Lesson 13 - The Walkthrough 

This is an ongoing series to dissect the PhreakNIC v3.0 code, which can be
seen at http://www.phreaknic.org/phreaknic.txt
---------------------------

The PhreakNIC v3.0 Code can be broken down into six sections:

 (1) The first line of numbers
 (2) A few lines of "poem" gibberish
 (3) A rotated PGP message
 (4) A rotated UUencoded message
 (5) The last "bkkbb" line
 (6) The "sekrit" page pointed to by the poem from section 2
 
The following step-by-step walkthrough assumes that you already have the
necessary reference materials and utilities, such as PGP, a Hex/ASCII chart,
an unzip or UUdecoder utility, etc.  If you do not have them, links to
everything necessary can be found at:
   http://members.aol.com/nova1337/tutorial20.htm
 

Step by step:

(1) The first line:
  - Break up the numbers into 2-digit segments
  - Convert the Hex to ASCII
  - Rotate the ASCII via ROT-13 to get:

         "Nice start. Now it gets tough."
 

(2) The gibberish after, a 9-line poem.
  - Rotate via ROT-13.
  - Each line is a separate anagram which translates to:

The earnes[t][se]crets sho(n)e.         -->  These sentences are short.
(O)ne hears sat[i]re.                   -->  There is a reason.
Ahem - r(e)ally rag Satan.              -->  They are all anagrams.
(A)(T)M of Hel(l).                      -->  All of them.
Evil nos[e]energy.                      -->  Every single one.
O, the (C)IA net lunacy.                -->  They contain a clue.
Obey luser ca[m].                       -->  Or maybe clues.
P[h]one far-fe[t]ched[r]oot text[.]     -->  For the next part of the code.
A data-[l]in[k] g[r](u)mbles on the cloud(.) -->   ** (see below)

  - The letters in (), "noeatclu", anagram to --> Not a clue.

  - The letters in [], "tseiemhtr.lkr", anagram to --> sekriter.html
     (see section 6)

(3) A short PGP message.
  - Rotate via ROT-13
  - Separate lines by the [] marks.
  - Strip out the [] brackets
  - Get the PGP key from section 6, and open the message.
 

(4) A UUencoded message.
  - Rotate via ROT-13
  - Separate and shorten lines according to normal UUencoding format
    - All initial lines should start with the "M" character
    - All initial lines should be the same length
    - Strip out the [---] lines, but keep everything else from "begin" to "end"
  - Save it as a text file with a .UUE extension
  - Decode with a UUDecoder, or an UnZip utility, to get the un-uu-me.txt file.
  - Inside un-uu-me.txt, take the columns of 5-character blocks, and add
carriage returns down the center white-space column.
  - Start with the "P" in the upper lefthand corner, and read vertically to
get the following message:

-----------------------------
Pretty good job. Now hit the following URL &give this one a try:
http://www.cia.gov/cia/information/tour/krypt.html

More info at:
http://www.und.nodak.edu/org/crypto/crypto/general.crypt.info/Kryptos/
----------------------------

 
(5) The last line, the "bkkbb" section.
  - Search/replace the B's to 0's, and the K's to 1's.
  - (or rotate via ROT-13, then o's to 0's, and x's to 1's)
  - Convert from binary to ASCII --> "end here".
 

(6) The "sekrit" pages
  - Follow the pointer from section 2:
      http://www.phreaknic.org/sekriter.html
  - View the HTML source on the page
  - "geography ants" anagrams to --> "steganography"
  - Locate steganography tools, such as s-tools4.zip
  - Download and open pix.zip from the page
  - Load code01.bmp (from pix.zip) into S-tools
  - Reveal the hidden message with:
     - Password: steganography
     - Encryption: Triple DES
  - Take the PGP key that's inside, and unlock the message in section 3.
  - Read the message.
  - Post bad poetry to root@se2600.org   :)
 

See? Piece o' cake!
 

** Postscript: For those of you that are just dying to know what obscene
comment that "A data-link grumbles on the cloud" translated to: Here's the
answer, rotated via ROT-13.  Unrotate it to see JonnyX's lovely parting
comment:
  "Tbbq yhpx, naq znfgheongr va uryy."
 

Elonka  :)
http://members.aol.com/nova1337/tutorial.htm
AIM: Elonka

"I'm a gamer.  It's what I am.  It's what I do."