Now that the bootsector is complete, we are left with a bunch of HEX numbers (all having 7 digits).
The anon tip on Discord amounted to these HEXes are either part of a file, or constitute a file in itself.
Question is: What options do we have to use these HEXes?
I’m not familiar how to translate these numbers into “a file”, so someone with them coding-knowledge could maybe help us out? I guess what I’m really asking what the next steps are, given that project-wt.com stays static and locked for now, and the new commands for wakingtitan.com didn’t really lead us anywhere.
The HEXes are the only new and major unused piece of the puzzle for now… ideas?
Well… it has been something on my mind for a while, “why show all those hex codes in overlay”.
To use them in a file, you need to get a hex editor and copy/paste them in. (Among others, MSVC can do this.)
There is a problem however, what kind of file is it? If it is a common program, it may well start with a magic number, or hex signature ( List of file signatures - Wikipedia ). None of the known types starts with DCE (or just DC) though, so most likely it is not.
That may suggest that the hex data is either not ready to be used in its current form, OR that we should not use all data. I noticed that we do still have some holes in the file. It may be that the hex numbers corresponding to those holes have some meaning, but it’ll take me a while to find out which they are.
Another oddity I noticed is that in the HTML source of the page all Hex codes are listed as having an ID of “byte-14399” ~ “byte-15422” (they are in ascending order, the first is 14399, the last is 15422).
This is slightly odd, since I’d have expected them to be labelled 1~x instead. I’ve tried to use this -XXXXX on the bytes, and that does not seem to have any useful effect.
It might be possible that these bytes are supposed to go into some file, but there is another problem there, they are no bytes really. They are hex numbers of 7 positions length. Each 2 positions is a single byte, so the list would not be a valid list of ascending bytes either (at least the numbers in the HTML source would not yield valid positions).
The numbers corresponding with the holes are probably to few in number to yield a valid file in most programs anyway, but they are not valid ASCII when converted either. So I’m not entirely sure what to do with them right now.
Yes, according to @LizardWithATopHat the message was “JUST SOLVED THE BOOTSECTOR SO ILL LEAVE A TIP, THE HEX DATA IS PART OF A FILE. GOODBYE.”
It doesn’t really say what file though, or how it might be part of it. It would have to be a corrupted file of sorts, or something we’ve not yet considered as a file (like the decoder ring or something).
Base 16 is Hexadecimal, meaning the numbers indeed span 0~9 + A ~ F for each position. When converted to computer language, they are 4 bits, a single byte is 8 bits, so 2 hexadecimal numbers can combine into 1 8 bit (1 byte) character, which can be converted to ASCII code (oversimplified, the letters we can read).
Well, partially. If you combine 2 codes back to back, you get 14 pairs (7 bytes) which is perfectly valid from a code point of view. The real question is more “where do we put them?”
Well… how about a pure text file to begin with? Converting hex to ascii doesn’t seem to yield anything, but how about hex to bin and maybe even to morse?
The Discord hint was written in morse code, and bin to morse is a fairly standard procedure… and maybe the morse code itself could be readable?
Hmm, one could ideally reverse the process and see the original code for the output, but then we’d need the L/R sequence, which we do not except when we assume they are the same for all input, we’d still need to work backwards to reverse the process. Using the 1L 1L 2L 3R 5L 8R 13L sequence reversing A77E1DE would get us:
953DBF3 (if I didn’t screw it up, did it without a ring, just in my head)
(remember also we go from inner to outer this time)
This is not a valid start for any file, nor does it have any meaning in hex → ascii either.
Finally @bcatrek I did insert all hex into a binary file, the problem is, what kind of binary file is it? (Which program can run it?) As I explained above, most common programs use magic numbers to flag files as “theirs”, but this file once made does not contain a valid number. As for morse, you can convert from binary to morse only if you have a program to open the binary in (like dots in a jpg file, or spikes in an mp3). Unless you want to treat binary data as morse, in which case you could just do a hex to binary conversion and run with that, but I don’t think that’ll fly.
I’ve tried translating the Codes to binary then to morse, it doesn’t seem to be valid. I’m still thinking this is somehow related to a 16 bit encode or something because all of the hints to the 16. LOOP16 and the 16 in the image, when you put in landscape and connect the holes…
Has everyone tried to download the .png file of the background image and fill the blanks with the code by directly editing the HEX code of the picture ? Maybe this could work… just trying.
EDIT: Here is the result : Imgur: The magic of the Internet
