What is Digg?Sponsored by Sony Pictures
Adam Lambert sings the 2012 theme song, "Time for Miracles" view!
whowillsurvive2012.com - Watch the Adam Lambert music video for the 2012 theme song. See 2012, in theaters Nov 13
164 Comments
- avPaul, on 10/12/2007, -0/+61It depends on whether you interpret the bytes as little endian or big endian. If big endian, it reads: 'VIÀGRÀª"„'. Those damn spammers are everywhere!
- Cymrubeats, on 10/12/2007, -4/+50If you remove all the numbers except the 0's and 1's then convert them from binary http://nickciske.com/tools/binary.php , this is what you get '¥RATÀª"„' which could been seen as 'VRATA' which means religious vow in sanskrit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vrata . :o :p Ok, that's about as far fetched as i get, bye now. :p
- monkeymad2, on 10/12/2007, -2/+39Googling the name gave me a new message
"For Mein Fraulein
For Mein Fraulein last modified: Mon, 29 May 19:26 PDT ... Mein Fraulein, You must call me again soon. ///415///704///0402/// ...
www.craigslist.org/sfc/mis/165936352.html "
interesting - swizzcheez, on 10/12/2007, -4/+40Actual meaning of message: "Be sure to drink your ovaltine."
- silenceHR, on 10/12/2007, -5/+39or...in some slavic languages VRATA means DOOR.... and thats really scary... what kind of door? leading to where?
there are so many doors around, maybe it means they are behind them?
:P - GeneralFailure, on 10/12/2007, -8/+394 8 15 16 23 42
- gdog05, on 10/12/2007, -2/+33I don't know, but it has something to do with scientology I think.
- Milan123, on 10/12/2007, -5/+36The grass is green and ready to be mowed. I repeat, the grass is green and ready to be mowed.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -8/+36Acknowledged. The bowl is loaded and ready to be smoked.
- olliholliday, on 10/12/2007, -4/+29i think he's talking about the people commenting on digg.
- gdog05, on 10/12/2007, -6/+31I looked at the numbers from a graphical perspective. I actually see a pretty clear picture. Here's what I got
01305 60510 |12079| 04606 50100
93000 08203 |90130| 94069 01207
81080 |17028 01706| 90220 73038
01401 |70150 15073| 00402 00680
12013 12510 |00540| 04091 01401
30150 86022 |09608 10660| 02082
05507 00020 |00000 02208| 30290
08022 |01200 40710| 13065 02709
40190 |29014 02200| 80020 11083
07300 |30260 19000| 00700 00000
If you look within the blocks, you'll see a map. I've seen a lot of maps just like this when I was a kid. It's a Legend of Zelda map. Specifically it's a dungeon map. There are bats in the dungeon, they look just like the Bacardi bat. Bacardi is ran out of Bermuda. In the movie Cocktail, Tom Cruise served Bacardi. Bermuda is where the Beach Boys want to take you, so I think we'll find some answers in Bermuda. - 60days, on 10/12/2007, -2/+23No one has the content, so lets look at the context:
Craigslist is a very high-profile site that often has quirky postings that get shared around the net. Not the best place for a 'secret' message (a better place would be a pre-determined lesser-known classifieds site, or just a webpage somewhere)
The 'Fraulein' bit shows that there is a message there, and adds personal intrigue - great if you want people to spend time figuring it out, not so good as a cover. If you want to keep a secret and use a phrase that someone is looking for, something like 'FOUND: Notebook with green flamingo (wearing hat) on cover, A5, 'Please return if found' written on, but no address' would be better.
Then of course there is the obvious way the numbers themselves are presented. It just yells 'ENCODED MESSAGE, PLZ DECRYPT'. It would be better to explain them away somehow, like setting up a fake ebay auction for '100 water-damaged keyboards, serial numbers are...' or using the example above 'The following is written on the first page'
My conclusion: Almost certainly viral marketing. After that I would go with an individual having fun, a few hundred possibilities later I would go with a genuine encrypted message from one person to another. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -4/+25Recently another set has appeared:
8675 309
This is starting to get weird... - Niek, on 10/12/2007, -0/+19According to Tunatic the played song in the MP3 file is "A-Ha - Little Black Heart"
Not sure whether that has a meaning too. - jzimmerman, on 10/12/2007, -1/+20Now we know why is name is "richardiscool" and not "richardisgoodatmath".
- swizzcheez, on 10/12/2007, -13/+32"There must be a more reasonable explanation for this than terrorist agents. It is all speculation at this point."
Although I agree that there is no reason to assume terrorism out of the box, the notion that there _must_ be a more reasonable explanation is complete nonsense. This mode of code transmission is cheap, easy to conceal, and typically drowned out by the other noise of spam on the net. Exactly the sort of thing that would be useful to any organization wanting to communicate without much in the way of records.
There was an event last year where I personally observed two young adults (probably in their mid to late teens) looking through a Wikipedia site entry at a local computer store's kiosk. I was waiting to use the device so was passing by every now and again since I wanted to shop while I was waiting. I couldn't tell (or didn't care) what exactly they were doing, but some middle eastern artwork did catch my eye -- making me think at that moment they were doing something like history homework. The store kiosk is normally locked down on the store's website so it seemed strange that teenagers would tamper with a kiosk to do homework. It wasn't until later that day that my brain made the potential connections.
Although I don't know if anything nefarious was going on, it did strike me how valuable publicly editable sites like Wikipedia would be for the purposes of steganography. Anyone (especially at that time) could drop edits in, almost anonymously. The changes would be lost in a sea of articles except for those looking for the telltale signs or specific entries. Others would certainly "clean up" the entries and if the hidden messages looked enough like other text wouldn't draw any attention.
Terrorism unfolding before my eyes at the time? Not likely, but I certainly wouldn't rule it out and the whole event was damned odd.
Terrorism unfolding before all of our eyes from the article? Not likely. It is always more likely to be a prank, but I sure wouldn't rule terrorism out. Paranoia or not, there are folks out there readying another attack. Regardless of one's point of view on the legality of the NSA phone surveillance, I'm positive those trying to communicate covertly here are forced to use other tactics. It is not impossible for this to be one. - healthy, on 10/12/2007, -2/+20and they are looking for an apartment.
- nocre, on 10/12/2007, -2/+20 Taking the sequence of numbers from 'Group 415' and converting all numbers into binary in their own respective places in the sequence gives you:
011101011100101101100111100101001100110101010010011100001000100111001011
101001100011010010110011110001010000111101010000111101101001010100111110
111000011000111101101011010111110010001000110100001100111110101100010110
000100010011011000111011010100011001010010011100100010110110001001000100
101101011100010000000010100100011010100100100001010011000100011110111011
010101011101001000110010101001011000101000100000100110100010111110011010
110011001000001110000000
Which, when separated, leaves you with 57 lines of 8-digit numbers with none remaining and, using the converter found here: http://www.roubaixinteractive.com/PlayGround/Binary_Conversion/Binary_To_Text.asp (as it gave the only really interesting results) to convert this into ASCII gives you:
uËg”ÍRp‰Ë¦4³ÅPö•>ák_"43ë6;Q”œ‹bDµÄ‘©!LG»UÒ2¥Š š/šÌƒ€
Keeping the original numerical codes (instead of the characters), gives you the following numbers all preceeded by pound signs (much like hexadecimal color codes):
203
8221
205
8240
203
166
179
197
246
8226
225
235
8221
339
8249
181
196
8216
169
187
210
165
352
353
353
204
402
8364
Let's assume all three-digit numbers are simply representative of six (eg, 203 = 220033), and the four digit simply changes the first byte of data (eg, 8221 = 822211)Converting each into a color leaves me with the following conclusion: this is simply a map for an earthtone colour scheme, as can be witnessed here: http://i30.photobucket.com/albums/c333/hallowJack/colorArray.png
Man, Saturdays are slow. Please bury the above comment also, it was an accident. -_- - gotamd, on 10/12/2007, -2/+19Actually, it's more like "my young wife".
- geniusj, on 10/12/2007, -0/+16Except 0+1 != 2 ;-).. Works with the others though.
- rolosworld, on 10/12/2007, -4/+20just cracked,
"all your base are belong to us."
sorry, had to post it...
as a bonus:
google translate gives in German -> english
Mein Fraulein = My woman wife - jtrost, on 10/12/2007, -2/+17Maybe it's a bunch of gibberish just to see how many Internet geeks would try to crack it.
- SatansMagicHat, on 10/12/2007, -2/+16I highly doubt the origin of the voice matters at all, because if someone actually wanted to do something like anonymously, they would grab old sound bytes of different people sayings numbers (like they obviously did) But yeah, the shortwave radio broadcasts they found have been compiled into a collection called The Conet Project, and can be found with a simple search at archive.org. The British did come out at some point (i'm not searching for the link) that said yes they did record spy messages like this during the cold war. This site says that info would be classified, but the cold war's over, so oh well.
- SnowSurfns, on 10/12/2007, -3/+16ok and a-ha also sung the song "the living daylights" for the james bond movie. and james bond was a 00 agent in the british secret service. and there is a new movie casino royale coming out soon!
ooooo I get it, its a big advertisement for casino royale!!!!!!!!! :) - kindrobot, on 10/12/2007, -3/+16And a weird followup.
"Jenny... Jenny... who can I turn to?"
Scary. - cyberdork, on 10/12/2007, -0/+12You are wrong. Fraulein is not feminine, it's neutral, so it's "Mein Fraulein".
PS: what's that? digg doesn't like umlauts? Coz the a in Fraulein is actually an a" umlaut. - Sl4sher, on 10/12/2007, -2/+14You are referring to "Numbers Stations."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numbers_station - bobbles, on 10/12/2007, -3/+14Could it be the microsoft product activation woman from windows XP, i get kinda freaked out when i do that thing at work :]
- templest, on 10/12/2007, -0/+11But you gotta ask yourself,
*why* do those hundreds of "Number Radio Stations" *exist* in the *first place*?
// Dun, Dun, Duuuuuuun... - ironbear, on 10/12/2007, -0/+11I'd highly recommend a close look at this mp3 file with a high quality audio spectrum analyzer. In fact, there is a subaudible, digital-like signal embedded above the 'number' audio in the 4.0 - 4.6 kHz. range. This is noticable as changes in the spectrum when new numbers are 'spoken', but the spectrum plot is different when the same numbers repeat. That indicates this extra signal is not an artifact or otherwise related to the regular audio. You can download a freeware spectrum analyzer here ("Visual Analyzer"): http://www.hitsquad.com/smm/programs/VA/. The bar-like spectrum analyzers you find in mp3 players aren't detailed enough to see this, BTW.
The other, 415-704-0402 file available on the 'net has a different sort of anomaly: occasional data-like bursts in the 4.5 - 7.5 kHz. area. - Strangers, on 10/12/2007, -5/+15They're not german anyway.
He says "Mein Fraulein", but the word Fraulein is feminine, and the correct article would be "Meine". I know it's pedantic, but it helps with weird things like this =) - Daychilde, on 10/12/2007, -5/+15This is very interesting...
Of everything I have read so far, looks like the "Group 415" and "Group 617" are legit - there's a "Group 012", but I think it's fake, for several reasons...
If you break the numbers into triplets -- it nearly certainly cannot be a coincidence that all but 4 of the total 151 known characters start with a zero, and the other four start with a one.
I really would like to see some more samples -- I find it very interesting that both group codes have a '1' in the middle, and the third digit is one more than the first digit... That's got to be a clue of some sort..
I also note that if you sort the entire list of "characters" (assuming triplets per above), there's a decently even spread, except for the 30's-40's... but that could be lack of data... - maiku00, on 10/12/2007, -6/+16Sounds totally spooky.
- templest, on 10/12/2007, -2/+11"Googling the name gave me a new message
"For Mein Fraulein
For Mein Fraulein last modified: Mon, 29 May 19:26 PDT ... Mein Fraulein, You must call me again soon. ///415///704///0402/// ...
www.craigslist.org/sfc/mis/165936352.html ""
Anyone wanna call that number and see if they get a prerecorded message,
and post what you hear on an mp3 and make a link?
I would, but long-distance + laziness get the best of me. :-( - spxiii, on 10/12/2007, -1/+10Haven't found what guy? Please tell me you're not thinking whoever wrote this is guilty of some "hidden meaning cryptography" crime.
- techmonkey4u, on 10/12/2007, -2/+11btw I realize the numbers may be meaningless, but I have nothing better to do on a saturday morning ;)
Not counting the Group 415 or the last 2 digits (86):
If you write the numbers in sequence with a 1 in place of the prime numbers and a 0 in place of the composite numbers, you get: 00000000000000000100000100000010000000000000100000
which is 4362600480 in decimal.
now from what I've searched, there's no area code 436 in the US, but there is a 260 in Indiana and 436 is a valid prefix in the 260 area code so if you turn 4362600480 into 260-436-0480, you get a phone number that when dialed says it's a disconnected number. =)
And there were originally 86 area codes. - jd230, on 10/12/2007, -3/+12"The chair is against the wall.
The chair is against the wall.
John has a long moustache.
John has a long moustache."
WOLVERINES! - techmonkey4u, on 10/12/2007, -1/+9Not counting the "Group 415" or the final two digits "86"
number of 0's = 109
number of 1's = 30
number of 2's = 26
number of 3's = 14
number of 4's = 10
number of 5's = 11
number of 6's = 12
number of 7's = 12
number of 8's = 13
number of 9's = 13
Graphing that reminds me of statistics or machine performance. - Beautyon, on 10/12/2007, -2/+10The Conet Project:
http://www.irdial.com/conet.htm - waldlaeufer, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7sorry people - and user "strangers"
but "mein fraeulein" is correct German. it means: "miss" and this word in German - oddly enough - does have the neuter gender.
one truly might speculate how THIS came to pass... ;-)
but whoever wrote this - he is correct.
and I apologize for my English... - parasitewasp, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8"The chair is agaist the wall."
- TheOneGreatX, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7You do know it's an alias, right? Hint: Look up the information.
- fitzfan, on 10/12/2007, -2/+9@Templest:
"I would, but long-distance + laziness get the best of me."
SkypeOut. - playerZero, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6dammit i didn't mean to submit that last comment, i wasn't done >_<
first post is in nyc craigslist with nyc number. voicemail states "group 415" then presumably a message. next message posted to sf craigslist with sf number. "group 617." what's poppin' at boston craigslist today? - stuffhappens, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7Maybe someone mis-spelled VARTA and is just trying to order some batteries. Mind you, I have sent technical emails to Varta on several occasions and they never reply.
- wallish, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7Has anyone checked if this a Godel number sequence? As far fetched as it may seem, that if done correctly it could be an excellent and secret means of communication. Though I doubt that "live-in-a-cave" terrorists would have the means to use a Godel number code because of the huge amount of math needed, but it's possible...
Godel number sequence: Taking prime numbers and assigning them the positions of a letter or space, such as with "cat." You take the primes, in this case up to the third spot, and assign them an exponent for the letter, so "cat" would become 2^3 * 3^1 * 5^20, which is:
2288818359375000
or
2288 8183 5937 5000
With this, you could put down a couple of words, maybe one or two, and have it decyphered by the people in the know while still getting a one-word message across.
6.1665459358837474296345050349572e 93
heh. - nocre, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7I agree. Keeping my original binary conversion (with 57 perfect lines of 8-digit numbers), I went through and converted each 'byte' into the different base number systems ranging from ternary to hexadecimal, but I wasn't able to discern any real pattern.
I would venture to guess that "A Journey to Brussels", the song being played, etc., is a sort of key. Just browsing through 'A Journey to Brussels' where 'Mein Fraulein' is mentioned, you can derive the following information:
- Four days in "Paradise"
- 8:30 Friday
- Music is a great prelude
- Great gala night at the Opera, All Highest will be present
All kinds of nifty ideas come to mind. What better way for some cryptographer boy to ask his cryptographer girl out on a date for the weekend? I'm inspired. - Nicklogan, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Well with Mein Fraulein, anybody might think that if we use the enigma machine to decode it, it might come out with something, or anything from the Third Reich might have used to encrypt messages?
- rhymevigilante, on 10/12/2007, -4/+9You guys are close, I have translated the code...
mechanic:somebody set us up the bomb,
cats:all your base are belong to us! - seanbateman, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5I was thinking along these lines earlier... Probably is some sort of marketing.
However, posting to CL isn't such a bad idea. You will have lots of people calling based on the interest seen here, thereby lessening the chance of someone figuring out who the intended recipient is.
The poster's IP was logged, but I would imagine the author would be smart enough to avoid any problems w/ this if it is indeed a secret message. Same goes for the VOIP service details...
It is interesting no matter the motive, which is why I am waiting to find out this is a marketing effort for Lee jeans. -
Show 51 - 100 of 165 discussions
© Digg Inc. 2009
— Content created and posted by Digg users is 