn't need the prefixes.

With the exception of silvia2.kbp (which is posted before silvia.kbp for some reason)...

The silvia files when grouped into silvia, silvia2 and silvia3 and listed in posting order are alphabetical by extension. Quite a coincidence for 23 files.
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PostPosted: Tue Oct 28, 2003 4:37 pm
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xnbomb
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 		Great Caesar's Ghost
Marl64 wrote:
With the exception of silvia2.kbp (which is posted before silvia.kbp for some reason)...

The silvia files when grouped into silvia, silvia2 and silvia3 and listed in posting order are alphabetical by extension. Quite a coincidence for 23 files.

To quote Perry White: "Great Caesar's Ghost!" (pardon the sideways mention of Mister .jpg). The timestamp of silvia2.kbp may be in error. When you put it between silvia2.jpg and silvia2.lhp, where it should be based on the alphabetical pattern, it makes more sense ('those guys are crap for crap' referring to the bigfeet Caesar mentions in silvia2.jpg).

The alphabetical pattern is odd ... you don't see it in carelessly, unjust, or bigmclargehuge. It's got me thinking about the nature of these files: Does the conversation happen through the hackers posting these very files, and their colleagues viewing them? How do they know when a file gets posted? Do they have access that allows them to view the contents of the directory so they can see when a file appears? And one last question ... why leave the files where they are? I know they need to be there for us to find them ... but why leave the evidence if this is subterfuge? I would think Caesar would have deleted the bigmclargehuge files pretty quickly ... except they are there for us to find Very Happy

PostPosted: Tue Oct 28, 2003 4:50 pm
Last edited by xnbomb on Tue Oct 28, 2003 4:56 pm; edited 1 time in total
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Marl64
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 		Re: So...we have the following transcripts
xnbomb wrote:
if we think .mp3 is not Statik.


MP3 was the first post of the carlessly files and has been described as a nod to static. Presumably from "mp3"

Caesar (who posts second) posts "first to the spot" presumably just carrying on the "nod" since he wasn't the first there.

I've always wondered why caesar didn't post first. He gave the clue to the location, you would have expected him to plop his flag down first. But I digress.

People have discussed if mp3 could be Statik and even the real statik has denied involvement, which has led people to discount this as a name.

But what if MP3 was given the name Statik as an ongoing nod to the real one. And in doing so confused the hell out of everyone.

Maybe the PMs originally thought "Hmm, we need another hacker name for the game, hey why not use the name of the guy who starts the ball rolling!"

So I'm, prepared to keep this as a possibility until proven otherwise.

Doesn't matter too much, he never says much anyway and didn't even turn up to the last meeting. He's AWOL. Very Happy
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PostPosted: Tue Oct 28, 2003 4:54 pm
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AnthraX101
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 		I suspect that the posting times have to do with howe the uploads are filed. If you use an FTP client like WsFTP it should upload them in some order, alphabeticaly would make sence. Filenames could be considered first, followed by extentions. That would explain the pattern.

Weither this is behind the curtain because of how the files were placed on the webserver, or a hint as to someone else uploading them after the fact, I am undecided.

AnthraX101

PostPosted: Tue Oct 28, 2003 5:14 pm
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xnbomb
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 		Timestamps
AnthraX101 wrote:
I suspect that the posting times have to do with howe the uploads are filed. If you use an FTP client like WsFTP it should upload them in some order, alphabeticaly would make sence. Filenames could be considered first, followed by extentions. That would explain the pattern.

I've thought about that ... and the spacing between the timestamps should tell us something ... the gaps between the silvia files timestamps are somewhere between 4-11 seconds (except for .bh's whomp which happens a good 35 seconds before .doc's response ... I'm pretty sure silvia2.kbp is in the wrong place). That's just too fast for that conversation to have happened at that time (and maybe a little slow for ftp upload ... the files aren't that big) ... ergo those files got copied there from elsewhere. Maybe this is a side effect of the moving from ftp to http business, where the design was to do this all by ftp (which would better explain how our hackers know when someone else posts a file because they can see the contents of the directory) but that approach had to be abandoned for security reasons.

Maybe we're not supposed to see the timestamps ... but how else can we know what order to put the files in? Carelessly, unjust, and bigmclargehuge have much larger spaces between the timestamps, often minutes not seconds, and they are not alphabetically arranged ... yet the conversations flow as if the timestamp based order we have is correct.

AnthraX101 wrote:
Weither this is behind the curtain because of how the files were placed on the webserver, or a hint as to someone else uploading them after the fact, I am undecided.

We need to be able to order the files to make heads or tails of the conversations. If they were all alphabetical like silvia is, I'd think we don't need the timestamps. But they aren't, so we do need them.

Of course, I have yet to test the alternate hypothesis ... reordering carelessly, unjust, and bigmclargehuge alphabetically and seeing how they look ...

PostPosted: Tue Oct 28, 2003 6:01 pm
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Marl64
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 		Re: Great Caesar's Ghost
xnbomb wrote:
Do they have access that allows them to view the contents of the directory so they can see when a file appears?

They obviosly have more rights than are given by the usernames and passwords we see. For a start, they can upload files.

I don't think it's unreasonabe to assume they have directory viewing rights as well.
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PostPosted: Tue Oct 28, 2003 7:40 pm
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skeptical
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 		do we agree this is a fair hypothesis from what I read?
Statik = mp3
Caesar = jpg
Bounce = lhp
Mello = kbp
Omni = graffle
Texel = txt
Random = ypt
Scratch = mic

wsg?
gif?
qm2?
goo?
doc?
bh?
m_u?

We have to be able to link these to "names" soon IMO...otherwise this game is going nowhere fast......

PostPosted: Wed Oct 29, 2003 5:36 am
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xnbomb
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 		Hacker names - rewind
Hmm ... I haven't see any posts by Skeptical in a while. Well, if you're out there ... we're finally getting somewhere. I think we already had these:

graffle = Omni
jpg = Caesar = Jesse Avery
kbp = Mello
lhp = Bounce
mic = Scratch
mp3 = Statik
txt = Texel = Ms. Kinross
ypt = Random

and we've got the following to fill in:

bh =Leak? (from to-night3.txt and process of elimination ... Yanka again)
doc
gif
goo = Fire? (from the quote in to-night.goo ... thanks Omnie)
m_u = Double? (from the quote in to-night.m_u and absence in Silvia files ... thanks Flavin and Yanka)
qm2
wsg =Malloc? (from the quote in to-night.m_u and presence in the Silvia files ... thanks Flavin and Yanka)

and we have the following possible names not assigned: buzzkill, spawn (EDIT: fire ... right Omnie! I knew I was forgetting someone, EDIT2: Flavin and Yanka have figured out that wsg must be Malloc because Malloc is mentioned in the Silvia files and there's no m_u in there, so m_u is double by process of elimination from to_night.m_u) ... hopefully they'll keep posting in www.paintover.net/grief and fill it in for us Very Happy
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PostPosted: Wed Nov 19, 2003 10:57 pm
Last edited by xnbomb on Thu Nov 20, 2003 12:36 am; edited 3 times in total
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Omnie
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 		goo = Fire?

"Where there's smoke..."
there's fire. Isn't that how the phrase goes?

PostPosted: Wed Nov 19, 2003 11:18 pm
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AnthraX101
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Omnie wrote:
goo = Fire?

"Where there's smoke..."
there's fire. Isn't that how the phrase goes?


I tend to think that was more of an observation that they are all screwed. Smile

AnthraX101
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PostPosted: Thu Nov 20, 2003 12:06 am
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xnbomb
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 		Fire?
AnthraX101 wrote:
Omnie wrote:
"Where there's smoke..."
there's fire. Isn't that how the phrase goes?


I tend to think that was more of an observation that they are all screwed. Smile

Could be ... although carelessly.goo featured fireworks ... so at the very least .goo has an interest in fire. Although we (and particularly you AnthraX101) have spent some time debunking that second IRC conversation with 'Caesar' and 'Texel", they did mention someone named Firewall. Was that a lucky guess by some imposters? We'll see ...
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PostPosted: Thu Nov 20, 2003 12:42 am
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ChainedLightning
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 		So can we say that .bh is leak?

PostPosted: Thu Nov 20, 2003 12:53 am
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Worker
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Joined: 07 Oct 2003
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 		Re: Fire?
xnbomb wrote:
AnthraX101 wrote:
Omnie wrote:
"Where there's smoke..."
there's fire. Isn't that how the phrase goes?


I tend to think that was more of an observation that they are all screwed. Smile

Could be ... although carelessly.goo featured fireworks ... so at the very least .goo has an interest in fire.


Fireworks? As in "Fire works" => "Fire is on the job" maybe?

PostPosted: Thu Nov 20, 2003 10:10 am
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