Congratulations once more! Happy to see you guys solved it!
The idea for this puzzle came to me when I started doing some research on combined steganography tools and how they affect each other. I wanted to see if multiple ways could be combined into one source, without messing up each other. Most often, the use of steganography changes the source. or alters it in such a way, that something can be hidden inside. I think this example clearly proves it is very well possible for a combination of ways to hide a final solution in just one single source.
Let me walk you through the creation of this puzzle:
The end result needed to be an audio file, containing all the puzzles
The SSTV image with the hint to use DeepSound
Created with MMSSTV itself, but using TX, resulting in an audio file (wav).
The spectogram, containing the hint to use MMSSTV to find the above image
This spectogram was created from a black/white image turned into a sound file (wav). I used Coagula to convert an image to sound. Quite an old tool and no longer maintained.
One single audio file, containing both the above.
I used Audacity for this to get one single audio file (wav) by mixing them together.
The password, required for Deepsound to be able to extract the hidden solution
Decided to use a very simple technique that works for many file types. There is usually a section within the HEX source, where simple plain text can be injected without any issue. In case of the resulting audio file (wav) above, I just used a Hex Editor to add plain text at the end of the source. To make it more interesting, I decided to re-introduce the Decoder Ring, familiar to those who have been participating in the ARG.
The resulting audio file with clue hidden in the Hex source, containing the solution (2 files)
I used DeepSound to hide the solution in the combined audio file after having added the Hex clue. This program allows to use an audio file as a ‘carrier’ to hide a file(s) inside, with or without use of a password. Some of you may have recognised this tool having been used in the Mr Robot series.
The end result is what you guys have been working with and had to be available as source. So Dropbox was an easy choice for me, as I use it quite often.
Breakdown:
Most likely finding the Spectogram clue first, or possibly the Hex password. The latter would have most likely been a dead end until further clues were found. Although for me personally, DeepSound or similar, is one of my early go-to tools when looking for clues. It would have been possible to skip a big part when finding the hex, solving it and go straight to DeepSound. I did expect this would likely not happen though, and I was glad to be proven correct
Unless the audio would be recognised as SSTV, which is very well possible for a trained ear, the Spectogram would point in the correct direction. The Spectogram was purposely hidden in the lower frequencies to not affect the SSTV audio.
MMSSTV would then give the clue for Deepsound, even with ‘poor’ results.
The Hex code included in the SSTV result, was only there as a clue for finding a password and using HEX, aka a HEX Editor.
Expecting the source with a Hex Editor would lead to the password clue found at the end of the file source. Those familiar with the ARG would recognise the tool required.
Once the password was deciphered using the Decoder Ring provided in the ARG, it could be used on the Puzzle.wav in DeepSound to get the two hidden files as a solution.
The solution being an image of two gates with MORPHEUS written at the top.
The text file containing my congratulations. The text itself is just something that rhymes with a somewhat deeper meaning.
I hope you all enjoyed this puzzle. Feel free to ask me any questions, let me know what you liked best, the difficulty level, or just further discuss it here.
I thank you all for participating, it has been a great pleasure. Who knows, I may be putting up some other puzzles in the future. My research resulted in various ways to combine steganography tools, alhtough many of them likely less known to the community in general. I think at least some of you welcomed being introduced to the tools used.
I love SSTV and find it to be a wonderful thing. It is still being used among Radio Amateurs and for those interested, I would certainly recommend checking it out on for example WebSDR. Even the ISS (ARISS) still uses it, I think on an annual basis as well as on other occasions. I enjoyed their transmissions last October for example and even early December there have been some transmissions.
Edit: Forgot to mention the 20th Anniversary event they had back in July, which lasted for two days.
Is it possible to hide a picture or text inside of another picture like you did with the audio? Is there an app that would decode that? Theyre both just files right so Im wondering about those mirror files…
There are several ways to hide an image, text, or even other files inside an image or other files. I only used a few tools in this example, but there are loads of different tools for Steganography use, both encoding and decoding. Often the same tool is required, but not always the case, depending on the method used. There are too many tools out there to easily list for you, but if interested, do a search on the internet. Make sure to add the file description or format if searching for specific tools.
