ARG Puzzle with 3.5 BTC Private Key Prize, Game Over

[shorena]

yw

[jc01480]

RGB = (1,1,1)
Red= (1,0,0)
Green = (0,1,0)
Blue= (0,0,1)

CMY=(1,1,1)
Cyan = (1,0,0)
Magenta = (0,1,0)
Yellow = (0,0,1)

Plotted they make a 3 dimensional cube or square.

[jc01480]

Only an artist would think like this!  Gotta be a clue.

[Mister S]

Checking blockchain, there's a few more things to note tonight.

No more hints will be given.

This is listed on both address 1rEDGrNbuqqtbJU12XiU4hvmfM4XaQVcD and 1rEDGrNbuqqtbJU12XiU4hvmfM4XaQVcD, so it's safe to say those addresses are valid clue repositories.

I'll be honest, I've given this one a lot of silent thought before chiming in.


YT gives number sequences in the transactions list.
Starting with the 1AskcEemXLiwStjvHEXGkLSDEWK6CEx9sd transaction, they are as follows, omitting the leading 0.X

10101010 *
00100000
11101000 è
01010011 S
01001111 O
01000011 C
01001100 L
01001111 O
01010011 S
01000101 E
00101111 /
01100100 d
01101111 o
01100100 d
00101111 /
01110100 t
10100110 |
10011110 ž
10100110 |
01011000 X
01011000 X

Now things get cool.

5, 2

4, 1

19, 8

Asked for a hint, we got

01011010 Z eight times.

... think Z has anything to do with this puzzle? Actually, it probably does.

Nine binary commas follow.

a countdown from 23 to 1, omitting 8 AND 3

00101101 -

00111111 ? (This is probably a hint request)

5

followed by another help request from the community, SOS

Lastly followed by 12345, and 98765

That's it, that's the clues we get. I got ABSOLUTELY nothing to contribute elsewise.

[shorena]

ITA2 TELEX isnt working either in case someone wondered

its a 5 bit code.

http://www.bergziege-owl.de/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/Telegraphenalphabet-ita2.jpg

raw code used

Code:

010101111110101101010100101011110101110111000001101001001011111110011010101011111111000100011011100011101011000110110001111001001101001101100101011011010100011101001111011011001001010100011101111010101110000011110011101101010001110001010111100111101111000011011000001001111101111101110011100111110000111001110101000101110011110111010101111101101110110000010110101011100001010001001001111101101101010010101110010

split to 5 bit parts

Code:

01010
11111
10101
10101
01001
01011
11010
11101
11000
00110
10010
01011
11111
00110
10101
01111
11110
00100
01101
11000
11101
01100
01101
10001
11100
10011
01001
10110
01010
11011
01010
00111
01001
11101
10110
01001
01010
00111
01111
01010
11100
00011
11001
11011
01010
00111
00010
10111
10011
11011
11000
01101
10000
01001
11110
11111
01110
01110
01111
10000
11100
11101
01000
10111
00111
10111
01010
11111
01101
11011
00000
10110
10101
11000
01010
00100
10011
11101
10110
10100
10101
11001
0

padded the last to 00000

and got:

Code:

R
LETTERS
Y
Y
L
G
J
Q
A
N
D
G
LETTERS
N
Y
V
K
SPACE
P
A
Q
I
P
Z
11100
B
L
F
R
INTs
R - 4
M - .
L - )
Q - 1
F - €
L - )
R - 4
M - .
V - =
R - 4
11100
O - 9
W - 2
INTs
R - 4
M - .
<-
X
B
INTs
A
P
E
L
K
LETTERS
C
C
V
E
11100
Q
->
X
M
X
R
LETTERS
P
INTs
KYR
F
Y
A
R
SPACE
B
Q
F
S
Y
W
KYR

crap

I still think the hints point towards some sort of binary coding.

[S4VV4S]

3 new TX over night:

spelling

01010011 S
01001111 O
01010011 S

they do not come from the usually address though.

there are also 2 more with 0.0054321 BTC
from 1sosB9wN5ij84GKfo6Xxx8FWyh5fPXVXu

and 0.00098765 BTC
from 1rEDGrNbuqqtbJU12XiU4hvmfM4XaQVcD

the last one also has "no more clues" has a blockchain comment.

rEDGrN was loaded from the one address we access as the one controlled by OP.

https://blockchain.info/de/tx/c353daf8bdbbf74e76ade5d11fec3b0479f20813e15aabb0988f312b04309c1b

Fibnacci looks like a deadend as well.

One of the values is
1000010100010010011
-> 100001010001001001
= 1+13+34+233+987+4181 = 5449 which isnt in base64

there is also no way to encode 0 in fib, so we would be missing 1 letter or wed need to shift by -1 to get a 0.
But 1 or 0 would be encoded 11 which is all over the code. ~ 20/80 times sounds a bit overkill to me. Might be noise but since its ignoring the yellow and blue dot(s) I stopped going down that path.

Playing around in GIMP a bit with color channels, brightness/contrast, and saturation, I see a few things that might be interesting:
- the black border area has plenty of artifacts that mostly look like noise to me, but there's occasional surprising geometric regularity to them. there's a chunk in the lower left that looks sort of like 8-bit art, but I can't tweak things to get anything clear (to me) out of it.
- the yellow squares in the lower left quadrant seem extra yellow compared with anything else in the image.
- a few of the darker blue squares with dots look like their color was digitally darkened, but it looks like touch up work.

If this is the correct direction to go in, it's really challenging to tell what's a clue and what's an artifact of the artistic process. Maybe there's some other manipulations people can try out that I'm not thinking of.

I just check it with inverted colors and the only thing that struck me was:

red and green are complementary colors
blue and yellow are complementary colors as well.

So there might be some sort of code where red/green are one thing and yellow/blue are another thing complementy.

E.g. yellow = shift left, blue = shift right.

Okay, I have a suspicion.  Look at the RGB and CMY color models:

https://software.intel.com/sites/products/documentation/hpc/ipp/ippi/ippi_ch6/ch6_color_models.html

(Sorry, can't post the pic from a mobile.  Can someone help?)

You'll see why when the example is posted.  It is a three-dimensional block, as in block chain.

I'm also suspicious that some of this is hexadecimal in the photo.  They weren't kidding about the sleepless nights...

this one?

That's a prime number love.

[S4VV4S]

Guys and girls, if there is one thing we have noticed is that the transactions coming from "Alice" all count backwards 23-13 13-1 9-6 5-1.

Maybe we should be looking for things in reverse.

[S4VV4S]

Public Note: no more clues

We are screwed...... 

Also the last clue came from: 1rEDGrNbuqqtbJU12XiU4hvmfM4XaQVcD

So maybe we should just focus on the red green dots

[shorena]

Code:

stegdetect Uc6VAnV.jpg
Corrupt JPEG data: 6 extraneous bytes before marker 0xd9
Uc6VAnV.jpg : negative

dont get excited they are just 0 bytes. Might be just data corruption.

also ELA looks normal to me.

http://fotoforensics.com/analysis.php?id=02f2441a5bbd0a9fc3b69c0a4d490516ea0ddc46.913084&show=ela

Also I know we should not brute force, but I had to make sure:
stegbreak gives nothing

Code:

Loaded 1 files...
Uc6VAnV.jpg : negative
Processed 1 files, found 0 embeddings.
Time: 255 seconds: Cracks: 3666043,  14376.6 c/s

Guys and girls, if there is one thing we have noticed is that the transactions coming from "Alice" all count backwards 23-13 13-1 9-6 5-1.

Maybe we should be looking for things in reverse.

Probably.

I am going to research some of the basics.

http://www.citi.umich.edu/u/provos/papers/practical.pdf

Public Note: no more clues

We are screwed...... 
-snip-

[rgm108]

Public Note: no more clues

We are screwed...... 

Also the last clue came from: 1rEDGrNbuqqtbJU12XiU4hvmfM4XaQVcD

So maybe we should just focus on the red green dots

SOS + rEDGrN = Morse code?

Code:

@,w,b,5,!,@,@,@,@,y,@,#, , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,!,@,u,@,f,e,@,!,!,@
@,@,!,!,3,#,T,#,#,@,@,@, , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,#,C,@,@,!,!,S,!,v,!
@,@,@,j,!,!,@,@,@,!,@,!, , , , , , , , , , , , , ,#,@,!,!,w,!,@,!,o,@,@
@,A,!,!,@,@,@,U,@,!,@, , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,@,r,@,!,@,!,@,k,!,9,@
F,@,@,@,z,@,R,!,@,#, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,@,!,e,@,@,@,7,!,a,@,#
@,!,e,#,!,!,!, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,!,J,@,6,!,@,@,!,@


!,@,!,@,#,2,@, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,@,#,!,!,Y,!,T,!
o,@,!,6,@,!,!, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,!,@,A,!,!,@,#
!,B,!,@,@,D, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,i,#,@,@,@,!,@
@,!,#,@,F,@, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,!,@,!,t,@,!
!,@,!,@,!,@, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,@,@,!,!,@,!

Consider lines 13 to 18 and then 19 to 23.
Reading top to bottom (@ = . and ! = - and # = break/next char)
@@@@@ = 5 which is typically what priv keys start with.

Maybe I looking at the wrong stuff?

[S4VV4S]

Code:

stegdetect Uc6VAnV.jpg
Corrupt JPEG data: 6 extraneous bytes before marker 0xd9
Uc6VAnV.jpg : negative

dont get excited they are just 0 bytes. Might be just data corruption.

also ELA looks normal to me.

http://fotoforensics.com/analysis.php?id=02f2441a5bbd0a9fc3b69c0a4d490516ea0ddc46.913084&show=ela

Also I know we should not brute force, but I had to make sure:
stegbreak gives nothing

Code:

Loaded 1 files...
Uc6VAnV.jpg : negative
Processed 1 files, found 0 embeddings.
Time: 255 seconds: Cracks: 3666043,  14376.6 c/s

Guys and girls, if there is one thing we have noticed is that the transactions coming from "Alice" all count backwards 23-13 13-1 9-6 5-1.

Maybe we should be looking for things in reverse.

Probably.

I am going to research some of the basics.

http://www.citi.umich.edu/u/provos/papers/practical.pdf

Public Note: no more clues

We are screwed......  
-snip-

stegdetect will give negative on this image too:
but I can guarantee to you that it has hidden content.
You don't even need a key to extract it

EDIT: In case anyone is wondering about the hidden content:

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1


The work of a private man
who wished to transcend,
He trusted himself,
to produce from within.


1:2:3:1
3:3:13:5
45:5:2:3
20:3:20:5
8:3:8:6
48:5:14:2
21:13:4:1
25:1:7:4
15:9:3:4
1:1:16:3
4:3:3:1
8:3:26:4
47:3:3:5
3
13:2:5:4
1:4:16:4
.
o
n
i
o
n

Good luck.

3301


-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.11 (GNU/Linux)
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=6Gxk
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

[S4VV4S]

Public Note: no more clues

We are screwed...... 

Also the last clue came from: 1rEDGrNbuqqtbJU12XiU4hvmfM4XaQVcD

So maybe we should just focus on the red green dots

SOS + rEDGrN = Morse code?

Code:

@,w,b,5,!,@,@,@,@,y,@,#, , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,!,@,u,@,f,e,@,!,!,@
@,@,!,!,3,#,T,#,#,@,@,@, , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,#,C,@,@,!,!,S,!,v,!
@,@,@,j,!,!,@,@,@,!,@,!, , , , , , , , , , , , , ,#,@,!,!,w,!,@,!,o,@,@
@,A,!,!,@,@,@,U,@,!,@, , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,@,r,@,!,@,!,@,k,!,9,@
F,@,@,@,z,@,R,!,@,#, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,@,!,e,@,@,@,7,!,a,@,#
@,!,e,#,!,!,!, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,!,J,@,6,!,@,@,!,@


!,@,!,@,#,2,@, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,@,#,!,!,Y,!,T,!
o,@,!,6,@,!,!, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,!,@,A,!,!,@,#
!,B,!,@,@,D, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,i,#,@,@,@,!,@
@,!,#,@,F,@, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,!,@,!,t,@,!
!,@,!,@,!,@, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,@,@,!,!,@,!

Consider lines 13 to 18 and then 19 to 23.
Reading top to bottom (@ = . and ! = - and # = break/next char)
@@@@@ = 5 which is typically what priv keys start with.

Maybe I looking at the wrong stuff?

I have made that suggestion before but since my morse code ain't that good I stopped at: c t h u l t (.) t k e t s e C e t s o

[Lauda]

The reward is way too low judging from the difficulty of it.

[S4VV4S]

The reward is way too low judging from the difficulty of it.

The reward is to get to brag about it

[gondel]

Is the reward splitted into several smaller prices? THe 2.94 price is divided into more rewards? I dont get it at all
BR

[c275]

so now is a cicada 3301 game with a .onion address? 

[S4VV4S]

so now is a cicada 3301 game with a .onion address? 

NO NO NO.

I just posted that as an example.

[c275]

oh, ok tnx!

[eldinhadz]

I told you, we need think in 3d. It is a ARG Game

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternate_reality_game

We need to find somebody from UF − unfiction, They are the biggest Community for  ARG

[Newar]

I have made that suggestion before but since my morse code ain't that good I stopped at: c t h u l t (.) t k e t s e C e t s o

Which parts are you using?

http://www.onlineconversion.com/morse_code.htm