Lets Solve Hackaday.com/Space!

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Well that was fun :)
John Boyd • 05/02/2014 at 16:14 • 2 comments
For those of you who have not noticed, Hack A Day announced the Hackaday.io/prize competition to go to space! They have also been explaining in HaD posts how this whole hackaday.com/space ARG was a "pre-game party" for the announcement of their competition to go to space! Pretty sweet if you ask me. This will likely be the last project log, I just wanted to have one last update to conclude things for anyone reading this in the future.
Hack A Day Official Explanations of ARG Transmissions:
Spoiler - Final Transmission - Major Tom's Diary
mikeneiderhauser • 04/25/2014 at 14:58 • 0 comments

For those who do not have Minecraft. (This was posted in the comments and taken from http://pastebin.com/JjmKfR6e)
1:
Herein are the
Cronicles of
Major
Joshua
Tesla
Tom
----
2: No sooner do I publish details about my launch vehicle do I get slapped with a patent warning. Really, having the engine on the bottom of the rocket is patented?
----
3: I have come up with a brilliant solution. While the current situation prevents me from putting the engines at the bottom of the rocket, the language used in the previous patents say nothing about putting the engines at the top of the rocket.
----
4: I have moved the engines to the top, and the capsule to the bottom. Of course the vehicle will be rotated for launch, but all is well. In keeping with the patent warnings, I have now rotated all diagrams 180 degrees.
----
5: The new vehicle design works brilliantly. Unfortunately, the lawyers do not see my solution as unique, and have filed suit in east Texas.
----
6: Although I'm building for personal use the cease and desist letters are getting more and more aggressive.
----
7: Able to stand it no longer, I have launched my space station months earlier than planned. Out of the jurisdication of any nation I should be safe to build whatever I want.
----
8: So far the microgravity environment has proven challenging for a number of simple tasks. There is now solder flux in the atmospheric recyclers and using the CNC router causes a slight rotation in the station around the forward axis.
----
9: I feel I am getting the hang of working in a zero gravity environment. I have noticed a small fault in the vehicle's abort switch which I believe to be a loose solder joint. This must be fixed befire I can continue my research.
----
10: I have come up with an elegant solution to the abort switch problem. If the computer is manually placed into an abort condition, I may continue using the flight computer as it will never trigger an abort. Genius.
----
11: There has been a main bus fault. Thrusters are gone, as is the navigation computer. Main computer will require extensive repairs.
----
12: ex appiars i hazi s{exchih xdi xderh anh joyrxd haxa leni.
# (it appears I have switched the third and fourth data line)
----
13: The previous situation has been resolved, altough I am currently dealing with several other mechanical problems on the ship.
----
14: I have repaired as much as I can inside the ship, but the repairs now require me to EVA and fix the remaining systems. I do no like extravehicular activities. Last time the comms circuit died.
----
15: The problem on the exterior has been resolved, thanks to a few comms from a good friend back on the blue earth. The defective component was a 709, luckily I had the spares. Bob will get back to me on the cause of the failure.
----
16: Some readings from my transmission testing leads me to think others have been decoding my communications. Who would take the time to intercept and decode all of my messages?
----
17: I grow weary of both waiting and worrying. If rescued I plan to start my search for someone to replace me. Maybe a more skilled soul can keep this place running, without interfering with their quest for discovery.
Final Transmission
John Boyd • 04/24/2014 at 00:42 • 6 comments

For those of you who haven't noticed, the final transmission was posted a few days ago. The transmission was simply this picture:
The numbers in the picture represent the IP address and port number: 50.112.128.47:25565, which happens to be a minecraft server!
On the server there is a myriad of puzzles for us to solve. It seems most of them have been solved, but it is still a lot of fun to go find them all!
When a collection of photos has been gathered, I will post them here.
Transmission #03 Decoded: Launch site confirmed.
John Boyd • 04/17/2014 at 18:45 • 0 comments
Seems like the transmission has been decoded and we have a launch site confirmed. Its hard to keep track of who has done what, but the entire community has come together to solve this one. The words played back in the audio files listed below, were deciphered to reveal the geographic location of the Baikonur Cosmodrome Launch Facility.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baikonur_Cosmodrome
These are the MP3 files extracted from each image:
Here is what the mp3's say:
- 1.mp3: Earth, Farad
- 2.mp3: Joule, Circuit
- 3.mp3: Amp, Gain
- 4.mp3: Electron, Capacitor
- 5.mp3: Dialectric, Diode
Taking the first letter as a number starting with A=0 we get the following numbers:
45 92 06 42 33
AKA the GPS coordinates: 45.920N, 63.342E
Ground Control confirmed the launch site here.
They left us with a parting phrase (possibly clue), "Suit up!" Is this a reference to the space suit Minecraft skin we found earlier in the transmission? It might be worth our while to keep a look out for a HaD minecraft server in the near future.
Decoding Transmission #3
Tyler Anderson • 04/16/2014 at 06:33 • 0 comments
Each of the images for Transmission #3 contains a block of hidden data at the end. Fire up a hex editor and search for FF D9. This indicates the end of a JPEG file. Everything after this is extra.
Rocket Picture
We can tell there is a PNG file hidden in the rocket picture because the extra block starts with ".PNG........IHDR" and ends with "IEND.B`." Heres the extracted image:
Turns out its a space suit skin for Minecraft! View it at http://minecraft.novaskin.me/
Telescope Pictures
In each of the telescope pictures, the extra data starts with "Salted__". So this means its encrypted with OpenSSL. After copying the data to it's own file, you can decrypt it with...
```
openssl enc -d -aes-256-cbc -in 1.bin -out 1.mp3 -pass pass:"Im floating in a most peculiar way"
```
These are the MP3 files extracted from each image:
Here is what the mp3's say:
- 1.mp3: Earth, Farad
- 2.mp3: Joule, Circuit
- 3.mp3: Amp, Gain
- 4.mp3: Electron, Capacitor
- 5.mp3: Dialectric, Diode
Theres also more data hidden in these recording. The MP3 metadata has the following comments:
1. Transmission received at T-1090800.0222786265106846
2. Transmission received at T-1090800.0296872268554892
3. No transmission
4. No transmission
5. No transmission
Also, if you have ffmpeg, try...
```
ffplay 1.mp3
```
...to get a Real Discrete Fourier Transform
What we know (recap) T#1, T#2, T#3
mikeneiderhauser • 04/15/2014 at 23:02 • 0 comments

Here is a log of the recap from the ##hackaday IRC
<mdn15> Lets do a little recap shall we (and please feel free to fill in where I may miss)
TRANSMISSION #01
<mdn15> Transmission 1: [Input Sources] Coordinates of telescopes.
<mdn15> Test Block 1: "I'm floating in a most peculiar way"
<mdn15> Test block 2 was the QR code that led to the Major Tom Page
TRANSMISSION #02
<mdn15> --Transmission 2--
<mdn15> Video on HaD Page
<mdn15> IP of telnet server
<mdn15> bob widlar (username and password of server)
<mdn15> Various messages from MrWildard
<emerica_> ^ ignoring those
<mdn15> (thats what I'm thinking, but still needs to be noted)
<emerica_> indeed
<mdn15> On the telnet server
<mdn15> we found a key file and a puff the magic dragon file
<emerica_> AGC
<mdn15> correct
<mdn15> as of now.. I feel AGC was to throw us a curve ball
<mdn15> The keyfile and openpuff led us to a message in the Transmission 2 Image
<rawe_t30> status.jpg?
<mdn15> yes.. status.jpg
<mdn15> the message resulted in
<mdn15>
"Current Status
Inclination 52.3
Altitude 439km
O2 76.2%
Could do with a lift guys.
<mdn15> then we got this from ground control
Major Tom, this is Ground Control. Message received.
Rescue mission planned, crew selection progressing.
Next communication at T-18180
TRANSMISSION #03
https://github.com/unlimitedbacon/Transmission3
<mdn15> -- Transmission 3 (so far) --
<mdn15> 5 images that (most likely) relate to T#1 on the main Hackaday page
<mdn15> These images have some sort of SSL info embedded (files begin with Salted__)
<mdn15> The pic on the T3# page had a PNG file embedded that contained a space suit as a minecraft skin
<rawe_t30> this was the first image on static.projects.hackaday.com with embedded info
<emerica_> I dont know if the post number 119822 is relevant
<emerica_> the next 8 bytes are the salt
<emerica_> 8 right?
Transmission #03 is here
John Boyd • 04/15/2014 at 16:08 • 4 comments

Transmission #03 has been posted on Major Tom's Page, along with images of the target radio telescopes decoded from Transmission #01. So far there doesn't seem to be much progress deciphering this message, but check it out for yourself and see what you can find!

Here is what a few people have found:
1. Green Bank Telescope (National Radio Astronomy Obervatory)
2. Arecibo Observatory
3. LOFAR Superterp (Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy)
4. Ratan-600 (Special Astrophysical Observatory of the Russian Academy of Sciences)
5. Effelsberg 100-m Telescope (Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy)

Original GPS Coordinates:
1. Arecibo Observatory
2. Very Large Array (National Radio Astronomy Obervatory)
3. Ratan-600 (Special Astrophysical Observatory of the Russian Academy of Sciences)
4. Effelsberg 100-m Telescope (Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy)
5. LOFAR Test Field (Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy)
(Almost) Complete HD Dump
cadeldarkon979 • 04/10/2014 at 01:21 • 0 comments

I dumped most of the hard drive into a tar.bz2 file, as I could not get all of it (bob doesn't have all the needed permissions). If you would like to chroot into a copy of the computer, this dump is perfect for that! I have uploaded it to DepositFiles and Skydrive.
Link 1: http://depositfiles.com/files/vyhn9x8ei
Mirror: http://1drv.ms/1ksqGqd
Transmission #02
Emerica • 04/10/2014 at 01:06 • 1 comment
Transmission #2 - Solving the video
http://hackaday.io/project/754/log/1301

Transmission #2 - Server Contents
http://hackaday.io/project/754/log/1303
http://hackaday.io/project/754/log/1327

Transmission #2 - Completing Decryption.

Emerica:
I had spent most of my evening watching Apollo Navigation Computer videos, preparing for possible use of DSKY.
It seemed most people were still stuck on trying to find data in the images and video expecting more, and I was starting to think that it was all just a ploy to side track.
All the video is, in my opinion, is an attempt to gain more attention for the event, and to expose the IP and the AUTH clues.
It was on the site all day/night, bringing much more attention to those who many have missed it.
More help is always good :)
I don't think you can really expect any visual stenography to make it through Youtube's encoding process, with reliability.
Audio is another story, but too complicated in my opinion to try and have the public find it 'easily enough'
Transmission #1 was pretty simple, there is little reason that this challenge should be magnitudes harder.

Many of us have thought these images have hidden data in one way or another.
How are we going to decode stenography it we can't verify what was used to encode it, without the algo(s) and the key(s), it seemed like a moot point to me. So I focused more on the AGC app.
When Ben mentioned the email about the decryption not being complete, I knew that we had to take another look at the transmission 2 image.

I opened it with a hex editor, this gave me a header with Ducky in it, some googling returned this to be an Adobe save for web file. Ok onto the metadata,
```
 <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <x:xmpmeta xmlns:x="adobe:ns:meta/" x:xmptk="XMP Core 4.4.0-Exiv2"> <rdf:RDF xmlns:rdf="http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#"> <rdf:Description rdf:about="" xmlns:xmp="http://ns.adobe.com/xap/1.0/" xmlns:xmpMM="http://ns.adobe.com/xap/1.0/mm/" xmlns:stRef="http://ns.adobe.com/xap/1.0/sType/ResourceRef#" xmp:CreatorTool="Adobe Photoshop CS6 (Windows)" xmpMM:InstanceID="xmp.iid:CF0B160FBE6B11E38995D5ABC046E8AD" xmpMM:DocumentID="xmp.did:CF0B1610BE6B11E38995D5ABC046E8AD">  <xmpMM:DerivedFrom stRef:instanceID="xmp.iid:CF0B160DBE6B11E38995D5ABC046E8AD" stRef:documentID="xmp.did:CF0B160EBE6B11E38995D5ABC046E8AD"/>  </rdf:Description>  </rdf:RDF> </x:xmpmeta>
```
Not much here of use.....that I can gather anyway.
I remembered the other image being a png. This being a jpg, other tools might work.
Well back to google, "xmp jpg stenography"

first result:
OpenPuff - Steganography & Watermarking - EmbeddedSW.net
embeddedsw.net/OpenPuff_Steganography_Home.html‎

I should have clicked I'm feeling lucky.
I went back to IRC at this point and the chat log basically explains the rest.

nope, currently trying to use the keyfile keys on the image in the transmission 2 page
not sure which steno tool to use though
ok
any idea where that image came from?
nope
I tried reverse image search but it didn't turn up anything
hmm, maybe original then?
someone at HaD is not a bad artist then
yeah its nice, but i'm growing tired of staring at it ;-)
huh! looks like we're on the right track
got an email from ground control
Communication with Major Tom was initiated at 00:00 on 08/04/2014, transmission archive available here: http://hackaday.com/2014/04/08/119222/
The following image was received from Major Tom at 00:01hrs this morning. Decryption is not yet complete. Please assist.
followed by the image from the transmission 2 page
cool
just got the same
I got the same email
of course knowing that ii'm working on the right thing doesn't necessarily make it any easier for me to decode! :-)
and the wife is calling, good luck guys.
* Ben___ has quit
http://vimeo.com/30680384...
Read more »
Github Repository of Telnet Server
John Boyd • 04/09/2014 at 06:05 • 0 comments

Here is a Github repository with the home directory on the telnet server for those of you that would like easy access to all of the files.