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Sparkception

Posted: Tue Mar 27, 2012 1:58 pm
by spartan64
If you had or hadn't noticed, Spark have been recently tweeting out on what seems to be encrypted binary code. Some believe it's a hint on their super secret project, but I believe it's something else of no importance. If you want to have a crack at it, here it is...

Code: Select all

00000001
01001001
10100111
11000010
00010110
11010000
00110101
00000100
Spark also mentioned that the codes cannot be simply converted into plain ASCII, otherwise it would have been too easy. You will have to invent the right formula. Currently the gwtor forums are having a serious go at it but I haven't seen any success yet.

Re: Sparkception

Posted: Tue Mar 27, 2012 3:33 pm
by Scott
Too bad Aro isn't around anymore. I think he's out making a career for himself or something :8):

I don't have any cryptography experience so I'm probably useless. We need math nerds.

Re: Sparkception

Posted: Tue Mar 27, 2012 3:46 pm
by spartan64
I'm having a go at writing up a program in java which could speed us up in the decoding.

Re: Sparkception

Posted: Tue Mar 27, 2012 3:48 pm
by Scott
spartan64 wrote:I'm having a go at writing up a program in java which could speed us up in the encryption.
You know what sort of encryption they're using?

Re: Sparkception

Posted: Tue Mar 27, 2012 3:53 pm
by spartan64
Scott wrote:
spartan64 wrote:I'm having a go at writing up a program in java which could speed us up in the encryption.
You know what sort of encryption they're using?
I mean decoding not encryption :8(: Just edited my previous post.

...and we don't know...

Using my program, I have converted these numbers into decimal just to make it easier.
Edit: It's best to convert in hex

1 49 a7 c2 16 d0 35 4

I presume that every number is supposed to be a letter forming an 8 letter word.
Scott wrote:Too bad Aro isn't around anymore. I think he's out making a career for himself or something :8):

I don't have any cryptography experience so I'm probably useless. We need math nerds.
Do you think you can still contact him?

Re: Sparkception

Posted: Tue Mar 27, 2012 5:06 pm
by Nitro
Very interesting..

Re: Sparkception

Posted: Tue Mar 27, 2012 5:22 pm
by Scott
spartan64 wrote:
Scott wrote:Too bad Aro isn't around anymore. I think he's out making a career for himself or something :8):

I don't have any cryptography experience so I'm probably useless. We need math nerds.
Do you think you can still contact him?
...I probably shouldn't. So, no.

We could always reverse engineer the process, thinking about possible answers and then ways to solve the puzzle to fit the possible answer.

Ex
8 Letter Words: StarWars, StarTrek, LucasArt, Republic, CloneWar, etc.

Re: Sparkception

Posted: Tue Mar 27, 2012 7:58 pm
by AllenMR
well heres a full writedown of wat we got right now, its nothing special and probably all of you have tipped this down by now, so after we got a couple of more codes it will be easier for us to decrypt a word, although i have been brainstorming on a twitt they did a while back were they explained a guy the process of a conversion and compilation as i believed, but i could be wrong...

Bin: Hex: char: Desc:
00000001 4 eot (End of transmission)
01001001 35 5
10100111 d0 Ð
11000010 16 so (Shift Out)
00010110 c2 Â
11010000 a7 §
00110101 49 i
00000100 1 soh (Start of heading)

Re: Sparkception

Posted: Tue Mar 27, 2012 8:31 pm
by MagisterQuis
Working under the assumption that each byte is an encoded ascii character, I've tried adding and xoring all numbers from 0-255 and a bunch of fibonacci numbers with no luck. Something always comes out unprintable.

Right before the EOT, they tweeted something about a comms snafu. It's possible we're missing data, as well.

Also, the sequence started with SOH and ended with EOT. Perhaps the SYN is for control and isn't printable?

Re: Sparkception

Posted: Tue Mar 27, 2012 9:18 pm
by AllenMR
we are better waiting for the next line of codes to see were it fits, something tells me they expect us to convert this to some kind of command line not just a phrase or word.

Re: Sparkception

Posted: Wed Mar 28, 2012 9:28 am
by Grpeephole303
this are the moments i wish i knew more about the Binary system. what would be more interesting is if the one who decoded the tweet got some sort of prize

Re: Sparkception

Posted: Wed Mar 28, 2012 1:53 pm
by RogueStarkiller
AllenMR wrote:well heres a full writedown of wat we got right now, its nothing special and probably all of you have tipped this down by now, so after we got a couple of more codes it will be easier for us to decrypt a word, although i have been brainstorming on a twitt they did a while back were they explained a guy the process of a conversion and compilation as i believed, but i could be wrong...

Bin: Hex: char: Desc:
00000001 4 eot (End of transmission)
01001001 35 5
10100111 d0 Ð
11000010 16 so (Shift Out)
00010110 c2 Â
11010000 a7 §
00110101 49 i
00000100 1 soh (Start of heading)
You need to switch your EOT with SOH. 00000001 is SOH and 00000100 is EOT. Also, John(Spark's twitter guy and CTO) said that the first hint(this whole series of binary codes) would be complete when an EOT was received. This is the whole first hint. He also said it was encrypted so simply converting it from one format to another will not work. I believe it's been salted.

Re: Sparkception

Posted: Thu Mar 29, 2012 11:44 am
by Terrabyte20xx
.....

I'm lost.

Re: Sparkception

Posted: Thu Mar 29, 2012 1:15 pm
by DarthRevan19
i been woorking on it but i found a little connection theres a "B" each time i translate it

Re: Sparkception

Posted: Thu Mar 29, 2012 1:29 pm
by DarthRevan19
of course i'm doing this by hand, and im in grade 10 so my maths that not great but i figure out B and A from it.(Maybe wrong just remember that) EDIT: im a bit stumped now i got 5 and i have no idea what it means, it could mean battlefront 3 is the fifth installement in the battlefront series. as before i might be wrong