unforum

[drawbars]

[arthurdent11389]

"in pictures"

[TonyTwoFish]

My short convo with @ExcitingBooks

[L0j1k]

http://pastebin.com/KX0HTJ1r

I also had a conversation with "excitingbooks". Owning my own web development business, I know that designers are always trying to spread their work via their portfolio, and I asked him a question about this. Immediately after, he declared that I was creepy and unfollowed me, so I could not ask him anymore questions. Because of his reaction to asking for his portfolio, my instinct is that this person is not a designer, and that they are either working with PM or are PM.

Because he called me creepy, I decided to be creepy.

I gave him one of my email addresses in hopes that he would visit the domain. He did so, and I was able to get his IP address, which revealed basically everything about the guy. He registered a domain that points to that IP, and used his real information for all of the contact information in the whois. Some interrogation of the IP also revealed several ports open and an old, exploitable version of OpenSSH. I was able to isolate this guy's identity from the favicon and self-signed SSL certificate served at his site, as well. The favicon is not available online anywhere but a single site, which lists users by geographical area, and this is another, more circuitous route through which his identity can be revealed.

At this time I'm am investigating the data to determine the likelihood that he is just some random designer, or one of our PMs. I will update later in the day, perhaps.

[drawbars]

L0j1k, awaiting further info with bated breath!!!

[L0j1k]

Well, "ExcitingBooks" appears to be more or less a white-hot ball of inner rage stuck in the suburbs or something. Anyways, the IP not only visited one of my (deserted) domains, but also checked through the IRC logs around the same time he said he checked it. So I'm confident to like two sigma this is ExcitingBooks.

Most importantly, ExcitingBooks has a wide variety of publicly-available information, including a few boilerplate/placeholder websites. Searching through a few databases for chains of information, none of the websites or resources contained a "design portfolio" or anything of the sort. Whatever ExcitingBooks says, he is not a designer by trade, or is only very recently getting into it (which would be consistent with OTP22 being created post-2010 and not "roughly ten years ago" as he claims). Importantly, ExcitingBooks claims that his portfolio site "contains his real name" and therefore didn't want to link it to either myself or Tony. However, ExcitingBooksRealName.org is simply boilerplate saying something similar to "Welcome to the future site of ExcitingBooksRealName.org!". No portfolio.

So from trawling through this dude's RL information, and discussing it at length with some of the regulars (and a few new people -- Hi!) in #ARG, we're still at a stalemate as to whether or not ExcitingBooks is in on it, and what it means even if he's PM.

The following information has nothing to do with ExcitingBook's RL data (because that largely doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things, so much as what he's saying). Here's what we have noted so far:

1) He's in on it, or at least knows about it, and is sloppy.
2) He's telling the truth and PM commissioned these cover designs from someone outside an inner circle.

There are some very interesting and clever possibilities that come up regarding this:

If 1, OTP22 could be coming to an end, as PM is very, very diligent about cleaning up potential mistakes and keeping tangential information out of view. ExcitingBooks has either made a very serious mistake (something that's never happened before to our knowledge), or this was an intentional leak for some reason. Who knows, maybe this is just PMs way of calling me a creep and a sociopath.

If 2, we can start to wonder about how many OTHER activities were commissioned from outside sources, and it's then a logical step to conclude that our PM might be using the internet to recruit for his effort, just like we are. Previously, I had truly believed that this was some kind of hackerspace effort (for example, the Pennsylvania Tree Trunk drop was about 50 meters from a hackerspace). It might be possible to use this information to find PM through these recruiting efforts.

PM might have planned this in order to release to us all of the covers, as the books are pretty clearly implementing some kind of information. This could be in the ISBNs (some of which have previously appeared lexicographically similar to some of WORM's known phone numbers), barcodes (some of which do not match their ISBNs), or especially the titles/authors. We know PM communicated previously using 5-gram messages, and it's somewhat easy to see how these titles could translate into 5-grams.

Bobdamnit mentioned that this guy could be the "Bookman", which would certainly mean that I won't be getting the red book or its correct order code anytime soon from ExcitingBooks! Haha! This I think is a very clever idea and something worth considering.

Wrkq notes that when ExcitingBooks talks about ".ps files" and we all assumed Photoshop files, .ps is postscript, and Photoshop is not vector-based. The book covers are pretty clearly vector-based graphics, and that means Photoshop is unlikely. From the conversation I had with ExcitingBooks, he took the .ps "blanks" from his commissioning agent -- which had ISBN, barcode, and title -- and then "riff off of these styles" to create the cover styles presumably from the colorful titles. For me, at least, this is an important observation because postscript blanks are more "OTP22-style" than something easier like Photoshop.

We talked a bit about ExcitingBook's claim that he's been doing this for "roughly 10 years ... off and on" for the commissioning agent. A few people make clever observations, notably that there's a QR code in the green book which precludes this being created too early in the last decade, and the page previous to the green book QR code contains the blank page with "TARGET" message having a timestamp of 2013, which implies that it wasn't created some ten years previous to this year but relatively recently.

Importantly, TonyTwoFish is still being followed by ExcitingBooks, and this may mean that we can still ask questions. I've totally torched that bridge, but if there's something anybody here can think of that would be useful to ask, know that it's possible for us to send him a message through TonyTwoFish.

This is a summary about the ensuing conversation in #ARG. If anybody's got something to add, definitely let us know! Somebody's always in #ARG, and of course we're always checking this thread.

[Restlessmind]

Alas, I'm the person they are going on about having the IP they were investigating. I just lurk the game here, the wiki, IRC logs and anything else that may garner information because I don't have time to actually play. They put my idle interest together concurrent to events with exciting-books and thought I was involved in the game, but as I mentioned on the IRC channel, it's not me. I'm no designer and certainly not the game's PM, just a programmer with no time to be heavily involved in OTP22, but still find the whole thing intriguing.

P.S. I took a couple minutes and upgraded OpenSSH; thanks for the heads up

[L0j1k]

Huh, well... AWFUL timing with your hits!

Thanks for coming forward to tell us.

[L0j1k]

As time goes by I'm wondering if ExcitingBooks is a troll. I've used a QX (#29) to ask PM directly if ExcitingBooks is related or OOB. Early reports from invision going to the Astoria drop site indicate that this may not be a drop at all.

[invision]

So, the Astoria drop is like right across the highway from my ANG base. I went and looked, but couldn't find anything. It's been landscaped pretty heavily since Google got the current sat pics. Heres pics, and a thing that I found that I feel isn't related, but I didn't want to leave it behind incase it was actually something.

http://imgur.com/a/qt7OQ

http://imgur.com/a/OtD7v

[invision]

So, went back to Astoria. Found the keycard.

http://imgur.com/a/58IaY

Here it is in a PSD, size-matched with the IBM scantron card thing:
http://pdxapartment.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/keyandcard.psd

[arthurdent11389]

[drawbars]

i will be picking up the rohnert park library drops this weekend.

[bobdamnit]

Been a while since it was done, so I decided to call all known numbers to OTP22. Here is the list:

202 999 3335: Plays "Ace of Base music", transfers to MD
303 309 0004: Plays "Ace of Base music", transfers to MD
314 266 0004: Plays "Ace of Base music", transfers to MD
769 307 0004: Plays "Ace of Base music", transfers to MD
931 516 0004: Plays "Ace of Base music", transfers to MD
254 589 0004: Plays "Ace of Base music", transfers to MD
860 323 0004: Plays "Ace of Base music", transfers to MD
559 397 0004: Plays "Ace of Base music", transfers to MD
859 405 0004: Plays "Ace of Base music", transfers to MD
859 405 0004: Plays "Ace of Base music", transfers to MD
740 617 0004: Plays "Ace of Base music", transfers to MD
850 632 0004: Plays "Ace of Base music", transfers to MD
609 456 0004: Plays "Ace of Base music", transfers to MD
540 931 0004: Plays "Ace of Base music", transfers to MD
903 331 0004: Plays "Ace of Base music", transfers to MD
417 295 0004: Plays "Ace of Base music", transfers to MD
234 222 0004: QX system
769 305 0004: Plays "Ace of Base music", transfers to MD
769 553 0004: Plays "Ace of Base music", transfers to MD
769 287 0004: Plays "Ace of Base music", transfers to MD
412 888 0004: Cleveland Direct, still works.
603 415 0000: Used to fax, now just rings
888 854 2402: Plays "Ace of Base music", transfers to MD
202 204 2303: Goes to Message Desk
202 999 3337: "Corrupted bootloader"

Class 6 numbers
703 880 9929: ABISM
706 931 9906: ABISM
802 263 4993: ABISM
434 995 9995: ABISM
503 416 1137: ABISM
206 576 1137: ABISM
272 364 9905: WORM order
212 364 9953: ABISM

The only odd thing to mention is that the fax number no longer faxes. It just rings.

[bobdamnit]

Rohnert Park drops acquired!