Skycoin Crypto-Challenge

Puzzle user where are you?
Is a bounty still there?

Attached: 4104281041.png (1263x800, 80K)

Other urls found in this thread:

steemit.com/skycoin/@chozai/cryptography-contest-ii-skycoin-test-net-live-soon
xor.pw/#
branah.com/unicode-converter
twitter.com/SFWRedditImages

No crypto user myself, but I was last night trying. How stuck are you? I think I got the steps but not the order. This was the post:

totally stuck, feelsbadman. I have a feeling I'm overthinking stuff.
What steps do you think there are?

With previous challenges I overthought like crazy due to the guy lying in a clue (it was written "write in uppercase" when only the first character was uppercase and the rest lowercase). I think in this one is the same. I have tried modular encryption with no success, and I think the proper steps are in how a XOR is applied, but the message of the guy yesterday is giving me headache: I am always trying to apply the numbers in the Ouruboros to decode the long string, but he said that the long strings is a partial thing to unlock what is hidden in the picture (but the order in XOR is irrelevant). Whatever happen, I would like to know the answer at the end just out of curiosity.

I've been trying classic ciphers with little luck.
My assumptions were:
1. Greentext is ciphertext
2. Ciphertext is 12 English words, 6-7 characters on average
3. Picture is a key
Not a single one worked.

I've tried 180515180515180515... and 151508151508151508... as keys to match the greentext and do something like addition, subtraction, reading 2 strings together and than try to see if digits match some cipher.
Now there is a problem there are 293 digits which means a random number of digits encoding a letter. Also digits distribution is very even, so it's not just simple dec ASCII2. Doesn't look like numbered alphabet.
Straddle checkerboard cipher looked promising but there are too many digits way more than required for 12 English words.

I also tried splicing greentext into various groups and slapping 180515 or 151508 around. Nothing sensible.
What was your idea behind XOR?

So we are in the same spot, neuronal meltdown.
About the XOR, he mentions a final operation between the greentext and "the result", being "the result" whatever operation is correct with the greentext and the picture. So I basically tried in reverse with words that i know will be in the keys (sky, skywire, skycoin, testnet...) and using XOR with the picture digits and the long text and rotating values. No success.

I have also noticed that 180515 is yesterdays date, but usually you would read the Ouroboros from head to tail, which maybe tells a reverse order in some step, but I tried too...

Overthinking for sure. We missed something very basic and stupid, parallel thinking perhaps.

>180515 is yesterdays date
Oh wow nice catch.
What really boggles my mind is that ciphertext consist of digits, which means the final step would be converting digits to letters.
There are basically 4 ways to do it:
1) Alphabet aka A=1 B=2 or more complicated patterns
2) Ciphers based on Polybious square idea
3) ASCII 2
4) Numbers-to-Letter key

I didn't really think into about number 4, but with a keyword being something like testnet I can imagine it beeing coded as a first word in the greeetext digit sequence.

>The greentext contains part of the solution to the image and once you obtain the complete result, an operation must be applied on the two strings (the result and the greentext)
Extremely confusing statement. Do we apply greentext to picture to get the key string and than apply the key string to ciphertext? Wtf?

The statement may be actually harmful - previously the clues were badly redacted and that made me lost a lot of time in other challenges.

>There are basically 4 ways to do it:
There is unicode as well, the are many possibilities. Early today I ended up with a very clear message, but I can't for the sake of me reproduce the steps. It consisted of a very small set of symbols (=>|) and very few letters (P,Q,R,S,T.. no vowels), but it did not make any sense and I can't reproduce it. I remember playing with a) rotations on 180515 b) using the long text and a XOR on that rotation from previous step c) Using the result as Hex converted to UTF-8 without "/x", but it may be a red herring as well.

>Do we apply greentext to picture to get the key string and than apply the key string to ciphertext? Wtf?
That would make sense in the XOR I believe.
CRYPTOANON WERE ARE YAAAA. I think I know his reddit account though, last resource in a couple of days if there are no news.

>unicode
ASCII 2 implies some digits having a way bigger occurrence frequencies than others. Same with unicode.

His first puzzle was simple trifid cipher + transposition of already decoded words. I missed the second what was there?

This was the second:
steemit.com/skycoin/@chozai/cryptography-contest-ii-skycoin-test-net-live-soon

Basically the pic metadata was pointing to the word "Caesar" for unzipping the file hide in the image using steghide, and inside there were the keys encrypted using Caesar encoding, basically rotating the alphabet. I lost hours and hours writing the name of Caesar in every language, with every title, reading History stuff, because I was writing in uppercase as the metadata suggested...
But overall, very simple compared to this one.

Well nothing shows on that picture, its just Ouroboros, numbers and skycoin logo.

Attached: 1526412805657.png (800x800, 103K)

I want to know more. Where is OP

If you convert "180515" to unicode you get the chinese character 䚃. Translation literally means "What?".

mfw.

Kek

Ok just throw some thoughts here.
Ouroboros has a beginning at 1 and goes in cycles to infinity, it could be either 151508 or 180515 sequence.
After putting 2 strings together like this some simple operations could be applied. Strings could be interchanged if subtraction takes place.
647619506674728025159780842706...
151508151508151508151508151508...

The greentext consists of 293 digits which is prime number, so unless there are some junk digits using even formations ( like 8s for binary) are not possible. Could be some uneven formations like some squares not being full.

Could be numeric vigenere or some shit.

Attached: hrhaQOV.png (1000x1000, 66K)

Interesting, I'm going to have a look at it. Does anybody know the answer to the last one?

"Caesar" for the zip, "kitty cash skyminer skywire skycoin check out the miners join the revolution deus" or in a different order were the keys for the wallet.

not him, but I know that user. Dude's out for a beer, will let him know to join the thread when he can to help you guys out. the fucker loves his puzzles, I know the prize was still there a few hours ago tho. keep bumping and I'll link him the thread.

oh man I totally forgot it's not necessary for seed words to be random.
They were random in the first puzzle so it doesn't mean anything. 12 words is not enough to perform frequency analysis.

Guys give up, I got them :P Will report in one minute

well done! Let me know the answer :)

The user with the challenge here. I'll be home in 30 minutes and will start a new thread when I'm there. You guys are really going in the right direction with the first ideas (no need for conspiracy theories) but I realized I fucked up a bit somewhere (again, like all other challenges). I should have also mentioned that the snake has to turn 40 times.
Anyway, home soon and there's an extra 5 Sky in the wallet today.

Did you forget a digit to bump it to 294 so 294/6=40 aka 40 snake rotations?Got it?

Got it, I am just syncing the wallet. Previous version I had installed was not updating...

Wait that’s not correct, 294/6 = 49

I didn't forget that, the strings don't need to have the same length for the operation to work. But I thought they did, which is where I was mistaken. Since they didn't, I should've pointed out the length of the 2nd string.

Gratz.
Waiting for solution.

Ok, so this is what needed to be done:
Use a XOR calculator like xor.pw/#
In top add as decimal the long ass string of decimals. In the second field the code that was yesterdays date 40 times (180515). Do the XOR as output decimal.

The result is:
119111111100032111114100105110097114121032101114097032099111105110032103097114109101110116032109101109098101114032116101110110105115032098114105100103101032102101109097108101032116111117114105115116032105110115105100101032103117105116097114

This is actually unicode, all lowercase, meaning groups of 3 digits:
119 111 11 110 0032 111 114 100 105 110 097 114 etc.
When you convert to unicode, for example here:
branah.com/unicode-converter
You get the keys:
"wood ordinary era coin garment member tennis bridge female tourist inside guitar"

Thanks OP, I was one hour far from winning the 2nd challenge, and was left out of the DIY miner contest due to breaking rules (mine was the necklace miner). I consider this as rebalance of the universal justice :P

Waiting for the next one!

Well done, congrats!

Also I'm glad I found 2 other anons (at least) that really enjoy challenges like this. I know they're not perfect but with practice I'll get better at making them. I'm gonna download Cypher until the next one to get more ideas.

Oh and it was 180515 and not the other way around because I work in astronomy and the images we capture are labeled as YYYYMMDD, for easier autosorting.

Well done, But how did you know that you had to repeat the date 40 times?

Nice man

>mfw XOR on dec
I don't even...
No puzzlerino today?

Attached: 312321092.png (680x680, 321K)

So all the time I was looping that 180515 until it reached the same number of digits as the long text - needed to remove the last 5 as you know. So I tried not to remove it, and voila, that worked. Actually the "40 times" was written by puzzle user minutes after I was already playing with the unicode. It was all a matter of brute force told be truth, I was trying everything and anything. Got lucky for once.

Initially I wanted to just xor 2 strings and post the hex codes for the ascii chars but I figured that's way too easy. Would've given it away in a hint that the operation is on base 10 numbers..

Nothing today since this just got solved, probably about 2-3 weeks until the next one.

Very nice, will be looking forward, it's a nice little break from trading crypto.
Now back to flipping shitcoins