ARG Puzzle with 3.5 BTC Private Key Prize, Game Over

[medUSA]

I like puzzles but this one looks too technical for me. I don't even know what I am looking for??
I will stare at it and if I have any ideas, I will post them here.

[S4VV4S]

I like puzzles but this one looks too technical for me. I don't even know what I am looking for??
I will stare at it and if I have any ideas, I will post them here.

Even though I have managed to extract several private keys and addresses I highly doubt that, that is what we are looking for.

We are more likely to find a clue to the next step.

And having more people on board is a great thing, so welcome aboard


BTW all the crap I have extracted came from my conversion of the dots.
Something tells me that we are missing something which is obvious.

And I now have a shitload of addresses on my wallet which I will never use  

EDIT: That being said, I like the eye (illuminati) staring at us right in the face....
I am sure it's a clue but haven't tied it to anything yet...

EDIT 2:  Change your signature to: μέδoυσα the way you have it now it's wrong 

[micaman]

I like puzzles but this one looks too technical for me. I don't even know what I am looking for??
I will stare at it and if I have any ideas, I will post them here.

Even though I have managed to extract several private keys and addresses I highly doubt that, that is what we are looking for.

We are more likely to find a clue to the next step.

And having more people on board is a great thing, so welcome aboard


BTW all the crap I have extracted came from my conversion of the dots.
Something tells me that we are missing something which is obvious.

And I now have a shitload of addresses on my wallet which I will never use 

You can just check the addresses on blockchain.info instead of importing the keys.

[S4VV4S]

I like puzzles but this one looks too technical for me. I don't even know what I am looking for??
I will stare at it and if I have any ideas, I will post them here.

Even though I have managed to extract several private keys and addresses I highly doubt that, that is what we are looking for.

We are more likely to find a clue to the next step.

And having more people on board is a great thing, so welcome aboard


BTW all the crap I have extracted came from my conversion of the dots.
Something tells me that we are missing something which is obvious.

And I now have a shitload of addresses on my wallet which I will never use 

You can just check the addresses on blockchain.info instead of importing the keys.

That's what I did, but I imported the keys on my wallet....
Hey, who knows it could have been it

[S4VV4S]

Does anybody have a clue what the yellow dots and the blue one is?

Any ideas?

[moinen]

What I've gathered so far, most points seem to have come up already:

• There are 124 characters in the picture. Amongst them, a bitcoin address 1HXUobwcB19cGDrghuh42HDdJdJvrJUEra.
• The address contains 1.41613221 BTC at the moment. At least two of the transactions seem to be outside contributions to the pot, with attached public notes containing advertising.
• The goal of the puzzle is to find the private key to the address. A private key is 51 characters, starting with "5". It must not contain characters O, 0, I, l.
• 21 characters before the address, 69 after it. Directly after the addres, there is a O or a 0, and a second one near the bottom, as well as an "I". Two "5"s can be found at different positions.
• Two figures in the picture are the developers of Dark Wallet, the logo of which is displayed also. I believe this to not be a direct part of the puzzle at this stage.
• The unoccupied cells have colored dots in them. Mostly green and red, although pale yellow and one blue dot can be found. These seem likely to be a part of the puzzle.
• I do not believe the color of the cells themselves to be a part of the puzzle, as there are many shades that could be hard to distinguish.
• Colors of the letters might have meaning. Although some of their shades are also a bit hard to discern.
• Position and spacing of letters seems likely to be meaningful. Although many cells are partly obstructed by the figures, wether they have a dot or not is always clearly indicated (even overlapping the guy's shirt).
• The final solution will be a probably 51-character private key, but as of now, we still have 90 characters and many other forms of information unaccounted for. It is unlikely that the riddler has included extraneous characters, thus I believe that there are multiple steps left until the private key. I wouldn't be surprised if decrypting some of the characters revealed a hint to a next step.
• It is not out of the question that hints exist outside what is displayed in the picture. I have checked the EXIF data of the image, but found nothing. The image was posted by OP at both twitter and imgur, both of which likely strip such metadata, as well as any pixel-level steganography.
• The transactions to the bitcoin address could easily contain hints, and some of the values are interesting, containing only ones and zeros.

[S4VV4S]

Crap, I have managed to extract 100+ private keys yet none of them is it 

[leepsteer00]

Good luck guys, I couldn't get it.

[S4VV4S]

What I've gathered so far, most points seem to have come up already:

• There are 124 characters in the picture. Amongst them, a bitcoin address 1HXUobwcB19cGDrghuh42HDdJdJvrJUEra.
• The address contains 1.41613221 BTC at the moment. At least two of the transactions seem to be outside contributions to the pot, with attached public notes containing advertising.
• The goal of the puzzle is to find the private key to the address. A private key is 51 characters, starting with "5". It must not contain characters O, 0, I, l.
• 21 characters before the address, 69 after it. Directly after the addres, there is a O or a 0, and a second one near the bottom, as well as an "I". Two "5"s can be found at different positions.
• Two figures in the picture are the developers of Dark Wallet, the logo of which is displayed also. I believe this to not be a direct part of the puzzle at this stage.
• The unoccupied cells have colored dots in them. Mostly green and red, although pale yellow and one blue dot can be found. These seem likely to be a part of the puzzle.
• I do not believe the color of the cells themselves to be a part of the puzzle, as there are many shades that could be hard to distinguish.
• Colors of the letters might have meaning. Although some of their shades are also a bit hard to discern.
• Position and spacing of letters seems likely to be meaningful. Although many cells are partly obstructed by the figures, wether they have a dot or not is always clearly indicated (even overlapping the guy's shirt).
• The final solution will be a probably 51-character private key, but as of now, we still have 90 characters and many other forms of information unaccounted for. It is unlikely that the riddler has included extraneous characters, thus I believe that there are multiple steps left until the private key. I wouldn't be surprised if decrypting some of the characters revealed a hint to a next step.
• It is not out of the question that hints exist outside what is displayed in the picture. I have checked the EXIF data of the image, but found nothing. The image was posted by OP at both twitter and imgur, both of which likely strip such metadata, as well as any pixel-level steganography.
• The transactions to the bitcoin address could easily contain hints, and some of the values are interesting, containing only ones and zeros.

Hi moinen and welcome to the forums.
I have seen your post on reddit as well but since I am not a member there I didn't post.

Just a couple of point outs:

A) A private key can be 52 characters long as well (half the keys I found are 52 char long and all start with K) also there are mini-keys : https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Private_key
B) I am not sure about the image not having steganography. I have followed Cicada games who's images were uploaded on imgur (by whoever) and had hidden content in them.
C) You are spot on, the ones and zeros are a clue to deciphering.

[S4VV4S]

Good luck guys, I couldn't get it.

Don't give up.

That is why we share information here.

[fryarminer]

This is really awesome! I should get this guy to make me a wallet I can hang in my office, in clear view of everyone! My bitcoins will be safe!!

I've been trying to figure it out all morning. No luck!

[Cicero2.0]

Wow. This demonstrates how little I still know about bitcoin. Pretty cool idea though.

[moinen]

A) A private key can be 52 characters long as well (half the keys I found are 52 char long and all start with K) also there are mini-keys : https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Private_key
B) I am not sure about the image not having steganography. I have followed Cicada games who's images were uploaded on imgur (by whoever) and had hidden content in them.
C) You are spot on, the ones and zeros are a clue to deciphering.

Thanks!

Long shot, but here's the greens and reds seperated, to see if there's any visual patterns.

https://i.imgur.com/Vdn3fjj.png
https://i.imgur.com/6OVWl0I.png

[scribe]

A couple of random thoughts:

There are 26 parts divided by orange dots before the blue dot (1 part is empty though). I thought this might relate to letters of the alphabet, but some parts are the same, so doubtful it's a direct key.

If red and green do represent bits, and each part isn't a set length, it's not clear why you'd start (or end, depending on direction) with a 0 bit in some cases only. Suspect they represent something else, like direction?

I'm assuming the dots run right-to-left, not top-to-bottom...

Could the red/yellow/blue colours relate to the colours in the Darkwallet logo's triangle? [Edit: The red/yellow/green/blue prism spectrum also turns up in the logo for the related Darkmarket project, e.g. http://www.wired.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/Screen-Shot-2014-04-22-at-4.45.06-PM.png]

[S4VV4S]

0101 0 1111 110 1011 0 10101 0   

translates to (poetry) this:

dot consider presence rip understand above

could be relevant or not....

[S4VV4S]

Also, can the OP tell us which transactions should we consider part of the game?

[S4VV4S]

Wow, I found the private key to an address that starts: 1LsD

Yeah, no chance I will be using that.....,...

EDIT: Next milestone: 1COKE, 1POT, 1CRACK, 1JUNKIE...... etc etc    

EDIT 2: I shit you not, private key: 5HrVJgUTjbdEymrfnshvCSyspw1mQLjNqyvPiuyRhMefHDvdeDR

[zonkism]

I have imported the image into gimp and have noticed there are two 3x3 reversed but identical grids the first starting on row 7 after the "O" and the second starting on row 9 after the L.  Depending on whether the red/green dots are 1,2 and zeros... XORing these would give a 3x3 grid of 1.  Could be a coincidence but may be useful.  I am not sure how useful because the number of rows % 3 is not 0.

[S4VV4S]

I have imported the image into gimp and have noticed there are two 3x3 reversed but identical grids the first starting on row 7 after the "O" and the second starting on row 9 after the L.  Depending on whether the red/green dots are 1,2 and zeros... XORing these would give a 3x3 grid of 1.  Could be a coincidence but may be useful.  I am not sure how useful because the number of rows % 3 is not 0.

Welcome aboard mate

Will check your findings and see if I can come up with something.
I am sure most of the other participants will do the same.

Thanks for being part of the team

[zonkism]

another thing.. The Yellow dots on row 14 makes me think we should not be approaching these dots from left to right but instead either top/bottom or bottom to top.