Red Herring? (Destiny)

by TrMako, Friday, May 02, 2014, 10:10 (3857 days ago) @ /Sekhmet/
edited by TrMako, Friday, May 02, 2014, 10:37

As Hoovaloov pointed out above, the hidden image file clu255pe0id0ae.png can roughly be translated to Red Herring. For those unfamiliar with English idioms, from wikipedia: "The idiom 'red herring' is used to refer to something that misleads or distracts from the relevant or important issue."

Based on that, I think we're all getting way off track, focusing too much on this image. It may be completely irrelevant.

If anyone is familiar with the Cicada 3301 puzzles, steganography was used a lot to embed hidden messages in the images themselves. The free program OutGuess can be used to look for and analyze the bytes of an image to find hidden messages in the file by looking for slightly altered bits.

OutGuess works on JPGs but not PNG image files. Given that the first, distorted image provided by Sekhmet is a JPG, and the second "red herring" image is a PNG, this further convinces me that perhaps I'm on the right track. Why two different image types? Also, Sekhmet specifically said "The binary data included in the original message is sufficient for further analysis." Emphasis on original message.

However, you still need a keyword or phrase to use as a seed to decrypt a hidden message with OutGuess. This is where I'm stuck. I've just been sitting here bored at work manually trying dozens of different keys to decrypt the rx_err_crc_fail.jpg file using OutGuess. And the key is case-sensitive so using 'the answer' is different from 'The Answer' which is different from 'the_answer'. As you can see, that means there's thousands of possible permutations of keys.

I've tried using most of the words or word phrases in Sekhmet's original message with no luck so far.

Just my two cents. Feel free to do with it as you will.