unforum

[Waterborn2o2p]

First, I too am not programmer and wouldn't know a decoder from a blender. With that said, TRON is a movie about a guy who hacks into a corporate computer to obtain data that will prove his point. I can't imagine that anyone orchestrating this ARG would (or in truth could) really be offended if a little "harmless" hacking occurred during this process. If it moves the game forward, then I think it is ok.

Just my two cents.

[on3badmammajama]

what if the all the Encom stuff is suppose to be accessed via hack? or is that too much?

[Euchre]

I think 42E is smart enough not to deploy a Flash object that would progress the game before it could be used in any fashion to progress the game, and such objects can be made easily to obfuscate the 'right answers' but leaving the key information server side. If 42E can't make a Flash object that doesn't just hand over the answers inside, I don't know why Disney would be paying them to put this on. My impression thus far is that they are professional enough to at least keep the objects away from us until they are actually meant to be put into play. Consider the Zero Hour exercize - nobody managed to poke around and find any of the content before it was meant to be released. (The Minneapolis error was a human error, not a design error - and it was discovered through an intended path.)

Basically, as long as this is a professionally run game (and it would seem it is) you could decompile to your heart's content and very likely never find anything you weren't meant to find.

The only caveat I have about the 'hacking' idea is that you need to remember what is the property of 42E and what's not. The Encom site is theirs, and their work there should be tamper resistant enough you could beat at it a long time and not get anything. The likes of Facebook however are NOT 42E's property, so hacking the account there would be not just bad form in the game, it'd be illegal.

Remember, this is "alternate reality gaming", not "lose all touch with reality gaming".

[Broklynite]

[Nighthawk]

42E have shown considerable technical prowess already: the periodically changing image on the "zero hour" countdown was extremely well done and unexploitable.

And I'm sure they know the tools we have available more than anyone.

[Wiser]

[Broklynite]

[DarkJaguar]

irony...
a discussion on ethics on an ARG thread about a company who's ethics could be questionable...

[JohnVision]

Hey Broklynite,

Just to put in my 2 cents, I don't think there's anything wrong with what you did in looking for some clues in the source code of the Encom site. They'd have to KNOW that SOMEONE would try something of that nature, and let's face it, whatever is there can easily be viewed by anyone with the slightest web knowledge or programming skills.

Add to that, this is an ARG about a programmer/hacker to begin with, and I'm sort of hoping that this ultimately REQUIRES some sort of benign "hacking" (really just peeking at source code) anyway!

Don't beat yourself up...In fact, nice try, bro!

[Broklynite]

[Rogi Ocnorb]

[Broklynite]

Peter?

[Nikki Wraith]

Hey folks, Newb here, not ninja. I was just poking about at the Encom site, and noticed an oddity in the .css files. First, there are two files being used : main.css and encom.css.
In the main.css, I tripped over the following:

[Euchre]

It is not at all uncommon to see multiple stylesheets loaded for one page. The main.css file looks pretty generic to me, and thus far seems not to be used too much - probably part of a whole site template.

[Nikki Wraith]

I did some more poking with my cup joe this AM, and found the same main.css on all the known Flynn lives sites.

I didn't find any balcktext yet though.

I think I found a red herring.