Fa1k0n’s code (A PUZZLE!)

General Discussion
1

Hello all! There’s been a bit of bordem going around thanks to our sudden lack of puzzles, the very mention of them starting frenzys XD

So, I’ve decided to make a little challange for all of you! It’s very simple, figure out the method of encryption and decipher the message.

I’d strongly(?) suggest for y’all to not work together on this, more fun that way. If you get stuck ask someone for a hint! This is not a ‘rule’ and up to you, do whatever’s the most fun!

For awnsers/explenations (if you want to check) just DM me here or on discord, I’d love to see how things are progressing! Bonus points if someone can give me a python script for decoding, I’m lazy. Please do not spoil anything for others.

I’ve made two ‘versions’ here, one a little easier than the other. I want you to try the ‘hard’ one first and if you get stuck then take a look at the easier one.

Remember, the goal of this is to have fun!

Hard ciphertext here, good luck!

0100000101011000110001111!10100010000100110011010011001100001011000100110100101000110000101000110111100100001010100101101000010010000101010010111000001011100111110100001010001001111011110101110111010000010101110010011011100001100110001001111100100010100100,01001000110000101100011000100110100"01100000011101011001000100100101110000011001011001"

01001'0110101110011111010010100011110111110011101011001000101101110100000001101001010001111100001010110100010000010110010001011001101111010101010110011101000011101111011100111000001001000111110011011110110100101100100000101110001000111101101101000100001001011100011110011.1010001000001011000110101010010001101011000101001001111101110111000110011111100001010101010110110000100110111110110001011001010100010000010101100000011101011001001000111100111

0100110010001010000101100011001100101000011111000000101101000100001001100110100110011001010111001111101010011101000001100111100100001000010110010,0100110100000110000101110000100010101000000011001000100101000111100111001011010010100010000010110011001011011101001101000100001111101011010000101011100111110101001110100010100001011100010100.10100011110001000101001100000101001100101010001000010011001100011011111010101100001000100000001101100010100010001010010101110011011010100011010001011101111100101001100101,11001'00001011000110000001100100010101100101010001101011110010100100100010010010001110'1010001101000010101100101100001010101110000111010010101000011010001001011110111000101011100001110010110011000010100.010011011100001100110011000101001010110001001011100011101110010010001100101.

000110111101110001111010000001101001001101111011100001110010000010001101011010010111000111011011100100011011110010000101!

and here’s the slightly easier version:

‘easy’ ciphertext

0100000101011000110001111! 10100010000100110011 0100110011 00001 011000100110100101000110000101 00011011110010000101 01001 01101000010010000101 0100101110 00001 0111001111101000010100010011110111101011 10111010000010101110 01001 101110000110011 0001001111100100010100100, 01001 00011000010110001100 0100110100 “01100000011101011001 000100100101110000011001011001”

01001’01101 011100111110100 101000111101111 10011101011001000101 10111010000000110100 1010001111 100001010110100 01000001011001000101 1001101111 01010101011001110100 0011101111011100111000001 0010001111 10011011110110100101 100100000101110001000111101101 101000100001001011100011110011. 101000100000101 1000110101010010001101011 0001010010011111011101110 001100111111000 0101010101011011000010011 01111101100010110010 101000100000101 01100000011101011001 001000111100111

01001 100100010100001011000110011001 01000011111000000101 10100010000100110011 0100110011 001010111001111101010011101000 001100111100100001000010110010, 0100110100 000110000101110 0001000101 01000000011001000100 1010001111 001110010110100 1010001000001011001100101 10111010011010001000011111010110100 001010111001111101010011101000 10100001011100010100. 1010001111 0001000101 00110000010100110010 10100010000100110011 0001101111101010110000100 01000000011011000101 00010001010010101110 01101101010001101000 1011101111100101001100101, 11001’000010110001100 000011001000101 0110010101000110101111001 01001 00100010010010001110’10100 01101000010101100101 1000010101011100001110100101010000110100010010111101110 00101011100001110010110011000010100. 01001 101110000110011 00110001010010101100010010111000111 01110010010001100101.

0001101111011100011110010000011010010011 0111101110 0001110010000010001101011010010111000111 0110111001 00011011110010000101!

9 Likes
2

ignore the coloration that’s just ETARC trying to read it as an actual coding language.

Also, just to be safe, it goes past the box there!

4 Likes
3

To have a ‘code block’ shown format specific (or not), you can specify this.
More on that can be found here: Selecting the programming language used in code blocks - Using Discourse - Discourse Meta

In your case, you can just specify it at the top as text, as follows:

``` txt

3 Likes
4

There’s something thrilling about geeks at work! :joy:

4 Likes
5

For some sort of Python script, I am not sure how much time you find it worthy to spend on it. I’d most likely go with a partial tool to make things easier.

Python interpretation:

You’d probably use an input, then loop over it with a check for being 0 or 1. For each 5 characters being indeed 0 or 1, you can use int(binary, 2) to get a decimal value to which you add 64 or 96 (depending on upper/lower case), to then use the chr() function. The result can be added to an array/list to form the decode. If it comes across a character that is not 0 or 1, you can treat it as literal and directly add to the decode array/list.

Might want to add some checks, to force lower()/upper(), and probably a length check for binary sections being a multiple of 5

Something along those lines …

1 Like
6

If I really wanted to it’d be super easy, I’ve got a generic encoder/decoder script for substitution ciphers. It’s not pretty, just a 26+ long dictionary that replaces each character and cycles through the whole input.

For casing issues, I have an isupper() check that effectively makes everything lowercase

Mainly put that in there to be a different challenge as making custom decoders/encoders is usually my favorite part of ARG’s (also as a nod the the name with ’lazy’)


There’s 6 extra byte sequences (00000 and 27-31) so another idea was to do . , ! ‘ ? " or maybe maybe even a marker for upper/lowercase.

2 Likes
7

I can certainly enjoy the coding part of such as well at times, especially if it can be made to work both ways. My fallback is often javascript, most often because of web use. Python is perfectly fine as well, especially as a local tool.

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8

This was fun! I enjoyed it. I’ll send my answer if you want to check me, but what I got made perfect sense so I think it’s right. :smiley:

3 Likes