Cryptology Anyone?

Afflict · Sat 16/04/2005 12:45:05

http://3564020356.org/index.html

For those who know what it is enjoy I know I do...

Blade · Sat 16/04/2005 13:25:42

I got intrigued but can't find the password. Damn :/

Pelican · Sun 17/04/2005 00:35:46

If you're not sure where to start, Blade:

Spoiler

Have you looked at the page's source code? It'll tell you how to get started.

[close]

nihilyst · Sun 17/04/2005 00:55:34

Well, this game is well made and has tough riddles. But it's sometimes far away bayond any (or MY) horizon of reasoning.

cheers of logic
nihilyst

shbaz · Sun 17/04/2005 06:18:12

This is terribly boring but I got to level three with google.

Afflict · Sun 24/04/2005 14:52:29

The Puzzles are getting harder in the later stages. So sit back and shut up and learn some new skill.

2ma2 · Sun 24/04/2005 16:47:37

It's hella easy to crack, and the lesson is actually highly interesting. Albeit, I have cracked the cypher, but I can't manage to get it to work anyway. I've tried uppercase, lowercase.. dammit!

EDIT: Nevermind..

TerranRich · Sun 24/04/2005 17:26:36

I still can't get past the Alice in Wonderland one. Googling doesn't seem to help me any.

EDIT: Okay, I googled for the answer, but it makes no sense. Where does that password come from? See below for what it is:

Spoiler

LidlScott

[close]

MrColossal · Sun 24/04/2005 18:55:27

the first 4 letters is a compression of the real Alice's last name

Spoiler

Liddel

[close]

as for the lost bit, I dunno

TerranRich · Mon 25/04/2005 04:52:13

These are just getting downright obsscure now.

Vince Twelve · Mon 25/04/2005 06:16:59

It's just silly difficult. Did you read his description of the answer to that one? After I googled and solved the riddle, I looked at his explanation of how I was supposed to come to that conclusion. Not having an interest in picking up international espionage as anything more than a hobby, I quit at that moment.

His explanation minus the pictures:

Spoiler

Here you are, my friend ;-)

I'm quite unsure that the whole riddle will be solved in the "right" way, that
is the one I'm going to explain here: that's because I feel I've made an image
(the bmp) which is easy to understand even without analyzing the text, which
is (IMO) the most interesting part of the riddle. But let's follow the steps
I thought you should have done to arrive here:

- First of all, read the page: it has a .gif file called "alice.gif" and a
link which sends you a file (0c.zip) containing a .bmp image with a detail
of the Alice image. Why is this detail so important?

- To tell the truth, the detail of the original alice.gif image is not
important at all, but the bmp file is important itself: it contains some
steganographed data that make up the password you need to go to level 2.
This is the error I've done: just by looking at the image, you can see that
there are steganographed data. As you can see, there are some yellow pixels
which are "less yellow" than others, because their last byte (the blue
component of their color) contains some information: that is the hex value
of the PLAIN TEXT characters telling you which is the right pass!
I know, this was quite a big error, anyway I don't want to correct it now:
I'll do a harder riddle next time, who minds

- It's not hard to understand the order you should follow to connect all the
dots (do you remember my words in the riddle text? "solution will be as easy
as just connecting the clues you have found"... heh!). You just have to
follow the borders of the image, but to be sure you worked the right way I
gave you a big, big hint...

- in alice.gif there are 34 numbers: they can be divided in 17 pairs, where
the first number in each pair is incremental, while the second seems random;

- what does occur 17 times in the text file? Have you ever tried to use a
program which counts occurrencies of bytes inside files? Don't worry, since
you are at level 2 now I'll let you find one in the tools section (or I'll
dedicate a tutorial to it). Anyway, if you just count (argh!

or run the
counter program you can find that the only byte which occurs 17 times is
ASCII 46, that is (alt+46) "."

- isolate all the dots inside the text (that is why I had to add all that crap
(don't misunderstand me, I love text adventures but I didn't know what to
say more to fill all those gaps!) and you will find a "picture" like this:

.
.

.
.
.

.

.

.
.

. .

.

.

.
.

.

.

- now number all the dots according to the values you found in the alice.gif
image: that is, the first dot in the text will become number 10, the next
one 11 and so on.

- join the dots and what do you find? THIS image!

[meaningless image of dots connected]

- now just read the wrong pixels values you have found inside the bmp image,
following the order of the dots you have just connected (keep just the blue
values, of course):

112 97 115 115 32 105 115 32 76 105 100 108 83 99 111 116 116

that, converted in ASCII, correspond to the phrase:

pass is LidlScott

... I think that's all

[close]

ETA: If you are interested in cryptography and cyphers and like a good challenge but aren't interested in going prematurely bald, check out the cryptochallenge. The tough ones are really tough, but not impossible, and they also have a section called the "Lunch Hour Challenge" full of cyphers that you can crack in under an hour. It's a much more satisfying brain twister than 3564020356.org.

2ma2 · Mon 25/04/2005 14:38:06

That solution is sick. I mean, really. Wow.

TerranRich · Tue 26/04/2005 02:07:42

LOL 2ma2, I totally agree. That's really stretching. If an adventure game had that kind of puzzle I'd find out where the creator lived and brutally torture him and his family.

Well, no not really, but that's damn near impossible...not a challenge. There's a difference. :o

Afflict · Tue 26/04/2005 21:52:09

Yeah they get worse oh yummy .. .you just wait. The furtherst i have seen someone get is puzzle 19