page by anon,
puzzle by grandthefthippo
This image appeared on iichan's random board one day:
HELLO GENTLEMEN.
THIS IMAGE IS ACTUALLY A .RAR FILE. HOWEVER, IT IS ENCRYPTED IN 256-BIT AES FORMAT, THE FORMAT APPROVED BY THE NSA FOR TOP SECRET LEVEL DOCUMENTS. THEREFORE, THE PASSWORD CANNOT SIMPLY BE CRACKED.
HOWEVER, I WILL TELL YOU THE PASSWORD. I WILL TELL YOU THE PASSWORD. I WILL NOT TELL YOU IN THE VERNACULAR LANGUAGE, BUT IN THE LANGUAGE OF THE COSMOS, MATHEMATICS. THERE EXISTS A CONSTANT IN THIS REALITY, THANKS TO THE ABSTRACTION OF THE 2D PLANE. ALL OF THE POINTS A CONSTANT DISTANCE FROM A SINGLE POINT FORM A FIGURE. THE RATIO OF THIS PERIMETER TO THE DIAMETER IS CONSTANT REGARDLESS OF THE PARTICULAR FIGURE; AN INFINITE STRING OF DIGITS WITH NO PATTERN NOR END.
THE PASSWORD IS THE 1000-1020TH DIGITS
I was intrigued. It sounded like the famous notpron, only in a single file. Obviously, the ratio was pi; the 1000-1020th digits of which are the first answer.
938095257201065485863
That done, the renamed image popped open to reveal another image, this one much more obtuse:
The name of the image is "png.png". That's the windows-default font "wingdings" down there. Using The University of Michigan's Wingding Club's Translator, I quickly worked out that the text down there is actually "raded" in disguise. Renaming the file to "png.rar", I plugged in the password.
Nothing. I looked at the image again, and realized that there were fish there. Red fish. Red Herrings.
Within a few minutes, I recieved an email: "invert the color of the image and the password is hidden in the second fish. It's resmarted." Lo and behold, there it is (easier to see with high contrast):
So in goes "resmarted", and out comes two files.
The two files are here: lol.rar and lolomg.swf.
The trick here? Zoom. See that gray patch on the ducks in the water, just left of center? Zoom in on that. Keep going. Eventually, the phrase "the password is terabithia" comes into view.
Deeper and deeper! This unraring gives us two new files: lol omg another rar.rar and only the fearless will reach the end.exe.
Run the exe. Put in anything for your name. Don't panic. Remember what it said about fearlessness? Press enter, and discover the password is "desudesudesu".
OK, back to pictures.
Did you pass high school calculus? This is a parabolic function. "x^2 - 61.75732x + 901.93033"
"The roots travel north and east." Factor the function (gives (-38.0593 + x) (-23.698 + x)), and the two numbers that come out are co-ordinate points on the earth. This gives us this location. Zoom ALLLLLLLLLL the way in. Someone has carved "EIPHNH" into the hillside.
Unrar and release another file: k.lwf.
This is an IrfanView native file, so opening it in that gives a picture of the URL: http://tinyurl.com/yjrvtt, which leads to http://students.washington.edu/toanb/temp_redirect0886.html, which displays a long string of binary
011000110110111101101101011001010010000001100010011000010110001101101011001000000110110001100001011101000110010101110010
This translates to: "comebacklater". So we will.
UPDATE: The string has changed to 0101100101101111011101010010000001100001011100100110010100100000011010010110111000100000011000010010000001100010011011110110000101110100001000000111011101101001011101000110100000100000011000010010000001110010011011110110001101101011001011100010000001011001011011110111010100100000011101000110100001110010011011110111011100100000011101000110100001100101001000000111001001101111011000110110101100100000011010010110111001110100011011110010000001110100011010000110010100100000011011000110000101101011011001010010111000100000010101110110100101110100011010000010000001110010011001010111001101110000011001010110001101110100001000000111010001101111001000000111010001101000011001010010000001101100011000010110111001100100001011000010000001110111011010000110010101110010011001010010000001100100011011110110010101110011001000000111010001101000011001010010000001101100011001010111011001100101011011000010000001101111011001100010000001110100011010000110010100100000011101110110000101110100011001010111001000100000011001110110111100111111
You are in a boat with a rock. You throw the rock into the lake. With respect to the land, where does the level of the water go?
Thank you #iichan and #lunixmonster for helping out.