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Topic: ARG Puzzle with 3.5 BTC Private Key Prize, Game Over - page 96. (Read 99503 times)

hero member
Activity: 854
Merit: 500
Nope..
This may sound silly, but I think she's trying to say that one of us, S4VV4S most likey, had the answer, clue, or piece of the puzzle we're missing.  I watched the video and she's very pretty and extremely intelligent.  I like her comments.  Definitely someone to follow.  Wonder if she'd paint a picture of me with question marks floating out of my head.

So, here I am twiddling my thumbs trying to think what to do next.  
copper member
Activity: 1498
Merit: 1528
No I dont escrow anymore.
The gibberish section at the end of the morse code (after "STOP WORDS") was caused by an em-dash accidentally being put into the mix instead of a regular dash. Here is the correct sequence and translation:

- .-.. .-- --. ---. -. -.-- .- . ..-. -.. -- .... - .... -- . - -. -.-- - .-- - . .-- - .--. ---. -.- . ..- . .- .-.. . -. . -.. .-.. .- .--
TLWG(---.)NYAEFDMHTHMETNYTWTEWTP(---.)KEUEALENEDLAW

Not sure if this was translated correctly from the green/red dots due to the fact that there is still an unknown character.


And here is just that section reversed:
--. -. ..-. ..- . .- . ..-. -. . -.. . -.- .--- .--. - --. . - --. - --.- .- - . -- .... - .... -- ..- .-.. . -. --.- .- .--- .-- --. ..-. -
GNFUEAEFNEDEKJPTGETGTQATEMHTHMULENQAJWGFT


I dont think there is more:

Code:
---Cesarshift by 0:
TLWGNYAEFDMHTHMETNYTWTEWTPKEUEALENEDLAW
---Cesarshift by 1:
SKVFMXZDECLGSGLDSMXSVSDVSOJDTDZKDMDCKZV
---Cesarshift by 2:
RJUELWYCDBKFRFKCRLWRURCURNICSCYJCLCBJYU
---Cesarshift by 3:
QITDKVXBCAJEQEJBQKVQTQBTQMHBRBXIBKBAIXT
---Cesarshift by 4:
PHSCJUWABZIDPDIAPJUPSPASPLGAQAWHAJAZHWS
---Cesarshift by 5:
OGRBITVZAYHCOCHZOITOROZROKFZPZVGZIZYGVR
---Cesarshift by 6:
NFQAHSUYZXGBNBGYNHSNQNYQNJEYOYUFYHYXFUQ
---Cesarshift by 7:
MEPZGRTXYWFAMAFXMGRMPMXPMIDXNXTEXGXWETP
---Cesarshift by 8:
LDOYFQSWXVEZLZEWLFQLOLWOLHCWMWSDWFWVDSO
---Cesarshift by 9:
KCNXEPRVWUDYKYDVKEPKNKVNKGBVLVRCVEVUCRN
---Cesarshift by 10:
JBMWDOQUVTCXJXCUJDOJMJUMJFAUKUQBUDUTBQM
---Cesarshift by 11:
IALVCNPTUSBWIWBTICNILITLIEZTJTPATCTSAPL
---Cesarshift by 12:
HZKUBMOSTRAVHVASHBMHKHSKHDYSISOZSBSRZOK
---Cesarshift by 13:
GYJTALNRSQZUGUZRGALGJGRJGCXRHRNYRARQYNJ
---Cesarshift by 14:
FXISZKMQRPYTFTYQFZKFIFQIFBWQGQMXQZQPXMI
---Cesarshift by 15:
EWHRYJLPQOXSESXPEYJEHEPHEAVPFPLWPYPOWLH
---Cesarshift by 16:
DVGQXIKOPNWRDRWODXIDGDOGDZUOEOKVOXONVKG
---Cesarshift by 17:
CUFPWHJNOMVQCQVNCWHCFCNFCYTNDNJUNWNMUJF
---Cesarshift by 18:
BTEOVGIMNLUPBPUMBVGBEBMEBXSMCMITMVMLTIE
---Cesarshift by 19:
ASDNUFHLMKTOAOTLAUFADALDAWRLBLHSLULKSHD
---Cesarshift by 20:
ZRCMTEGKLJSNZNSKZTEZCZKCZVQKAKGRKTKJRGC
---Cesarshift by 21:
YQBLSDFJKIRMYMRJYSDYBYJBYUPJZJFQJSJIQFB
---Cesarshift by 22:
XPAKRCEIJHQLXLQIXRCXAXIAXTOIYIEPIRIHPEA
---Cesarshift by 23:
WOZJQBDHIGPKWKPHWQBWZWHZWSNHXHDOHQHGODZ
---Cesarshift by 24:
VNYIPACGHFOJVJOGVPAVYVGYVRMGWGCNGPGFNCY
---Cesarshift by 25:
UMXHOZBFGENIUINFUOZUXUFXUQLFVFBMFOFEMBX

and reversed.


Code:
---Cesarshift by 0:
GNFUEAEFNEDEKJPTGETGTQATEMHTHMULENQAJWGFT
---Cesarshift by 1:
FMETDZDEMDCDJIOSFDSFSPZSDLGSGLTKDMPZIVFES
---Cesarshift by 2:
ELDSCYCDLCBCIHNRECREROYRCKFRFKSJCLOYHUEDR
---Cesarshift by 3:
DKCRBXBCKBABHGMQDBQDQNXQBJEQEJRIBKNXGTDCQ
---Cesarshift by 4:
CJBQAWABJAZAGFLPCAPCPMWPAIDPDIQHAJMWFSCBP
---Cesarshift by 5:
BIAPZVZAIZYZFEKOBZOBOLVOZHCOCHPGZILVERBAO
---Cesarshift by 6:
AHZOYUYZHYXYEDJNAYNANKUNYGBNBGOFYHKUDQAZN
---Cesarshift by 7:
ZGYNXTXYGXWXDCIMZXMZMJTMXFAMAFNEXGJTCPZYM
---Cesarshift by 8:
YFXMWSWXFWVWCBHLYWLYLISLWEZLZEMDWFISBOYXL
---Cesarshift by 9:
XEWLVRVWEVUVBAGKXVKXKHRKVDYKYDLCVEHRANXWK
---Cesarshift by 10:
WDVKUQUVDUTUAZFJWUJWJGQJUCXJXCKBUDGQZMWVJ
---Cesarshift by 11:
VCUJTPTUCTSTZYEIVTIVIFPITBWIWBJATCFPYLVUI
---Cesarshift by 12:
UBTISOSTBSRSYXDHUSHUHEOHSAVHVAIZSBEOXKUTH
---Cesarshift by 13:
TASHRNRSARQRXWCGTRGTGDNGRZUGUZHYRADNWJTSG
---Cesarshift by 14:
SZRGQMQRZQPQWVBFSQFSFCMFQYTFTYGXQZCMVISRF
---Cesarshift by 15:
RYQFPLPQYPOPVUAERPEREBLEPXSESXFWPYBLUHRQE
---Cesarshift by 16:
QXPEOKOPXONOUTZDQODQDAKDOWRDRWEVOXAKTGQPD
---Cesarshift by 17:
PWODNJNOWNMNTSYCPNCPCZJCNVQCQVDUNWZJSFPOC
---Cesarshift by 18:
OVNCMIMNVMLMSRXBOMBOBYIBMUPBPUCTMVYIREONB
---Cesarshift by 19:
NUMBLHLMULKLRQWANLANAXHALTOAOTBSLUXHQDNMA
---Cesarshift by 20:
MTLAKGKLTKJKQPVZMKZMZWGZKSNZNSARKTWGPCMLZ
---Cesarshift by 21:
LSKZJFJKSJIJPOUYLJYLYVFYJRMYMRZQJSVFOBLKY
---Cesarshift by 22:
KRJYIEIJRIHIONTXKIXKXUEXIQLXLQYPIRUENAKJX
---Cesarshift by 23:
JQIXHDHIQHGHNMSWJHWJWTDWHPKWKPXOHQTDMZJIW
---Cesarshift by 24:
IPHWGCGHPGFGMLRVIGVIVSCVGOJVJOWNGPSCLYIHV
---Cesarshift by 25:
HOGVFBFGOFEFLKQUHFUHURBUFNIUINVMFORBKXHGU


I also think its pretty safe to assume that the rest is just noise.

We have the numbers and letters in the foreground and got the address. The rest of them gave us nothing.
We have the dots and got "they can not attack what they do not see". The rest looks random to me.
I also doubt that any information are embedded digitally into the picture. Its a piece of art that will be one day in gallary. Wouldnt it suck to tell, well yeah it only holds part of the solution, the rest was added later?

hero member
Activity: 854
Merit: 500
Nope..
Transaction 0.29869595

A A A ART EVIL DAY

Seems fitting...
full member
Activity: 183
Merit: 100
The gibberish section at the end of the morse code (after "STOP WORDS") was caused by an em-dash accidentally being put into the mix instead of a regular dash. Here is the correct sequence and translation:

- .-.. .-- --. ---. -. -.-- .- . ..-. -.. -- .... - .... -- . - -. -.-- - .-- - . .-- - .--. ---. -.- . ..- . .- .-.. . -. . -.. .-.. .- .--
TLWG(---.)NYAEFDMHTHMETNYTWTEWTP(---.)KEUEALENEDLAW

Not sure if this was translated correctly from the green/red dots due to the fact that there is still an unknown character.


And here is just that section reversed:
--. -. ..-. ..- . .- . ..-. -. . -.. . -.- .--- .--. - --. . - --. - --.- .- - . -- .... - .... -- ..- .-.. . -. --.- .- .--- .-- --. ..-. -
GNFUEAEFNEDEKJPTGETGTQATEMHTHMULENQAJWGFT


hero member
Activity: 812
Merit: 500
hero member
Activity: 854
Merit: 500
Nope..
I have to underline one important thing: Almost all posters in this thread are operating under assumption that private key must be 52 characters long, starting with '5' and following by 51 characters. This is completely wrong. It's just a WIF representation of the private key, one of many formats private key can have. Essentially, private key is any integer starting from 1 and ending with 0xFFFF FFFF FFFF FFFF FFFF FFFF FFFF FFFE BAAE DCE6 AF48 A03B BFD2 5E8C D036 4141, see explanation here: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Private_key.

I believe this wrong assumption was started by incorrect naming of the textboxes on the brainwallet.org website, which name 'WIF representation' as 'Private Key', while the real private key is what they call 'Secret Exponent'. In ECDSA cryptographic sense that integer is just the number of times we dot-multiply Generator point with itself, and X and Y coordinate of the resulting point being our public key.

So, people, you are wasting time looking for a 52-character string starting with '5', you should be looking for a number.

Hi, and thanks for adding but I think you might be wrong....
First of all 51 char priv keys start with 5.
52 char prib keys start with K or L (believe me I found quite a few).

Last, I don't believe (personally) that we are looking for something like that, I think we are looking for a keyword or key-prhase that will reveal the priv key.
But that is just my opinion.

None the less, thanks for adding Wink

nope, itod is right. a private key is just a number which can be represented in different encodings, WIF being only one of them.

Is there a resource for all the possible encoding?  Admittedly, I'm getting confused with all the different attempts occurring.

This is like eating gummy bears.  Just can't put them down or stop.
sr. member
Activity: 345
Merit: 500
There is a lot of data posted in this topic by the users, not all is correctly translated/converted.
You should always check it yourself if you think the idea is correct.
member
Activity: 112
Merit: 10
Do not rely solely on Users for solves, double check solves for user errors: #checkuser404

Are we working from faulty information? Is there a solve we're working on that is incorrect? It was assumed the 404 was in reference to urls, but the full text makes it sound like there's a user error in something that has been solved.

It's probably a good idea for everyone to take a second or third look at the CSV that we've generated, especially the letters that are not in the known public bitcoin address. There may be some incorrect transcriptions (IMO, several of the characters are ambiguous if we are dealing with case sensitivity). It's entirely possible that some of the data we've been using is incorrect.

Quote
- Embedded morse code has been solved: "They cannot attack what they DO not see"

Glad OP clarified this, I mistyped this at one point and it propagated wrongly through some replies. I corrected my original error up above.

As a side note, given that the difference between "can" and "do" is semantically negligible, it makes me think that the exact wording of the phrase is important.

Quote
The crossbar is awfully low on the 't's in the plaintext code. Could these be plus-signs instead?

That's an interesting possibility. If it is a + sign, then it's from a larger character set than we've been assuming, or is otherwise meaningful.

Quote
I don't think subtle color shifts or artifacts will be part of the code. Any good artist knows that digitization, image compression, and viewing on different monitors can greatly shift the colors and subtlety of these things.

I disagree. With the kind of analysis we've been doing, we can pull out the same results across platforms and across bitmap manipulation tools. All it would take is for the OP to have barely compressed it and then check to make sure that everything worked before posting to embed this sort of information. I don't know if that's what she did do, but it's certainly within the realm of possibility.

Quote from: prospero
If OP made no mistakes, then all the typos in the morse code were intentional errors. Guess we should expect more of that type of obfuscation.

Which morse typos?
full member
Activity: 194
Merit: 100
Updated opening post:

Quote
Update 6/28:

OP made no mistakes.

- Embedded morse code has been solved: "They cannot attack what they DO not see"

If OP made no mistakes, then all the typos in the morse code were intentional errors. Guess we should expect more of that type of obfuscation.
legendary
Activity: 1974
Merit: 1077
^ Will code for Bitcoins
Updated opening post:

Quote
Update 6/28:

Do not rely solely on Users for solves, double check solves for user errors: #checkuser404

OP made no mistakes.
 
confirmed:

- Public Address has been solved: 1HXUobwcB19cGDrghuh42HDdJdJvrJUEra

- Embedded morse code has been solved: "They cannot attack what they DO not see"

No more clues. Good Bye and Good Luck.
full member
Activity: 183
Merit: 100
Brain dump:

Do not rely solely on Users for solves, double check solves for user errors: #checkuser404

Are we working from faulty information? Is there a solve we're working on that is incorrect? It was assumed the 404 was in reference to urls, but the full text makes it sound like there's a user error in something that has been solved.

- Embedded morse code has been solved: "They cannot attack what they DO not see"

Not "partially solved." "Solved." Does this mean there's nothing left to work with in the morse code?



Other thoughts:
Could the triangle be pointing at Cody Wilson instead of the blue dot?

I previously said that "They cannot attack what they cannot see" could be a red herring. If it's not, could the triangle be pointing at something hidden? Maybe a grid point, if you extend the grid behind Cody and Amir?

The crossbar is awfully low on the 't's in the plaintext code. Could these be plus-signs instead?

I don't think subtle color shifts or artifacts will be part of the code. Any good artist knows that digitization, image compression, and viewing on different monitors can greatly shift the colors and subtlety of these things.

The thread title says "...BTC Private Key Prize." I don't think we're looking for a passphrase or Dark Wallet key. I believe it will be a regular Bitcoin private key.

sr. member
Activity: 345
Merit: 500
Here's a chat with OP from a couple weeks ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0N4hq4fVAnw

From 37:10 - 39:30 she talks a bit about the sorts of things that presumably inspired her to make this puzzle.

Around 56:00 she talks about the series of bitcoin portratis she's doing, which this is one of.
I strongly  encourage you to watch this video, if you wants clues. I'm not saying about this puzzle in particular, but about the way she sees art and her work.

At first i thought the picture might hide some qr code, but if you watch the video, you'll see she would never do that.
I believe she mentions she was working on some huge 5x8 ft canvas, so i'm not sure if our picture is a photo or a digitalization or originally digital.
If she used some sort of invisible UV ink, we will never get that digitally, right?

She talks about smoothly merging lots of layers and adding sculputural elements as well as text.
So i don't think we're getting a private key, we are just starting.

I believe she put a lot of work and effort on this, and the result is exactly what she looks for: mixes beautiful art and tech, brings people like us together breaking our heads in this quest. I'm loving it.

This piece of art has had more eyes looking at it for more time than many others considered more valuable.
The more time it stays unbreakable, the more value it will have.

full member
Activity: 183
Merit: 100
Okay, after thinking more about this, maybe it is "STOP WORDS" in the message. Two definitions I found:

Quote
In computing, stop words are words which are filtered out prior to, or after, processing of natural language data (text).

Quote
Sometimes, some extremely common words which would appear to be of little value in helping select documents matching a user need are excluded from the vocabulary entirely.

So, maybe either the morse code is a red herring with no value to the overall decryption, or they are used to filter some other information in some way?
legendary
Activity: 1778
Merit: 1043
#Free market
Any news?
legendary
Activity: 1974
Merit: 1077
^ Will code for Bitcoins
There sure is a lot of artifacts around the borders, what do you guys think? intentional or just jpeg compression?

Probably jpeg compression.

When I reed "...what they do not see" the area of the picture behind the two portraits comes to mind. We can not see what's behind them. Maybe there is a need to reconstruct that background with visible data.
jr. member
Activity: 44
Merit: 12



There sure is a lot of artifacts around the borders, what do you guys think? intentional or just jpeg compression?

also the concept of white comes up quite often:
-ytcoinartist. yt=white
-follow the rabbit down the white hole
-in the original image the borders of the image are dark and become whiter as we get to the center and the pyramid does look like it is falling in a white hole.

member
Activity: 89
Merit: 11
Quote
- embedded morse code: "They cannot attack what they DO not see," has been solved.
Why is there a comma? Am I going paranoid?
newbie
Activity: 26
Merit: 0
At this point OP believes we have all the data we need to reach at least the next step.  Pretty sure we will not be receiving anymore clues for a while.  This damn puzzle has consumed my life now for several days.  I am seriously bummed that I am leaving on a cruise tomorrow for 7 days and will  probably miss the next steps.  Although I am now very very tempted to pay a stupid premium for internet access while on the boat.  Hell that is a first world problem if ever there was one.  It also appears the morse code is completely solved based on the OPs last update.  I think the next strategy is in looking at the remaining alpha numeric that are not part of the plaintext address.  I've been looking at all of the standard transpositions and nothing is clicking.  Possibly a base change.  I have converted everything to hex, decimal, reversed it, flipped the hex values, reassembled.. nothing.  Analysis of the remaining alpha numerics  show a pretty random distribution which is usually indicative of a cipher, meaning a plaintext transposition will not work due to the frequency of letters and numbers does not seem to match typical language pattern.
legendary
Activity: 826
Merit: 1002
amarha
Just a question.. Is it possible to create a valid priv-key from collecting some random data?

It is possible to generate private key out of any data, even out of unreadable binary blob. Private key is by common agreement just the result of sha256() function of that data.

Great, thanks. I'm learning right now.

Me too. I wasn't aware of that. Interesting how much you can pick up from threads like these where everyone is just spilling their brains.
staff
Activity: 1718
Merit: 1206
Yield.App
Just a question.. Is it possible to create a valid priv-key from collecting some random data?

It is possible to generate private key out of any data, even out of unreadable binary blob. Private key is by common agreement just the result of sha256() function of that data.

Great, thanks. I'm learning right now.
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