ARG Puzzle with 3.5 BTC Private Key Prize, Game Over

[Mitchell]

So, has there been made any progress? Anyone care to update me?

[arg]

maybe we should try looking at it from other perspectives
xkcd.com/538/

Somehow I doubt rubber-hose cryptanalysis is part of the ARG. Probably best not to suggest that again.

So, has there been made any progress? Anyone care to update me?

Take a look at my partners summery like 3 posts up.

[Mitchell]

Take a look at my partners summery like 3 posts up.

Oh, I see. I totally missed that, thanks dude!

[LtPaxIV]

ok guys ime head to work now.i´ll be back in like 10 hours,by then it would be nice if someone could tell how to convert a string of digits to a privkey that can be imported to the qt wallet pls.

[shorena]

ok guys ime head to work now.i´ll be back in like 10 hours,by then it would be nice if someone could tell how to convert a string of digits to a privkey that can be imported to the qt wallet pls.

https://brainwallet.github.io/#converter

Converts almost everything to private keys if you want.

[arg]

I'm out of ideas, so here's a prediction (not a pre-committment).

Code:

2138a160e3ad80c80bf0aa748c96f5f452691e5d13e6a37df6195b52b0fc10b3

[ooxtcoo]

maybe it have something todo where the plot points show?
i have updated my tool to make dots instead of lines or both...



DOWNLOAD HERE : http://jau.cc/bitcoin/BAGIM.rar

[mirth23]

arg, thanks for the summary. Allow me to supplement it with some insane rambling.

There doesn't appear to be anything to open. Therefore we are either looking for a web/onion address of some kind, or we're at the final step: constructing the private bitcoin key.

My guess is that this is the last step. How do we get to a bitcoin key with the large amount of information currently in front of us? Also, how can we do this with simple transformations? We haven't been using excessively complex math to date.

My (somewhat hare-brained) notion is that the OP used oringinal data from the crop circle binary and the Wow code printout to do this. This might sound crazy from a security perspective, but it's also entirely feasible. Some combination of the alien messages could build the raw bytes of our private key, from which we can easily extract the private and public addresses. I got onto this idea because of OP's "wow + crops" hint. So, how could we combine the two data sources?

We have three hints built into the puzzle:
1) 0=0A=10BABYA=36WOWÐS

2) CHANNEL NUMBER, (TWO DIGITS, WRITTEN VERTICALLY).
z69JZqlJn862D1ndx7oLVEMmVOlP1zewEeUCrsI7Roahzpeny7P

3) the XMP data in Wow.JPG

One other possible hint source is the DoD game. There were added word fragments that went unused. Most notably, "Such Wow!", which I'll get to in a bit.

BREAKDOWNS

1) 0=0A=10BABYA=36WOWÐS

We didn't actually use most of the hidden morse code to move on to the next step. What could the rest of it mean?

0=0A: starting point is position 10 (0A hex->dec)? It just so happens that the overlaid message from OP ends just before the 10th octet of the binary alien message.

=10BABYA=: ? I have been puzzling over this for a while. It might be an end point to stop reading.

36: Not sure, but there's multiple instances of '36' in Wow.JPG. The first is a bit to the right of the Wow! signal itself. The other ones are all in the seconds column, which happens to be to column that the XMP is drawn alongside - and the XMP stops RIGHT at 36. Combine this with the use of "The Final Countdown" video, and I wonder if the seconds column itself was used as a raw data source.

WOW: we already used this to get to the next step. It could also imply "36 on the WOW file"

Ð: this is not a typo, it really is the Dogecoin symbol in morse code. This leads me to an alternate interpretation for 36WOW - it's "Such Wow!", the Dogecoin meme, like in the DoD game. 36=Such or So?

S: I added this in because one final morse letter is incidentally here before the original binary message resumes. Not sure if it actually means anything.

2a) CHANNEL NUMBER, (TWO DIGITS, WRITTEN VERTICALLY).

This was the original text, but "two digits, written vertically" sounds like a potential hint. Again, it specifically makes me wonder if we're supposed to be the seconds column from the time data. They are pairs of digits, written vertically.

2b) z69JZqlJn862D1ndx7oLVEMmVOlP1zewEeUCrsI7Roahzpeny7P

We've probably all hammered on this a lot. It doesn't transform into a private address. It doesn't rotate into anything useful. It's not clear how we'd use it as a cipher key, and it's not clear what we'd use it on if we did.

As outlined previously, I wonder if there's a message hidden in it. Things that particularly pop out are: 2D 1ndx 7oLVE ... P1ze ... U Crs I7 Roahz peny 7P

It might not include data for the puzzle solution (it's crossed out by the XMP) but I also think it's some sort of hint.

A (FAILED) ATTEMPT

0=0A=10BABYA=36WOWÐS

Let's interpret this to mean that we take 10 bytes of data from the crop circle, starting with the tenth (conveniently the first one unhidden by the puzzle data).

Code:

00100000 01100010 01100101 01100001 01110010 01100101 01110010 01110011 00100000 01101111

this gives me 20 hex characters: 2062656172657273206f

A private bitcoin key is 64 bytes, so I need another 12 hex. Let's grab a vertical series of timecodes from Wow.JPG, starting with the "36" that the blue dot points to (using the '36' from the morse code message). (Get it, "Final Countdown"?)

36 48 00 12 24 36 >> 2430000c1824
concatenate this with the above: 2062656172657273206f2430000c1824
public key of this is 1PKSpvbMJqFJ4DPuMbNsiGcp35guqwai3g

Nope.

Obviously, I'm not getting correct solutions here, but I wonder if something along these lines will get us there.

tl;dr: I think the real key is to correctly interpret 0=0A=10BABYA=36WOWÐS and z69JZqlJn862D1ndx7oLVEMmVOlP1zewEeUCrsI7Roahzpeny7P .

[itod]

ok guys ime head to work now.i´ll be back in like 10 hours,by then it would be nice if someone could tell how to convert a string of digits to a privkey that can be imported to the qt wallet pls.

Since this subject is confusing to some, let me clarify the issue. You can convert a string of digits to private key in two ways:
1) To treat it as a string (passphrase) and convert it to WIF representation of the private key
2) To treat it as a number and convert it to WIF representation of the private key.

Step 2) is often confusing because the private key is a number. What we usually consider a private key (WIF representation) is just a full-proof way to import that number into a wallet. Lets clear all this with the example. Suppose you have a private key 1337. Private keys are usually much bigger numbers, generated with good random number generator to be extremely hard to guess, but for this example we will use this number. In Bitcoin that number represent the number of times we do a multiplication of Generator point, but we will not get into details, if somebody is interested in inner workings of this mechanism he can see the details here:
A (relatively easy to understand) primer on elliptic curve cryptography

We'll first go with the option 1), treat it as a passphrase. Go to https://brainwallet.github.io/, go to 'Get Address From'->'Passphrase', type 1337 and you'll get uncompressed WIF representation: '5JXYuGrwSbyp8sKBmiLcvokqSnxALPjKWQMPJXZYyBWKof7c2pk' and uncompressed Public address '15w3bGS6L2EGXamLPNEPfPUWHCnjqZQ35v'. There's also compressed WIF representation 'KzMqoj1RJ1Pm3j5GYMTbaVNUpqpUCbKngn4ySMtg6yNRzjRpS4oZ' and Address '1HuFPmbS43LTqoy24jEGKz41wVcdTUPzfF', but compressed form is rearly used. This means that every private key controls two Bitcoin addresses. If you look at the history of address associated with this private key https://blockchain.info/address/15w3bGS6L2EGXamLPNEPfPUWHCnjqZQ35v you'll se that some genius tested and sent 1337 satoshies to this address few months ago, and they were stolen within two seconds. It's also interesting to note that by convention sites like Brainwallet only use one (not two) sha256('passphrase') calculation for generating the number from the passphrase, I don't know if this will have any effect in solving this puzzle.

Now we will go to option 2) treating our private key 1337 as a number, not a passphrase. You have to convert this decimal number to hex in oreder to use it this way, since 1337 == 0x539 go to 'Get Address From'->'Secret Exponent' and put 539 in there, you'll get '5HpHagT65TZzG1PH3CSu63k8DbpvD8s5ip4nEB3kEsrgmY3GRe4' as uncompressed WIF representation and '1MSMbtdPMYbTZscPRtd3FsADKtarct84Eo' as a Bitcoin address.

I hope this clears things up.

[arg]

maybe it have something todo where the plot points show?
i have updated my tool to make dots instead of lines or both...

If anybody else doesn't use windows, here's what the app looks like in action.

https://i.imgur.com/vXmHicQ.gif

[cinnamon_carter]

not that i have time for this but has anyone considered the original frequency in mhz that the wow signal was received on?

[rgm108]

Excellent summary as always.
Let's hope the ideas lead somewhere

arg, thanks for the summary. Allow me to supplement it with some insane rambling.

There doesn't appear to be anything to open. Therefore we are either looking for a web/onion address of some kind, or we're at the final step: constructing the private bitcoin key.

My guess is that this is the last step. How do we get to a bitcoin key with the large amount of information currently in front of us? Also, how can we do this with simple transformations? We haven't been using excessively complex math to date.

My (somewhat hare-brained) notion is that the OP used oringinal data from the crop circle binary and the Wow code printout to do this. This might sound crazy from a security perspective, but it's also entirely feasible. Some combination of the alien messages could build the raw bytes of our private key, from which we can easily extract the private and public addresses. I got onto this idea because of OP's "wow + crops" hint. So, how could we combine the two data sources?

We have three hints built into the puzzle:
1) 0=0A=10BABYA=36WOWÐS

2) CHANNEL NUMBER, (TWO DIGITS, WRITTEN VERTICALLY).
z69JZqlJn862D1ndx7oLVEMmVOlP1zewEeUCrsI7Roahzpeny7P

3) the XMP data in Wow.JPG

One other possible hint source is the DoD game. There were added word fragments that went unused. Most notably, "Such Wow!", which I'll get to in a bit.

BREAKDOWNS

1) 0=0A=10BABYA=36WOWÐS

We didn't actually use most of the hidden morse code to move on to the next step. What could the rest of it mean?

0=0A: starting point is position 10 (0A hex->dec)? It just so happens that the overlaid message from OP ends just before the 10th octet of the binary alien message.

=10BABYA=: ? I have been puzzling over this for a while. It might be an end point to stop reading.

36: Not sure, but there's multiple instances of '36' in Wow.JPG. The first is a bit to the right of the Wow! signal itself. The other ones are all in the seconds column, which happens to be to column that the XMP is drawn alongside - and the XMP stops RIGHT at 36. Combine this with the use of "The Final Countdown" video, and I wonder if the seconds column itself was used as a raw data source.

WOW: we already used this to get to the next step. It could also imply "36 on the WOW file"

Ð: this is not a typo, it really is the Dogecoin symbol in morse code. This leads me to an alternate interpretation for 36WOW - it's "Such Wow!", the Dogecoin meme, like in the DoD game. 36=Such or So?

S: I added this in because one final morse letter is incidentally here before the original binary message resumes. Not sure if it actually means anything.

2a) CHANNEL NUMBER, (TWO DIGITS, WRITTEN VERTICALLY).

This was the original text, but "two digits, written vertically" sounds like a potential hint. Again, it specifically makes me wonder if we're supposed to be the seconds column from the time data. They are pairs of digits, written vertically.

2b) z69JZqlJn862D1ndx7oLVEMmVOlP1zewEeUCrsI7Roahzpeny7P

We've probably all hammered on this a lot. It doesn't transform into a private address. It doesn't rotate into anything useful. It's not clear how we'd use it as a cipher key, and it's not clear what we'd use it on if we did.

As outlined previously, I wonder if there's a message hidden in it. Things that particularly pop out are: 2D 1ndx 7oLVE ... P1ze ... U Crs I7 Roahz peny 7P

It might not include data for the puzzle solution (it's crossed out by the XMP) but I also think it's some sort of hint.

A (FAILED) ATTEMPT

0=0A=10BABYA=36WOWÐS

Let's interpret this to mean that we take 10 bytes of data from the crop circle, starting with the tenth (conveniently the first one unhidden by the puzzle data).

Code:

00100000 01100010 01100101 01100001 01110010 01100101 01110010 01110011 00100000 01101111

this gives me 20 hex characters: 2062656172657273206f

A private bitcoin key is 64 bytes, so I need another 12 hex. Let's grab a vertical series of timecodes from Wow.JPG, starting with the "36" that the blue dot points to (using the '36' from the morse code message). (Get it, "Final Countdown"?)

36 48 00 12 24 36 >> 2430000c1824
concatenate this with the above: 2062656172657273206f2430000c1824
public key of this is 1PKSpvbMJqFJ4DPuMbNsiGcp35guqwai3g

Nope.

Obviously, I'm not getting correct solutions here, but I wonder if something along these lines will get us there.

tl;dr: I think the real key is to correctly interpret 0=0A=10BABYA=36WOWÐS and z69JZqlJn862D1ndx7oLVEMmVOlP1zewEeUCrsI7Roahzpeny7P .

[S4VV4S]

Guys does anybody have an image of the crop with the new morse code?

[arg]

Guys does anybody have an image of the crop with the new morse code?

https://i.imgur.com/9fvOEZq.jpg

[S4VV4S]

Guys does anybody have an image of the crop with the new morse code?

-snip-

Thank you

[S4VV4S]

Guys does anybody have an image of the crop with the new morse code?

-snip-

Thank you

How did you guys convert this to morse from binary?

[shorena]

Guys does anybody have an image of the crop with the new morse code?

-snip-

Thank you

How did you guys convert this to morse from binary?

They didnt. It was decoded as binary IIRC

here is the post you are looking for: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=661781.msg7662736#msg7662736

[S4VV4S]

Guys does anybody have an image of the crop with the new morse code?

-snip-

Thank you

How did you guys convert this to morse from binary?

They didnt. It was decoded as binary IIRC

Please explain, because I saw a couple of versions of the code translations and I will like to try myself.

Thank you

[cryptozim]

=10BABYA=: ? I have been puzzling over this for a while. It might be an end point to stop reading.

tl;dr: I think the real key is to correctly interpret 0=0A=10BABYA=36WOWÐS and z69JZqlJn862D1ndx7oLVEMmVOlP1zewEeUCrsI7Roahzpeny7P .

I'm still not quite sure what to use it on, but I'm pretty sure the 0=0A=10BABYA=36 is a character mapping.
0=0
A=10
BabyA=36. Morse code has no lowercase, so she called the lowercase 'a' BabyA.

This also jives with the background story for Wow!.jpg. The numbers/letters are intensities:

The circled alphanumeric code 6EQUJ5 describes the intensity variation of the signal. A space denotes an intensity between 0 and 1, the numbers 1 to 9 denote the correspondingly numbered intensities (from 1.0 to 10.0), and intensities of 10.0 and above are denoted by a letter ('A' corresponds to intensities between 10.0 and 11.0, 'B' to 11.0 to 12.0, etc.). The value 'U' (an intensity between 30.0 and 31.0) was the highest detected by the radio telescope; on a linear scale it was over 30 times louder than normal deep space.

Edit:

The code from Wow.jpg (z69JZqlJn862D1ndx7oLVEMmVolP1zewEeUCrsI7Roahzpeny7P) maps to the following numbers using the above character mapping:

Code:

61 6 9 19 35 52 47 19 49 8 6 2 13 1 49 39 59 7 50 21 31 14 22 48 31 50 47 25 1 61 40 58 14 40 30 12 53 54 18 7 27 50 36 43 61 51 40 49 60 7 25

[mirth23]

=10BABYA=: ? I have been puzzling over this for a while. It might be an end point to stop reading.
tl;dr: I think the real key is to correctly interpret 0=0A=10BABYA=36WOWÐS and z69JZqlJn862D1ndx7oLVEMmVOlP1zewEeUCrsI7Roahzpeny7P .

I'm still not quite sure what to use it on, but I'm pretty sure the 0=0A=10BABYA=36 is a character mapping.
0=0
A=10
BabyA=36. Morse code has no lowercase, so she called the lowercase 'a' BabyA.

OH. It's a description of a base58 character mapping. These are the valid base58 characters. 0 isn't in it, 10 is 10, and a is 36:

edit: Upon closer inspection, I made a transcription error and base62 is far more likely. I agree with pongo below: 0=0, A=10, a=36