[PUZZLE][SOLVED] 12-01 Beating Stalin

brandoblues · Post by **brandoblues** » Fri Dec 01, 2006 2:03 pm

im thinking it was instructions to crack the letter somehow which we did

so if it was instructions reverse engineering it should be easier

evaB · Post by **evaB** » Fri Dec 01, 2006 2:11 pm

oh my god i'm such a dork

evaB · Post by **evaB** » Fri Dec 01, 2006 2:13 pm

also, I can't get into the chat... anyone else having that problem?

Kasdeja · Post by **Kasdeja** » Fri Dec 01, 2006 2:14 pm

Work blocks chatrooms for me.

iamcool · Post by **iamcool** » Fri Dec 01, 2006 2:16 pm

evaB wrote:also, I can't get into the chat... anyone else having that problem?

yeh theres a few people that cant get on, do u use firefox or ie?

FallingIntoSin · Post by **FallingIntoSin** » Fri Dec 01, 2006 2:16 pm

The remaining loose ends:

1. What does the "love note" mean? Who was it meant for?

2. Why the constant John Cusak references/movie quotes.

3. What's the significance of the Chain Reaction address? Is it the local of the next drop?

4. We have found out that the Hex Code was a Key/directions on what to do with the message, but we don't know what exactly it meant, except it told us it was a "love letter" that needed to be hexed twice to read. We still don't know the significane of "20,000 miles" or Base 36/34".

brandoblues · Post by **brandoblues** » Fri Dec 01, 2006 2:19 pm

ok i reconstructed acids work, the rar file decode it from hex, then decode that from base 64, then decode that from binaty, then decode that from hex, then its reversed. that is 5 steps

worked like a charm, 5 steps on the craigslist, 5 steps to decode the letter, now matching them up, hmm

casandra led to HEX
poly amouros submissive not sure (the reverse maybe)
31286 not sure (the binary maybe)
rob base 36 34 BASE
superboy HEX

they might not be in order but the binary and the reversing are two instructions left and should match up with the two im not sure about, i just dont see how yet

Lola · Post by **Lola** » Fri Dec 01, 2006 2:20 pm

Here's another question. Why does she include the conversion of 20,000 to kilometers? When I made the conversion using an online converter
I got 32 186.88 by the way.

surrealisticpill · Post by **surrealisticpill** » Fri Dec 01, 2006 2:38 pm

Lola wrote:Here's another question. Why does she include the conversion of 20,000 to kilometers? When I made the conversion using an online converter
I got 32 186.88 by the way.

it does say "roughly"

evaB · Post by **evaB** » Fri Dec 01, 2006 2:47 pm

nice, blues!

deagol · Post by **deagol** » Fri Dec 01, 2006 3:04 pm

Wow you guys are amazing. Unfortunately I was at work all the time, but I've been trying to chip at it as much as I can here (hehe, at least it actually looks like work, instead of clips of a couple of teens running around and puppets and stuff).

So, those must be the instructions to decode the .rar file. There's a few gaps in what I could do, but I see that between Acid and Mike and others you've got it to work and decoded it all, it seems. I'm just going to put here what I know and then I'll edit once I figure out what other's did.

So, the original file was clearly in Hex:
4d444178 4d544177 4d544167 4d444578 4d544177 4d544567
4d444178 4d544178 4d544167 4d444578 4d444178 4d544567
4d444178 4d544178 4d544167 4d444578 4d444577 4d544567
4d444178 0d0a4d54 41784d54 41674d44 41784d54 41774d44
... and so on.

Notice there seems to be a repetitive pattern in groups of 8 characters. I get more than 14 thousand of these hex "words."

So the first step (cassandra hughes): hex > ascii, and we get something like this:
MDAx MTAw MTAg MDEx MTAw MTEg
MDAx MTAx MTAg MDEx MDAx MTEg
MDAx MTAx MTAg MDEx MDEw MTEg
MDAx MTAx MTAg MDAx MTAw MDEg
... etc, again for almost 14 thousand of these.

This is in base64, although I don't know what poly sub has to do with that. So, decoding from base64 gives:
00110010 01110011 00110110 01100111
00110110 01101011 00110110 00110001
... and on for almost 4600 of these octets.

Which is obviously binary. Here I'll mention something that seems relevant but I still don't understand: If we drop one bit from each octet you get 4600 times 7 is 32200 bits altogether (is there a checksum bit in ascii? can't remember). "32186 kilometers away" may be simply saying, "you are here, you've decoded this far."

Now converting to ascii gives 2s6g6k6120726574666120646k72... etc which is where I got stuck.

I don't understand how reversing it (turn it out go _ 36 34) resulted in a final Hex code (SuperBoy fitty fo'). I tried reversing the binary, negating it (swapping all zeroes and ones), but nothing comes through.

Also, I can't find the leet speak that some mention.

Ahh ok I just read the base conversion reference. Maybe I'll check it out later and update this.

Again, excellent job, especially the pop culture/movies team. That stuff's amazing.

MrsCop · Post by **MrsCop** » Fri Dec 01, 2006 3:05 pm

brandoblues wrote:ok i reconstructed acids work, the rar file decode it from hex, then decode that from base 64, then decode that from binaty, then decode that from hex, then its reversed. that is 5 steps

worked like a charm, 5 steps on the craigslist, 5 steps to decode the letter, now matching them up, hmm

casandra led to HEX
poly amouros submissive not sure (the reverse maybe)
31286 not sure (the binary maybe)
rob base 36 34 BASE
superboy HEX

they might not be in order but the binary and the reversing are two instructions left and should match up with the two im not sure about, i just dont see how yet

wicked.. I can do 2nd grade math AND remove virtually any stain known to man from almost every type of fabric. But YOU are amazing! *standing O*

shifty · Post by **shifty** » Fri Dec 01, 2006 3:10 pm

deagol wrote:Also, I can't find the leet speak that some mention.

It's under the 'About Me' section. You have to click (See full profile) and it's at the very bottom.

brandoblues · Post by **brandoblues** » Fri Dec 01, 2006 3:11 pm

its a team effort trust me, when you see so many people talking about stuff it just kinda starts coming together.

the only thing that i think woulda been better if the instructions were in order so we could of gone, ooohh ahhhh.

basically we figured out the note before anyone really looked at the clues too hard.

brandoblues · Post by **brandoblues** » Fri Dec 01, 2006 3:31 pm

in the note we know that all of the letters KLMNO were omitted for some reason.. but a few weird anomalies

7 o's that replace k's are in place in the note

the words are

kept know keeps awake back know suck

7k's

Leet speak for T is 7

tachyons redirect includes K12

so bear with me

K12 - K7 = K5

lol.

i think we've gone crazy