ARG Puzzle with 3.5 BTC Private Key Prize, Game Over

[Gatekeeper]

Now, straight up converting that into something readable isn't quite as straight forward as one would like. It's not divisible by 8.

I tried sorting them into sections of 8 and it came out with :yÒwÈ  which is an IP for Santa Clara University but nothing worked that i could find from that

Gut says that the 0=0 A=10 a=36 thing is probably right and we just need to find right word or phrase to convert, but again it leaves you with a whole pile of possibilities, like you guys i've tried lots of dif names,dates etc and nothing worked

If ARG-sidekick can't find it i don't think i have much chance lol

[arg-sidekick]

I had told myself I'd not post again until something important happened but I must say: where the fuck do you actually download that file? It just wants me to use its exe (hahaha).

Here's an MD5 hash: e533ea51607916e7dfac6211a939a1fd

Link: https://mega.co.nz/#!soUH1QwB!3cBaiOmXMOItB5lwRhAkPCFTiXlbyr7FJX5VCCuwIZE

Enjoy.

[Kprawn]

Don't you feel, it's starting to get a bit boring now?

1. People forming small groups, doing it on their own.
2. No more sharing of files and hints.
3. 7z after 7z after 7z.......zzzzzzzzz

And no end in sight...... I enjoyed helping to search for clues, reading pages and pages and doing sha after sha ....... examining every pixel in the images for hours...
and even playing that game.. And now everyone is going underground..

[itod]

Considering G (green) seems fairly common, lets just call it 0, R 1 and [] the wildcard. This creates:

Code:

 00000 01110 00000 10 01110 10000 00000 0111 10 0111 0100 10 01110 11100 01111 100 000 100 11001 000 01100010 01100101 01100001 01110010 01100101 01110010 01110011 00100000 01101111 01100110 00100000 01000110 01000001 01001100 01010011 01000101 00100000 0110011101101001 01100110 01110100 01110011 00100000 00100110 00100000 01110100 01101000 01100101 01101001 01110010 00100000 01000010 01010010 01001111 01001011 01000101 01001110 00100000 0101 0000 01010010 01001111 01001101 01001001 01010011 01000101 01010011 00101110 01001101 01110101 01100011 01101000 00100000 01010000 01000001 01001001 01001110 00100000 011000010 01110101 01110100 00100000 01110011 01110100 01101001 01101100 01101100 00100000 01110100 01101001 01101101 01100101 00101110 01000*10* 01000101 01001100 01001001 01000101 01010110 011001*00101 00101110 0101011 01101000 01100101 01110010 01100101 00100000 01101001 01110011 00100000 01000111 01001111 01001111 01000100 00100000 01101111 01110101 011110100 00100000 011110100 01101000 01100101 01110010 01100101 001011110 01010111 01100101 00100000 01101111 01110000 0111 0000 01101111 01110011 01100101 00100000 01000100 01000101 01000011 01000101 01010000 01010100 01001001 01001111 01001110 00101110 01000011 01101111 011011110 01100100 011110101 01101001 011110100 00100000 01000011 01001100 01001111 01010011 01001001 01001110 010001111 00101110

Now, straight up converting that into something readable isn't quite as straight forward as one would like. It's not divisible by 8. Selecting a few sections and converting will dump you quotes from

Beware the bearers of FALSE gifts & their BROKEN PROMISES. Much PAIN but still time. BELIEVE: There is GOOD out there.We OPpose DECEPTION. Conduit CLOSING ?

Is capitalization some sort of a clue?

(B) FALSE BROKEN PROMISES (M) PAIN BELIEVE (T) GOOD (W) OP DECEPTION CLOSING

Notice the space before the question-mark. Why is it there?

[elh40257]

I had told myself I'd not post again until something important happened but I must say: where the fuck do you actually download that file? It just wants me to use its exe (hahaha).

Here's an MD5 hash: e533ea51607916e7dfac6211a939a1fd

Link: https://mega.co.nz/#!soUH1QwB!3cBaiOmXMOItB5lwRhAkPCFTiXlbyr7FJX5VCCuwIZE

Enjoy.

e533ea51607916e7dfac6211a939a1fd - YES, IT IS!
Also see there: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=661781.msg7647910#msg7647910.

[arg-sidekick]

Is capitalization some sort of a clue?

FALSE BROKEN PROMISES (M) PAIN BELIEVE (T) GOOD (W) OP DECEPTION CLOSING

Notice the space before the question-mark. Why is it there?

No, caps are from the source too. The last space and ? are meant to be a "ding" or bell sound which is also in the source. Everything after the first ~94 bytes (I think that's the number) is exactly the same as the source. Think of it like the Space.mp4's extra space that turned into a 7z. The first ~90 bytes of the crop circle are the modded parts.

I'd love to be proven wrong and given another direction.

Also see there: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=661781.msg7647910#msg7647910.

Ah, I remember that now, but I'd try using another host in the future. If you've got to scroll past "download" links and things, your host is doing something very wrong.

EDIT: http://purviancepyramid.net/Message.html is an interesting link. Look at the bottom. Binary with S's every 8 chars. Consistant until the very last line. Thoughts?

EDIT: https://i.imgur.com/69BVtlq.jpg
That's the original crop circle. I'd like to think that the alien head is part of the password. But who knows. Also, edits don't count as posting, so:

LAST POST NOW, PROMISE.

[mirth23]

EDIT: http://purviancepyramid.net/Message.html is an interesting link. Look at the bottom. Binary with S's every 8 chars. Consistant until the very last line. Thoughts?

Isn't that just indicating the delimiters in the original circle? It was 8 red/green and then 1 blue, repeating.

Also, edits don't count as posting, so:

LAST POST NOW, PROMISE.

Ha! You can stop posting any time, I believe you!

So I suspect the binary is a rathole. In the first image, we had morse code that ended into gibberish. That could very well be what's going on here. That said, I don't know what to do with the initial morse code in its long form. We've got weird characters. That raises a red flag for me because, aside from executing hash functions, the solutions to date haven't actually involved complex manipulations. (Side thought: Maybe we can ROT the characters out? Perhaps ROT based on the number of turns in the spiral? I tried this already and it didn't seem to get anywhere but I may very well have done something wrong.)

If you'd like to come back around to my diff idea, you get a 16 character letter-only message to play with. Way friendlier! Unfortunately I can't seem to get any anagrams or anything particularly useful out of it, its ROTs, squaring/rotating it, or playing Numberwang: LMEKWMDEDNEVIWAF

[xELx]

I think that we should be looking at the "WOW O" portion of things. This little extra chunk of morse code is bugging me... looking at things like:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wow!_signal

THIS IS TOTALLY THE RIGHT DIRECTION.

Edited for how I actually felt. No lies. Srsly.

[Prospero]

I think that we should be looking at the "WOW O" portion of things. This little extra chunk of morse code is bugging me... looking at things like:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wow!_signal

I, however, think that's not the right direction.

You're right: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Wow_signal.jpg
That reveals Wow.JPG

[Lauda]

So you still have not solved this?

[mirth23]

I think that we should be looking at the "WOW O" portion of things. This little extra chunk of morse code is bugging me... looking at things like:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wow!_signal

I, however, think that's not the right direction.

You're right: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Wow_signal.jpg
That reveals Wow.JPG

Wow! Well done.

[xELx]

Damn son, what a fluke! hahahaha

To unlock Crops:

shax2 6EQUJ5 = 807779b76e88b7aa9abc84a126822f76c0f24a28b5eb2ea1baa435eb09f5c155

[micaman]

I think that we should be looking at the "WOW O" portion of things. This little extra chunk of morse code is bugging me... looking at things like:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wow!_signal

I, however, think that's not the right direction.

You're right: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Wow_signal.jpg
That reveals Wow.JPG

Great job.

[arg-sidekick]

its ROTs, squaring/rotating it, or playing Numberwang: LMEKWMDEDNEVIWAF

I too went down that route. I really, really couldn't find anything that ended up logical/a password for the 7z. I think we're just circling the drain. I hope we get the final hint soon. I can just hear CA getting more and more frustrated with us. "It's right there! Just do x and y, not a, b, c, d, e, f, g and ß!".

I believe we're all just over thinking things. I know I certainly am. I'll revisit your idea with some gusto shortly. Let me close some of my many, many tabs and I'll look into it.

EDIT: !!! WOW        .jpg

You're the man, xELx!

EDIT:

The original

https://i.imgur.com/ffRoQGv.jpg

The mod (large extra file inside.. again)

https://mega.co.nz/#!gpNDyDIL!FP6zdfjymlS9Y0eGimGTM0C4y47ykMncsCzkl-Z7uT0

MD5: e92ea08b9fa72d9659ba84cd66e4e534

[mirth23]

Given the acronym I'm slightly concerned that we'll end up on a World of Warcraft server next.

[Mitchell]

Wow.JPG is not an archive. Maybe it's a video file/music file? Anyone care to check. Nice work xELx!

[mtgox555]

The different part in this JPG is the "channel number" .....

[micaman]

The different part in this JPG is the "channel number" .....

Date: August 15, 1977 8:09:31PM (date of WOW signal detection)
Original filename: Wow1.tif
Clue: z69JZqlJn862D1ndx7oLVEMmV0lP1zewEeUCrsI7Roahzpeny7P

[Gatekeeper]

fantastic job to getting that password, i bet a few of us had tried so many things so close to it, mostly including the BABY in there as well, then it turns out to be just WOW! lol

[shorena]

Some of you might have wondered where I have been the last days.

I posted a .pdf file yesterday, that was removed by the mods. Not sure why, probably because it had no proper introduction and I used the first one click hoster that did not want my mail.

I though the name of the file "the_trail.pdf" was clue enough to what it is. It was not finished, it is not finished now, but it will serve for those that want to catch up.

The short version is not done yet, it might never be done in time, depending on the way this goes. The file is very large because of the pictures inside.

here are the files: https://mega.co.nz/#F!Nlo2QJ4T!lgKMM21_MUhG99BRbwZhHQ

@OP thanks, its art the way it should be. I learned a lot about myself the last days.