The Next Roadblock

Since solving the Code D SECOM cipher, I've noticed two things.  First and foremost, the explosion of people posting on the forums and once again becoming active in the ARG.  For me, that is a great thing to see, and is as encouraging as it is helpful.  The second thing I've noticed is the growing complexity of the puzzles.  Granted, the time taken to complete them is nothing compared to the time it took to complete the SECOM cipher, but I feel like that was due to the anonymity of that cipher and the reality that not that many folks were working on it.  Looking at the two others that have been solved, the triangle converted to binary is actually a pretty clever ruse.  Personally, I printed the damn thing out and spent an hour at work trying to figure out how to fold it to create a message.  We can thank bobsayshilol from the forums for suggesting a binary conversion, and pointless for extending the use of binary and coming up with a solution.  Therefore, despite how quickly it was solved, that was a pretty complex puzzle that definitely required thinking outside the proverbial box.

The second puzzle, the IRC chat, was Navajo Code, and it wasn't particularly challenging.  However, now that we've come to the third "new" puzzle, the second IRC chat code, I'm noting a trend.  The message, after Base 64 decoding, is as follows:

INCOMING TRANSMISSION UNKNOWN SOURCE] LEAK SOURCE DETECTED.  TRIANGULATING . . . MIX CASCADE HOP DETECTED . . . ATTEMPTING TIMING ATTACK . . . [TERMINATED]  CANNOT CONNECT TO HOST . . . ATTEMPTING CONNECT TO USER H . . . SENDING DATA.  SECURITY LEVEL 7 ALPHA.

BAQKX  JOAJG  XAHED  IFGIZ  FZDPB  USXLG  GXHFA  UAUWM  HBQAM  WAXVY  LQQRY  WRUWV  ETQOK  BACBE  JWHMS  HVONZ  IAHPA  SOWCM  LGATX  UEXOQ  DRQEJ  BVLBO  DJIHE  CZTHM  ZKHIE  NOMLS  AXVVW  ETWIS  ETIGM  RXEVF  QYAUB  VFCEB  PWBUK  EMNOL W

 The first thing I noticed in this message was the mention of "mix cascade" which, to me, signifies that this cipher may be a variant of a cascade cipher.  If that's the case, we may be in for the long haul on this one.  Depending on the ciphers used, that could require a lot of time and determination.

Considering this realization, I will be updating the Cipher Formats page to reflect this new cipher--it will be listed in regular format, without the spaces, and backward.  In this case, and after how the Code D cipher was cracked, I don't feel the columnated format will be much  use.  Furthermore, depending on how much time this cipher takes to solve, I intend to include descriptions of the ciphers that it could end up utilizing.

Till then, hope you all have fun attempting the new cipher, and I'm glad to see past (and new) faces attempting to solve the ARG.