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 Forum index » Archive » Archive: General » ARG: Ares Station
[SOLVED] job application puzzle
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Lysithea
Unfettered


Joined: 04 Feb 2004
Posts: 468
Location: Australia

 		What I have so far:
Spoiler (Rollover to View):
t CONGRHCDSUGRXNFLBDHHINPOMPYLALMLB
g PBATEUPQFHTEKASYOQUUVACBZCLYNYZYO
c TFEXIYTUJLXIOEWCSUYYZEGFDGPCRCDCS
a VHGZKAVWLNZKQGYEUWAABGIHFIRETEFEU

t HACNCQNPPHUTNFAIRFVCLDCEJQTVYMBY
g UNPAPDACCUHGASNVESIPYQPRWDGILZOL
c YRTETHEGGYLKEWRZIWMTCUTVAHKMPDSP
a ATVGVJGIIANMGYTBKYOVEWVXCJMORFUR

t FVBYPOWFIAMAARXWJXDNABGARWWAXEPZ
g SIOLCBJSVNZNNEKJWKQANOTNEJJNKRCM
c WMSPGFNWZRDRRIONAOUERSXRINNROVGQ
a YOURIHPYBTFTTKQPCQWGTUZTKPPTQXIS

t VBANSMARGVHUSTAGHS
g IONAFZNETIUHFGNTUF
c MSREJDRIXMYLJKRXYJ
a OUTGLFTKZOANLMTZAL

Which spells out something like:
Congratul(a)tions you have completed your technical test.
Visit ????? html for your confirmation code to gain provisional martian status.

Sorry about the formatting. Does anyone know how to use a fixed-width font and bold at the same time?

I think that the canine gene sequence may still be needed.

EDIT Found another word in the messge
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"Some people grow into their dreams instead of out of them." - Miles Vorkosigan

PostPosted: Sat Mar 26, 2005 4:02 am
Last edited by Lysithea on Sat Mar 26, 2005 5:54 am; edited 1 time in total
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jbd
Decorated

Joined: 27 Jul 2004
Posts: 295

 		My guess is 16176 is a starting point in a chromosome, but the message doesn't specify *which* chromosome. Grf.

PostPosted: Sat Mar 26, 2005 5:23 am
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chippy
Entrenched


Joined: 19 Feb 2005
Posts: 789
Location: Leeds, UK

 		guys, gotta run now (easter family etc), but found this... 16176 gene sequence. gogogogo!!

http://www.tigr.org/tigr-scripts/tgi/tc_report.pl?tc=TC16176&species=Dog
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Do cats control our online behaviour?

PostPosted: Sat Mar 26, 2005 10:26 am
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deadman
Boot

Joined: 07 Mar 2005
Posts: 57

 		Great job Lysithea!!!

Spoiler (Rollover to View):
For the others out there, the possible page we are supposed to go to will be

www.aresstation.com/ABCDE.html

where ABCDE

A: L Y C E
B: D Q U W
C: C P T V
D: E R V X
E: J W A C

That's 4096 combinations. I'm tempted to brute force it. The sequence that was posted did not have the pattern we have already derived.


PostPosted: Sat Mar 26, 2005 11:37 am
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Ehsan
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Joined: 09 May 2003
Posts: 992

 		I've been thinking about brute forcing it all day, considering that we have done everything we can to solve it, and actually know how it is supposed to be solved.

But brute forcing just doesn't seem right.. I mean we will find the next page, but something will just be missing.. will you really be satisfied if we don't find that damn sequence??

PostPosted: Sat Mar 26, 2005 12:32 pm
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chippy
Entrenched


Joined: 19 Feb 2005
Posts: 789
Location: Leeds, UK

 		dont give up yet!
theres also this which seems more on the money?
UniGene Cfa.16176 Canis familiaris
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/UniGene/clust.cgi?ORG=Cfa&CID=16176

so, is this puzzle a vignere?
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PostPosted: Sat Mar 26, 2005 1:14 pm
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deadman
Boot

Joined: 07 Mar 2005
Posts: 57

 		I couldn't find an overlap in there either. Here are the translations we should expect to see in the run up to the address.


Spoiler (Rollover to View):
This is the code used for "technical test. Visit"
CCTCTAGACTCGAGCGGC
Keep in mind that we might be seeing the other side of the DNA strand in the published version online. If that is the case, then online, the other side would look like
GGAGATCTGAGCTCGCCG

If we find a match to the second one, then just take the next five letters, and make all the C's into G's and visa versa, and swap the A's and T's.


PostPosted: Sat Mar 26, 2005 1:34 pm
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Ehsan
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Joined: 09 May 2003
Posts: 992
chippy wrote:
dont give up yet!
theres also this which seems more on the money?
UniGene Cfa.16176 Canis familiaris
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/UniGene/clust.cgi?ORG=Cfa&CID=16176

so, is this puzzle a vignere?


I thought this was it! But I can't find anything useful...

Code:
>gnl|UG|Cfa#S22487276 tl23g08.b7 Right Cardiac Ventricle (DOGEST6) Canis familiaris cDNA, mRNA sequence /gb=CV998263 /gi=56268241 /ug=Cfa.16176 /len=340
TATAGGGCGAATTGGGTACCGGGCCCCCCCTCGAGTTTTTTTTTTCCCTTTTTTTTTTTT
TTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTGAAGGCGCAGGGGCCTTTATTAA
AACCCGGGGAGGCAACCCATTCGCTGAAAAAAAGGACACTTTTGTTCCAGAACCACGTCG
CCCCCCCCCGGCTGGGGGGGGGGTGGGCCAATCTGGCCAGACCCCTTTTTCATTACAGAA
GGGACCCGGGGGGCAGGGATGGATCAAAACGTTCTTAATGCCGGGCCCTGGTTTAAGGCC
TGGATTTGGGAGCAAAAGGGAGGGGGAAAGGGGGGGTGAA


And no it's not vigenere, it's more like a ROT using the sequence as a key..

PostPosted: Sat Mar 26, 2005 1:53 pm
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deadman
Boot

Joined: 07 Mar 2005
Posts: 57

 		I made a mistake before... there are only 1024 possibilities. I made a program the spits out bookmarks for all the possible pages, and then I went through them all, or I thought I did. Nothing but 404 errors, but there are so many I probably made a mistake. I'm hestitant to post the code or the bookmarks, since bruteforcing is not a good thing to submit other peoples servers to. There aren't too many, in computing terms, so I figured it was okay if I did it. I think I will try one more time.

PostPosted: Sat Mar 26, 2005 2:09 pm
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deadman
Boot

Joined: 07 Mar 2005
Posts: 57

 		Okay, that didn't take as long as I thought... I found a better way of doing it.

Every single page I tried came up with a 404 error. I put in www.aresstation.com by itself just to make sure I wouldn't get a 404 error, and I did not, so I think everything is working properly.

Just so you can get a feel for how I did it, I'm posting 2 screens, out of the 41 I had to go through. Not one of these links worked. So, what do you think the web address would look like, based on our current findings?

Assuming we are supposed to go to a page www.aresstations.com/ABCDE.html, like I thought originally, does not seem like a good place to be checking. Any other ideas?
Screen1.JPG
 Description   
 Filesize   116.88KB
 Viewed   272 Time(s)

Screen1.JPG
Screen2.JPG
 Description   2nd screenshot
 Filesize   116.94KB
 Viewed   259 Time(s)

Screen2.JPG

PostPosted: Sat Mar 26, 2005 2:29 pm
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LordKinbote
Decorated

Joined: 25 Sep 2002
Posts: 261
Ehsan wrote:
And no it's not vigenere, it's more like a ROT using the sequence as a key..


Actually, it's a special kind of Vigenere known as a "one time pad". Instead of choosing a short key that repeats itself, you choose a key longer than the message, which usually makes it nearly impossible to crack unless you know the key or know the key is an English (or another language) passage, subject to the same letter and word frequencies as anything else.

So this key *would* be extremely hard to crack, but it only consists of 4 letters in basically a random sequence. Think about how secure it would be if it were 26 letters in a random sequence; we NEVER would have gotten as far as we have. The problem with one time pads is that they're very impractical. Unless the key is something recognizable (FOUR SCORE AND SEVEN YEARS AGO, etc) you need to carry the key around with you or have easy access to it.

PostPosted: Sat Mar 26, 2005 2:34 pm
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deadman
Boot

Joined: 07 Mar 2005
Posts: 57

 		Yeah, the only reason we could get this far is because we basically found that from each letter, there should be only four things to choose from. If we could not even say that, than any letter could map to any other letter, making this all but impossible to solve without the key. Anyway, I'm not sure what good it will do, but here is a list of all the websites I tried. All of them at http://www.aresstation.com/<Fill>.html

Here's the fill part - I just modified my program to spit out the unknown string to a text file instead of bookmarks. Sorry about posting several times in a row. Anyway, I'm out of amunition for now, been working on this all morning. Maybe one of these 1024 entries is a real english word, I didn't find anything though.

Spoiler (Rollover to View):
Also, here's the full key, split into groups of 10, assuming what we have is correct. With all the long words like Congratulations, provisional, technical, and so on, you can bet a very large portion is spot on.
TTTTTACCAT GCCTGGGCTA GCGTTTGAAA CGGGCCCTCT AGACTCGAGC GGC?????CT CGAGAAAAAG TCTTCTTACC CACTCAGTTC CACCCAAGGG GATTTGGAAT TTGGT

tries.txt
Description 
txt

 Download 
Filename  tries.txt 
Filesize  7KB 
Downloaded  569 Time(s) 

PostPosted: Sat Mar 26, 2005 2:42 pm
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ItWasntMeISwear
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Joined: 15 Feb 2005
Posts: 503
Location: Illannoys, USA

 		p

PostPosted: Sun Mar 27, 2005 3:19 am
Last edited by ItWasntMeISwear on Sat Jun 23, 2007 6:40 pm; edited 1 time in total
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ellipses
Veteran


Joined: 17 Nov 2003
Posts: 138
Location: Location Location

 		Found it! It was indeed bovine (Bull) rather than Canine. Interesting - check it out here

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/UniGene/clust.cgi?ORG=Bt&CID=16176

The first 115 characters are

TTTTTACCANGCCTGGGCTAGCGTTTGAAACGGGCCCTCTAGACTCGAGCGGCCGCGGCT
CGAGAAAAAGTCTTCTTACCCACTCAGTTCCACCCAAGGGGATTTGGAATTTGGT

Note the N which also explains the A in congratulations

Spoiler (Rollover to View):
So it's cqrtw.html - but this seems to 404 for me


PostPosted: Sun Mar 27, 2005 5:51 am
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Ehsan
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Joined: 09 May 2003
Posts: 992

 		Good work!

What I get is slightly different.. cqtrw.html .. can you recheck yours? Still doesn't exist though..

PostPosted: Sun Mar 27, 2005 6:35 am
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