The Fate of the Cabal

[The Wild West Pyro]

Erik? (Duh.)

It's far from over, anyway. There's this image he's talking about (already bugging Mr. A), and I'm not sure we're done with the grille - it says "shift it to the right", and I don't think we did that. That's as far as I can push it right now, as I'm going home soon. More to come later.

Also, c'mon Erik - that was a textbook example of known plaintext attack, you shouldn't do stuff like that in secure communication. Unless we were intended to find the key by ourselves, I Sequence-Broke here.

Oh well, help me with Suzy, would you?

[narrativedilettante]

Excellent work, Dryu. A lime for you.



Now, to see what Mr. Administrator has to show us.

[Dryunya]

As I said, I don't think we're done. I tried to apply the hint about shifting the grille, and I checked all possible combinations of rotations and reflections. So far, nothing new. The cipher was easier. >_>

I think there is enough word salad for at least one more message.

Also, why would Erik send a message (to us!) on Don Juan's behalf? I even got confused and missed that it was from Don Juan at all.

[WackyMeetsPractical]

So....Did anybody ask A to reveal the image?

[Pixelmage]

Dryu did.

[Dryunya]

I did. Waiting.

Also, why would Erik send a message (to us!) on Don Juan's behalf?

Good question, me. Good question indeed.
That's because he didn't. The true message is as follows:

Grille shifted to the right

grille-solved.png (10.4 KiB) Viewed 2157 times

Much better. I am not Don Juan, but I need to cover my tracks. Ask Mr. Cosby about the key to success.

Who's smart? You're smart, me! Have a cookie!

Okay, technical details. I did shift the grille to the right, as the hint said - this time I simply was more careful. Also note that in "I am", 'I' is actually 'l'. The grille can be moved so that 'i' translates to itself, but then 'key' loses its 'y'. I think we get the point anyway.

Oh. OOOH.
Bill Cosby Quotes

I don't know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody.

Yep, I sequence-broke all right.

Another hint in hindsight: "This is failure". And this ^ is the key to it. Lol, so subtle!

[WackyMeetsPractical]

Great job Dryu. Gosh, that is some clever puzzle making. Hiding two hidden messages in one longer message? I'm really impressed.

[Blurred_9L]

Awesome Dryu! Thanks for the help, I guess we just wait for cAke to answer then...

[S_o_S]

Dryu, you absolute king <3

I think the time has come that I can post this publicly. Morgan requested that I not post an email she sent me, shortly after Pan's trial began. I did, however, discuss it with several others, notably Qara and Pixel. She knew that there was a traitor in the Cabal, and she didn't think he knew that she knew. It is as follows:

Dearest Joshua,

I must ask you not to post this email, as there are some in the Cabal who might be upset by it.

You mistake our actions with Pan. Does anything in that chat say that we were the ones who removed the audio? That would be the prosecutor's doing. That we had access to it does not damn us. We do not own xovr.net.

Besides, both the Cat and Pan claim that those pieces that led to the Pheeble archive were sent to them. Now who on earth could have sent them, I wonder? He doesn’t think I know, but I do.

Morgan

[Victin]

Awesome Dryu!

[Victin]

Sorry for double-posting, but it's there.

[Sicon112]

Just going to say that Erik is still annoying me because I feel as though he is foisting responsibility for HIS actions off onto others, namely his author. Sure, not really important, but every time I read that guy's excuses it ticks me off.

[Dryunya]

I had to get up early in the morning, so I checked for updates.

THIS INFORMATION WAS LIKELY SENT BY A CABAL MEMBER. IT SEEMED TO BE A FOOL'S ERRAND WHEN WE RECEIVED IT SOME TIME AGO. WE QUARANTINED THE FILE IN CASE IT WAS DANGEROUS. HOWEVER, IN LIGHT OF THEIR ACTIONS RECENTLY, YOU ARE WELCOME TO ANALYZE THE IMAGE.

IN ORDER TO ASSIST YOU IN YOUR ANALYSIS, WE SUGGEST THAT YOU EXAMINE THE MESSAGE WHICH LED TO IT TO DIVINE ANY CLUES ABOUT HOW IT MIGHT GIVE YOU THE INFORMATION INSIDE.

END EMAIL.

"A shadow under the ice" poster

Shadow poster.png (105.45 KiB) Viewed 2096 times

Yes, it's as small and pixelated as it is.

For the record, I don't know of a way to attach files to PNGs, as it's possible with JPGs. So, I leave the steganographical stuff to you, while I go back to sleep. =P

[Blurred_9L]

Tried opening the file as a .txt, that didn't work.

Tried applying a ones' complement to each byte in the image. That didn't yield any results too...

Finally, I tried to reverse a process that I found on the internet to hide files on an image. Basically, you just change the file type to .rar. That didn't work either, winrar said that the file was damaged and couldn't open it.

So... any other ideas, I'm not really good at this figuring out stuff. Though there might be something in the pdf that we have overlooked?

[Dryunya]

Well, I tried to read metadata, view it as plain-text, and check it visually for clues (without photoshop). The renaming trick only works with JPGs, as I said.

Use an open mind.

IN ORDER TO ASSIST YOU IN YOUR ANALYSIS, WE SUGGEST THAT YOU EXAMINE THE MESSAGE WHICH LED TO IT TO DIVINE ANY CLUES ABOUT HOW IT MIGHT GIVE YOU THE INFORMATION INSIDE.

So yeah. Let's work with that. Or maybe there are more hints in the pdf.
"Use" and open mind sounds suspicious. It led me to believe that "open mind" is a program or some other tool, but I failed to google anything up, and it would be hard if it is, because it's a common expression.

UPD: Blurred pointed that part out:

I do not believe that my position and yours are identical, but neither are they binary opposites.

We may have to do something with that.

[Blurred_9L]

That might be a clue. I'm not yet sure, though. What I'm still wondering if the part that said

if the ends don't meet, divide by six

or something like that. Was that important or we could throw it aside? If we can't, then that's something we still have to do, right?

[narrativedilettante]

That might be a clue. I'm not yet sure, though. What I'm still wondering if the part that said

if the ends don't meet, divide by six

or something like that. Was that important or we could throw it aside? If we can't, then that's something we still have to do, right?

I expect the "divide by six" is something relevant, which means yes, we still have to utilize it somehow.

[BlackWolfe]

Tried binary invert + rename to .rar. Was able to open the RAR just fine in Linux without errors, but it was empty, leading me to believe I got warnings that weren't reported to me and that was a dead end too.

I think I need to work from the original file, though, instead of what I did, which was to copy the image to clipboard, paste into GIMP, then modify and save.

[The Wild West Pyro]

Just had an idea:

What if we go to the Shadow under the Ice site again to see if we can find anything?

[narrativedilettante]

Just had an idea:

What if we go to the Shadow under the Ice site again to see if we can find anything?

Was there a website? I remember seeing a review of it, but I don't remember there being a website for it.

[The Wild West Pyro]

Just had an idea:

What if we go to the Shadow under the Ice site again to see if we can find anything?

Was there a website? I remember seeing a review of it, but I don't remember there being a website for it.

I think there was. Or was it a website for Erik's theatre company?

[narrativedilettante]

I think there was. Or was it a website for Erik's theatre company?

You might be thinking of this: http://lerouxproductions.twwf.info/ It's a website set up by Mr. Administrator's agent to lead us to one of the wall pieces. It's meant to make fun of Erik.

[BlackWolfe]

I think there was. Or was it a website for Erik's theatre company?

You might be thinking of this: http://lerouxproductions.twwf.info/ It's a website set up by Mr. Administrator's agent to lead us to one of the wall pieces. It's meant to make fun of Erik.

Oh wow, I never checked out the rest of that site. Just signed up for my tickets and that was it.

"Hamsters" LOL

[The Wild West Pyro]

I think there was. Or was it a website for Erik's theatre company?

You might be thinking of this: http://lerouxproductions.twwf.info/ It's a website set up by Mr. Administrator's agent to lead us to one of the wall pieces. It's meant to make fun of Erik.

If we showed to him, what would happen?

[Enlil]

Alright, I think I got this!

First of all, after spending a ton of time with the "binary inverse" clue and getting nowhere, I searched to see what tools were available for steganography. Conveniently, I quickly stumbled upon OpenStego found at: http://sourceforge.net/projects/openstego/?source=dlp. Using it with the RandomLSB algorithm on "Shadow poster.png" was (much to my surprise) successful and revealed "final message.txt" which I've uploaded at https://dl.dropbox.com/u/2418848/final%20message.txt and reads as follows:

Here is the information that I fear some might kill for:

iburonebyelbirzbqxededbrmfrboirsbelromdrrolkboqb

End of message.

Conveniently, PixelImage has already reminded us:

Guys! Blur has dug this tweet for us: https://twitter.com/AVeryMadCat/status/ ... 6957108225

tdnfhakaaaahfybwsmnbhjvi /3

Now consider: If the end needs a fix, divide by six.
We're most likely looking for 6 pheeble chat keys in that pdf. ^^

And so we have it, our six pheeble chat keys:

• http://pheeble.twwf.info/?iburoneb
• http://pheeble.twwf.info/?yelbirzb
• http://pheeble.twwf.info/?qxededbr
• http://pheeble.twwf.info/?mfrboirs
• http://pheeble.twwf.info/?belromdr
• http://pheeble.twwf.info/?rolkboqb