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General FreeSpace => FreeSpace Discussion => Topic started by: Star-Epock on May 09, 2008, 01:18:29 pm

Title: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: Star-Epock on May 09, 2008, 01:18:29 pm
TEMPORAL MECHANICS

This was a campaign started by GriffonUK many years ago. When his RL affairs grew too much he passed it on the Blacksheep to look after, and from blacksheep to me.

I just found an old backup CD. It has the TM music and Missions, ship Models etc all present. There are what seem to be 6 distinct fresh music tracks. I know Griffon had one produced for him by a music artist.

The script, Missions, Interface, Tables, and all essential files are part of a zip archive, which sadly, is password protected :(

Does anyone know a way of getting round this?

I would very much like to get this campaign finished off, assuming it has not already as I gave all info to Star Dragon. Maybe HE has the password???
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: Goober5000 on May 09, 2008, 01:40:39 pm
Ooh.  Help this man out. :yes:
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: MC_Kejml on May 09, 2008, 02:24:18 pm
Get a rar-file password cracker. There are plenty on the internet, they use brute force so it takes a while but i guess that's your best shot.

Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: Bob-san on May 09, 2008, 03:08:00 pm
I can unlock them, I think. I have a few pieces of Passware, and they should be able to unlock the archives. If they're a few years old, there should be no problems with it. I can't send them because I got them off of a CD and that CD was a slipstreamed Office 03 CD with a few less-than-legal things on it. Basically make a copy of it (how big is it?) and I'll try my darnedest to get it unlocked for you.
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: Star-Epock on May 09, 2008, 03:14:09 pm
Its 652KB, and last modified in 2002, so shes been locked up like a tomb all those years!

If you grab me on MSN or ICQ I can send it over.

Ive tried to crack it but its 6 P worded Archives within a non P worded one. Seems to confuse them. You cant extract the 6 without the Password either. Its like Fat-Bestard from Austin Powers. Its unhappy because its Locked, and its locked because its unhappy. Its a vicious circle.
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: haloboy100 on May 09, 2008, 08:06:37 pm
No. That's called a deadlock. :P

I hope you get it cracked!
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: Getter Robo G on May 10, 2008, 10:05:38 am
NO I'm sad to say I never received any info from you back then (I remembered I asked you once in the TM forum about keeping an archive "just in case")

If you didn't know, this is Star Dragon
 :(
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: Titan on May 10, 2008, 10:28:14 am
dang... no new music?
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: Goober5000 on May 10, 2008, 02:56:22 pm
Ive tried to crack it but its 6 P worded Archives within a non P worded one. Seems to confuse them.
"Them" who?  There are many different extractor programs.  Windows XP Extractor, WinZip, 7-Zip, etc.  Try them all.
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: Star-Epock on May 10, 2008, 03:22:36 pm
The good news is I HAVE the music!

Its the other stuff thats locked.

Ill be getting some space set up soon.

Goober, could you place the file up somewhere here so its publically available in the mean time?

DISCLAMER: Warning, in the event of opening the files sucessfully you are instantly recruited to the TM project willing or not, as you will know all the secrets!
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: Goober5000 on May 10, 2008, 05:33:16 pm
K, here it is.  Get cracking, everybody. :)

http://staff.hard-light.net/goober5000/TM.zip
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: haloboy100 on May 10, 2008, 05:45:39 pm
I would use torrents to get a cracker, but my uTorrent program is hacked so whenever I use it someone steals my bandwidth.

However, if anybody else wants to download it, I got the link here (http://isohunt.com/torrent_details/42392845/zip+password+cracker?tab=summary)
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: Polpolion on May 10, 2008, 06:03:41 pm
Erm, Haloboy, that's a RAR password cracker. This file is a zip.
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: Mongoose on May 10, 2008, 06:11:03 pm
A .rar cracker doesn't do much good for a .zip file, now does it? :p

(Plus, that thing generated virus alerts on AVG whenever I tried installing it.  I have no idea whether they were false positives or not.  At least it's good to see that AVG works...)
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: Polpolion on May 10, 2008, 06:27:37 pm
Hmm. Almost all brute force methods are expected to take several thousand years on my computer.  :blah:

EDIT: Yup. I'll be done in at most 10 thousand years. Sorry, but it's a waste of CPU.
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: phreak on May 10, 2008, 07:17:12 pm
if your zip recovery does known plaintext, try this

$Starting Shipname: Alpha 1
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: Bob-san on May 10, 2008, 07:22:12 pm
I'll try to brute-strength it... E2140 @ 3.24GHz. I'll start in a few minutes. I'll probably quit if it's not finished in about... 3 days?
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: phreak on May 10, 2008, 07:29:46 pm
don't brother brute forcing it...
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: haloboy100 on May 10, 2008, 07:53:21 pm
Is there a better way of doing it?
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: colecampbell666 on May 10, 2008, 09:33:48 pm
Using phreak's QX6850. (I think that's what he means)
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: Polpolion on May 10, 2008, 09:47:59 pm
Is there a better way of doing it?

AFAIK, the only other method is dictionary, and I have yet to find any dictionary to give me any results.
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: Akalabeth Angel on May 11, 2008, 12:24:40 am
    What kind of goofball password protects his backup disks anyway.
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: FUBAR-BDHR on May 11, 2008, 12:45:44 am
If anyone has a decent utility to do it I could set up half a dozen fast computers to work on it round the clock. 
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: phreak on May 11, 2008, 01:00:40 am
Using phreak's QX6850. (I think that's what he means)

even with a qx6850 it would take a few years to brute force 8 characters.  Not to mention that the zip cracks are not multithreaded so it's only going to use 25% of my cpu no matter what.  Winzip has a nice known-plaintext vulnerability that should recover passwords "instantly", but we need to know part of the unencrypted output.
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: Gamma_Draconis on May 11, 2008, 03:54:17 am
Wow, this is like a lost treasure chest. It even has a locked chest!

Since the music isn't locked, could you upload them for the community to hear?
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: Mobius on May 11, 2008, 04:10:16 am
Is the campaign SCP compatible? Please inform the FSCRP as soon as you crack the password :)
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: Bob-san on May 11, 2008, 09:37:34 am
I've tried a good bit of brute-forcing already. I estimate it's up above 300 billion passwords by now. I tried a "stupid" brute-force (lower-case letters and numbers) last night--racked up over 80 billion passwords in an hour. For the past 2 hours and ~40 minutes, I've been brute-forcing it with all standard combinations. I have two computers running 3 attacks right now... my E2140 @ 3.25GHz is running a brute-force attack and an Xieve attack while my PII @ 400MHz is running an extended dictionary attack.

I'm guessing it'll take quite a while to break, but I'm hopeful that it's within a few days that I have a password for you.

Do you happen to have any part of that archive that's not protected? I could get a password much faster if you have, for example, the readme file unencrypted.
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: Tinman on May 11, 2008, 10:07:30 am
and for a dictionary attack, the native language of the one that compressed/archived the file would be helpful
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: Tyrian on May 11, 2008, 12:01:41 pm
I've got a good amount of experience with password cracking.  I'll grab the archive and do some research on it.  I'll message a few of my contacts on the darker side of the net's to see what I can find out.

EDIT:  Do you have a time stamp for when this was password protected?  Anything would help, even if it was just the year.
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: Bob-san on May 11, 2008, 12:18:29 pm
2001. IF you DL the archive you can see the packaging times and all.
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: Goober5000 on May 11, 2008, 01:28:25 pm
This file had to have been made in 2002, since there's a 2002-dated archive inside it.  And it looks like it was made with something called ZipCrypto.  See the attached screenshot.


Do you happen to have any part of that archive that's not protected? I could get a password much faster if you have, for example, the readme file unencrypted.

Winzip has a nice known-plaintext vulnerability that should recover passwords "instantly", but we need to know part of the unencrypted output.

The zip contains a .fs2 file and a file called ships-tbl-entry.txt, so that gives you a bunch of strings you can search for right off the bat:

#Mission Info
This is a FRED created mission (if they didn't change that)
#Plot Info

$Allowed Dogfight PBanks:
$Expl Propagates:
$Max Oclk Speed:

etc.  How much unencrypted text do you need?

[attachment deleted by admin]
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: colecampbell666 on May 11, 2008, 03:11:22 pm
No, ZipCrypto is the encryption method for .ZIP files.

(http://i26.tinypic.com/2n1b2tz.jpg)
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: Clawandfang on May 11, 2008, 03:36:07 pm
This is making my head spin.... if everyone brute-forced, couldn't we seriously cut down that time? Even if everyone did it for just a few days...
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: colecampbell666 on May 11, 2008, 03:55:36 pm
Yeah, make it a community project. It could be our Folding@Home.
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: haloboy100 on May 11, 2008, 04:14:17 pm
:lol:
Would that be possible?
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: Tyrian on May 11, 2008, 04:26:31 pm
We'd need to set up a network of all our machines to make it work efficiently.  Or else, everyone would be overlapping when it came to a brute force attack.
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: Bob-san on May 11, 2008, 05:23:22 pm
I'm up well over a thousand billion passwords now--I've not looked at the system for an hour or so now, so I'll leave the system running until 10-11PM tonight.

As for decoded plaintext, a whole file is the best. I'll try injecting an unencrypted file into the mix and see if that has any results (I highly doubt it will). So far I've been brute-forcing using Zip Key from Passware--using all capitalized and lower-case letters, numbers, symbols, and spaces. I should be up to 8 characters now--the max that Passware would let me run. I did a 1-8 character attack. On the same computer I'm doing a Xieve attack which is going up to 14 characters.

Try to get into contact with the creator--any lead we can get on the length will be appreciated--meaning number of characters, type of characters, and possibly a copy of a file. I realize that it being made in 2001 is a daunting task...
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: haloboy100 on May 11, 2008, 05:27:19 pm
This feels epic :drevil:
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: phreak on May 11, 2008, 05:34:07 pm
This file had to have been made in 2002, since there's a 2002-dated archive inside it.  And it looks like it was made with something called ZipCrypto.  See the attached screenshot.

The zip contains a .fs2 file and a file called ships-tbl-entry.txt, so that gives you a bunch of strings you can search for right off the bat:

#Mission Info
This is a FRED created mission (if they didn't change that)
#Plot Info

$Allowed Dogfight PBanks:
$Expl Propagates:
$Max Oclk Speed:

etc.  How much unencrypted text do you need?

The minimum known plaintext is 13 bytes.

I was using the following since it was the largest chunk of text i could find in a normal FS2 mission that doesn't seem to be modified at all:

#Plot Info

$Tour:  XSTR("Blah", 6)
$Pre-Briefing Cutscene: Blah
$Pre-Mission Cutscene: Blah
$Next Mission Success: Blah
$Next Mission Partial: Blah
$Next Mission Failure: Blah

Unfortunately it didn't find anything...
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: Bob-san on May 11, 2008, 05:36:38 pm
You need a complete file to match--and it has to be in the Archive. I'll try a "Sure-Zip" attack tonight--probably stop the Xieve attack and see if an hour using Sure-Zip will really break the password--if it was made with a pre-WinZip 8.0, I should have success in an hour.

EDIT: Just tried Sure-Zip--absolutely no success. It's a non-WinZip file, so it's incompatible. Can you look through the other backups for a non-encrypted file? I resumed a heavy dictionary attack, Xieve attack, and normal brute-force attack
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: MP-Ryan on May 11, 2008, 09:58:43 pm
You know, zip files aren't encrypted when they're password-protected.  It merely denies access based on the keyword.  In short, you shouldn't have to actually have to crack the password to pull data from the file.  In fact, disk recovery software might let you start pulling the data.

Also, 10 to 1 the password is related to the campaign - in short, a brute-force attempt is overkill because the string will not be a properly constructed password.

I'll take a shot at it.
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: FUBAR-BDHR on May 11, 2008, 10:12:06 pm
Well I have 4 computers working on it.  Nothing so far.  I did try a few random passwords too but it would help to know something about the person to improve guessing chances.  As far as the 4 computers go I have one trying every ASCII value up to 5 characters, one trying all 6 letter lower case words and number combinations, one doing all 7 letter upper and lower case letter and number combos, and one doing all 8 letter ones.  Estimates are in years on anything over 6 characters so it doesn't look good for brute force.  Still going to let it run just in case. 

Stupid question but has anyone tried to track down the guy who password protected them in the first place?

Did a quick Google and came up with ICQ 39940258.  Who know maybe it's still valid.
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: phreak on May 11, 2008, 10:39:04 pm
are the old temporal mechanics forums backed up somewhere?
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: Falcon on May 11, 2008, 10:54:31 pm
Ouch, I don't have access to any brute force software. I was able to find the old TM website on archive.org as well as an old TM demo.

http://www.fileplanet.com/hosteddl.aspx?3dactionplanet%2ffreespace%2fTMDemo.zip (http://www.fileplanet.com/hosteddl.aspx?3dactionplanet%2ffreespace%2fTMDemo.zip)
http://web.archive.org/web/*/www.3dactionplanet.com/hlp/tm/ (http://web.archive.org/web/*/www.3dactionplanet.com/hlp/tm/)
http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.3dap.com/hlp/tm/ (http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.3dap.com/hlp/tm/)

Just by reading the website, it sounded like an awesome mod. Hope you get the password.







Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: FUBAR-BDHR on May 11, 2008, 11:05:45 pm
Following up on the ICQ I found this:  http://people.icq.com/people/full_details_show.php?uin=39940258

Looks like we are looking for one Andrew Bryant aka Optimus (think I'll try that as a PW).
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: Getter Robo G on May 11, 2008, 11:26:55 pm
did you try: Temporal ? just kidding
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: Admiral Nelson on May 11, 2008, 11:42:06 pm
Here is the demo, rehosted on filefront.  I gave it a skybox and the Polaris LS background so it wouldn't look so horrible.

Download (http://files.filefront.com/TMDemo7z/;10196621;/fileinfo.html).

There is an RTF in there with this contact info:

Andrew 'GriffonUK' Bryant, William 'Chucker' Vasser and
Chris 'Kellan' Reagan

Report errors to either
[email protected] or [email protected]

Alternatively, contact me on ICQ# 39940258

Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: ElGuillermo on May 12, 2008, 02:59:01 am
Hey there !

I' m new on the forum, but not at all on FS2 FS2Open. I still have the game box somewhere on a shelf, and play it once a year :)

I may help you finding the password, dedicating a core of my q9450 @3.5 GHz (if someone knows about a zip cracker that runs on multicores, please tell me), but I don't want to lose time searching in areas already explored.
So ? Any clue ? Did someone contacted Andrew 'GriffonUK' Bryant ?

As I've seen, you've already tried 8 chars length passwords. Should I go with 9 (it will take weeks...) ?

Feel free to contact me by mail
++EG
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: Titan on May 12, 2008, 07:02:37 am
:welcomeblue:

hello ElGuillermo.

I honestly don't understand what's going on here, can someone explain? You're trying to get the passwords from some zip archives... that are in a zip archive? And the fact they're in an archive is messing up you're de-passworders?
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: Tinman on May 12, 2008, 10:49:56 am
we need a complete file to match - anyone here who has one of the files?
like fighter2t-03mk2.pof or GriffOpening01.fs2

that will be a great help...
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: ElGuillermo on May 12, 2008, 12:09:43 pm
Hi

Has anyone managed to get the TMdemo.zip file ?
The readme.txt file could be the same as the one within the encrypted TM.zip... I just can't download TMdemo.zip, webarchive doesn't seem to store large files.

btw, a brute-force attack, even on a fast CPU, will take forever (I mean years), so I suggest we focus on social-engineering : find the password author aka Andrew Bryant.
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: Admiral Nelson on May 12, 2008, 12:16:28 pm
TM demo.zip is on fileplanet.  You can D/L it there.  The demo contains a readme.rtf, so it clearly is not the same file.
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: Tinman on May 12, 2008, 12:16:42 pm
Has anyone managed to get the TMdemo.zip file ?
The readme.txt file could be the same as the one within the encrypted TM.zip... I just can't download TMdemo.zip, webarchive doesn't seem to store large files.

no, the readme files are different  :(
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: colecampbell666 on May 12, 2008, 01:11:20 pm
You know, zip files aren't encrypted when they're password-protected.  It merely denies access based on the keyword.  In short, you shouldn't have to actually have to crack the password to pull data from the file.  In fact, disk recovery software might let you start pulling the data.

Also, 10 to 1 the password is related to the campaign - in short, a brute-force attempt is overkill because the string will not be a properly constructed password.

I'll take a shot at it.
Actually, ZipCrypto is a .ZIP encryption type.
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: Fozzy on May 12, 2008, 01:20:26 pm
What about opening it up in a hex editor you might get lucky

or the password might be his HLP forum password (pretty shure the password is in a text file someware on the server  ;7)

or try the file name.  :D
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: haloboy100 on May 12, 2008, 03:02:03 pm
Anything personal to him or something maybe?
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: FUBAR-BDHR on May 12, 2008, 03:15:51 pm
Well if the software I'm using is working then every possible combination of 4 characters is ruled out.  That's all ASCII values not just numbers and letters.  Other stuff is still running.  All lower case letter/number combinations of 6 characters will be finished checking later today.  As for the others 7 might be done in 3 weeks and 8 by the end of the year.  I also just started an all ASCII values for 5 characters.  No ETA on that one.

If we get an organized attack going we could knock out 7 in a day and 8 by the end of the week.  I started with numbers so someone start with letter a, someone with A then someone with m, then next person split between there, etc, etc, etc. 
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: Titan on May 12, 2008, 03:27:02 pm
huh...
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: Herra Tohtori on May 12, 2008, 03:37:31 pm
CrackTM.zip@home, powered by BOINC.

I wonder how feasible this would be... :nervous:

 :lol:
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: Bob-san on May 12, 2008, 06:37:05 pm
It's definitely 7+ characters long. I'm up well over 3 trillion (3000 billion) passwords by now.

Ask the admins to look into trying his forum password--it's doubtful. As it is, the password has symbols, spaces, or upper-case letters. I've been continuing an aggressive dictionary attack but it's only up a billion or so--it's the PII running it. To say the least, brute-force takes forever when you don't know what the password contains. If we could eliminate even one aspect of the password it'd be better. I'll download the demo and see if we can get any matches--unlocked plaintext is pretty much instant unlock.
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: colecampbell666 on May 12, 2008, 06:39:43 pm
It's definitely 8+ characters long. I'm up well over 3 trillion (3000 billion) passwords by now.

Ask the admins to look into trying his forum password--it's doubtful. As it is, the password has symbols, spaces, or upper-case letters. I've been continuing an aggressive dictionary attack but it's only up a billion or so--it's the PII running it. To say the least, brute-force takes forever when you don't know what the password contains. If we could eliminate even one aspect of the password it'd be better. I'll download the demo and see if we can get any matches--unlocked plaintext is pretty much instant unlock.
I'm sure you could figure out the probability by finding how many symbols on a keyboard.
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: Goober5000 on May 12, 2008, 06:44:48 pm
We don't have access to forum passwords. :)

Since this was a development archive, presumably we can try narrowing things down a little.  Try lowercase alphanumeric characters only... no uppercase, no symbols.
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: colecampbell666 on May 12, 2008, 06:45:51 pm
We don't have access to forum passwords. :)
What?
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: Droid803 on May 12, 2008, 06:47:02 pm
We don't have access to forum passwords. :)
What?

Admins can only reset passwords (or change them), they can't access them.
Its to prevent power abuse or something.
Most forums are like that.
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: Bob-san on May 12, 2008, 07:16:35 pm
We don't have access to forum passwords. :)

Since this was a development archive, presumably we can try narrowing things down a little.  Try lowercase alphanumeric characters only... no uppercase, no symbols.

Already tried--full brute-force but lowercase and numbers only. 80-some billion attempts later and no dice. I think I did 1-8 too, but I'm not perfectly sure. It was an hour-long search for that. We'd be best to retry that method again--I may have set 4-7 characters. Someone running 6-8 characters, lower-case and numbers only, all possible combinations.

I'm hoping the the Xieve attack will be the successful version--it tests about 1b theoretical or so--so I'm hoping it'll be done by 2010... :lol: I may run that attack again--but not until something else finished. The dictionary attack is so broad that it's taking forever. The E2140 will probably be done with Xieve first, so Core#2 will probably go towards another narrow brute-force attack. I think we can include upper-case and spaces too, but I don't think symbols.
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: haloboy100 on May 12, 2008, 07:22:57 pm
I can't wait to see what the password is :drevil:
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: Bob-san on May 12, 2008, 07:47:02 pm
You won't find out unless you crack it yourself--whoever finds it will know the password and will also give it to Star-Epock. No reason for a normal member uninvolved with the campaign to know the password after the cat's out of the bag.

From the looks of it, Fubar and I probably have the best chance of figuring out the password.
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: haloboy100 on May 12, 2008, 07:48:35 pm
Oh, yeah. Cause the file has been posted. Forgot about that.
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: Tyrian on May 12, 2008, 07:56:57 pm
Out of curiosity Bob-san, do your dictionary attackers support symbol substitution of the word lists?

If only my uni didn't pay so close attention to what goes on in the security labs, I could get a distributed attack of 30+ machines started...
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: colecampbell666 on May 12, 2008, 07:57:33 pm
Ask them. (the lab supervisor or whoever)
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: blowfish on May 12, 2008, 08:04:33 pm
"Umm ... teacher, can I use all the machines in the computer lab to hack some random file from the internet?" :doubt:
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: Akalabeth Angel on May 12, 2008, 08:10:00 pm
I can't wait to see what the password is :drevil:

Rumpelstiltskin
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: Tyrian on May 12, 2008, 08:10:18 pm
The lab also happens to be jammed with students cramming for the final lab practical.  I don't think they would let me "borrow" that many machines for a project like this when there are students with more pressing needs.
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: colecampbell666 on May 12, 2008, 08:11:32 pm
The lab also happens to be jammed with students cramming for the final lab practical.  I don't think they would let me "borrow" that many machines for a project like this when there are students with more pressing needs.
Sneak in under the cloak of night.
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: ElGuillermo on May 12, 2008, 11:37:09 pm
Any chance to get in touch with the campaign authors ?
Has anyone tried to contact them yet ?
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: Titan on May 13, 2008, 07:04:24 am
Anyone who isn't directly helping, we might as well start listing anything that might unlock them:

Freespace
freespace
free space
Free space
Free Space
free Space
Freespace2
Freespace 2
freespace 2
free space 2
Free Space 2
free Space 2
Free space 2
Temporal
Mechanics
SCP
Open
FS2Open
Optimus
Andrew
GriffonUK
Bryant
fs2temp-mech
William
Chucker
Vasser
Chris
Kellan
Reagean
HLP
hlp
Hard light
Hard-light
hard-light
Hard-Light
Hard-Light Productions

Maybe it's a system?

Ros 128
Ikeya
Polaris
Sol
Sirius
Ribos
Talania
Regulus
Vasuda
Alpha Centauri
Antares
Altair
Vega
Capella
Gamma Draconis

Or maybe it's a type of ship (give or take the prefixes)

Orion
Hecate
Ullyses
Hercules
Herc
Loki
Fenris
Leviathan
Aeolus
Deimos

It goes on...

Maybe it's his phone#/address/zip code... problem is, even if we do find them, will it be the right one?
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: ElGuillermo on May 13, 2008, 11:55:51 am
Wordlist... Good/bad idea...

I'm doubtful about the fact one's using odd words to protect his files. There's a chance for sure, but it has to be considered as minimal. As an example, myself and a lot of my friends are always using the same password in different places, and it is NOT related to the place/website/service/contents. Could be anything, from the first girlfriend's name to a strange car number or a geeky personal reference. Multiply this possibilities by the number of known languages and you'll get an almost infinite number of possibilities you WON'T guess.

That lead us to the starting point :
we'll get the maximum number of chances, and use our time in a more effective manner if we try to contact the author, assuming he remembers a seven years old password.
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: Mobius on May 13, 2008, 12:50:39 pm
Rumpelstiltskin

I remember a word...Stilzkin...where did you get that from?
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: colecampbell666 on May 13, 2008, 01:09:57 pm
A childrens book. :rolleyes: You Italians...
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: Mobius on May 13, 2008, 01:38:31 pm
No, I read it somewhere...I think it was the name of a character in a videogame...
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: Admiral Nelson on May 13, 2008, 02:02:55 pm
Best version of the story, for Mobius: Click to watch (http://video.aol.com/video/video-category/1828820). :)
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: Mobius on May 13, 2008, 02:06:27 pm
Oi...
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: Titan on May 13, 2008, 02:10:34 pm
problem is, does anyone have his email? the one there seems to be related to the campaign, and probably not checked anymore.
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: Bob-san on May 13, 2008, 02:20:05 pm
I still have nothing on it.

I don't think the dictionary attack supports symbols, but it may. I used 4 distortions and 2 misspellings for this run. The PII 400 runs about 14-16 hours a day and the E2140 is now going 24 hours a day. In short, it takes a lot of power to figure it out--the Xieve-optimized attack will likely be the first one to break the password--it ignores complete nonsense and does all other brute-force combinations.
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: Titan on May 13, 2008, 03:44:11 pm
for all we know, that nonsense may be his pass...
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: FUBAR-BDHR on May 13, 2008, 03:48:18 pm
Well the 7 character lower case/number combo found nothing.  It hit me that this machine is a quad processor so I made copies of the file and started 3 more runs on it.  Didn't slow the others down very much and it's still only using 50% of the CPU.  Probably an IO bottleneck if I open any more. 

Current results

Quick 1-5 character: nothing
Brute force 1-4 character all ASCII values: nothing
Brute force 5 character all ASCII values: running at 5 billion combinations tried up to starting character !
Brute force 6 character upper/lower/numeric:  almost up to C with 10 billion combos tried.
Brute force 7 character lower/numeric: nothing
Brute force 7 character upper/lower/numeric:  5 currently running.  9 billion combos on 1, other 4 just started at letters A, M, a, and m.
Brute force 8 character upper/lower/numeric:  9 billion combos tried
Brute force 8 character lower/number: just started 2.  One a 0 the other at j

I have a Core2quad 2.4, 2 Core2duos 2.0, a Pentium D 3.6 and a a P3 866 working on it 24/7
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: DarthWang on May 13, 2008, 03:51:06 pm
Has anyone tried www.volition-inc.com?

Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: Falcon on May 13, 2008, 06:47:46 pm
Do you think it could be more than 10 characters long?
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: haloboy100 on May 13, 2008, 06:51:50 pm
Obviously, if up too 8 characters long doesn't seem to be working.
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: blowfish on May 13, 2008, 06:57:19 pm
Has anyone even tried to contact the author?

Spoiler:
No, I haven't either :nervous:
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: FUBAR-BDHR on May 13, 2008, 08:28:30 pm
Yes I tried through his ICQ.  While it no longer says awaiting authorization I did not get a reply. 
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: ElGuillermo on May 14, 2008, 01:07:28 am
Ok, I tried to mail Andrew Bryant on his 3daction planet mail ([email protected]), but the box is dead.

I've send a mail to this guy :
http://www.westwiltshire.gov.uk/index/council/your-council/councillors/councillor_detail_page.htm?id=12515

And find a techie in here :
http://markmail.org/message/3lv3upxxikh5uwpf
... and mailed him too

There's one more in here :
http://www.travellerspoint.com/member_profile.cfm?user=androobe
... message sent

And another one in here (this one seems to be a very good candidate) :
http://www.technologyhorizons.co.uk/features.cfm?faarea1=customWidgets.contentitem_displaypage&cit_id=3726
Can't find a mail link, but I think he's here :
http://www.jobbath.co.uk/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=253628
So, if anyone living in UK can call him :
"Call Andy 07906 446375"
... And maybe he's here too :
http://www.linkedin.com/pub/2/B88/974
I've send him a message on Linkedin

My messages are pretty simple :
Quote
We're searching for you ! Revive Temporal Mechanics mod with Descent Freespace Open...

Please go to :
http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=53749.0

...Hope one of these guys is "the good one",
if yes, hope he will respond,
if yes, hope he will remember the pass.

If he doesn't, we'll have to get in touch with the mod's coworkers...
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: S-99 on May 14, 2008, 06:09:49 am
Damn, this sucks ass. For what it's worth, i did download the protected zip file and try to extract it in linux with ark. It still asked for the password, figured i might as well try. Another thing that might work is see if you can open the zip file with an app that just plain old ignores the password protection. Sometimes apps just don't care about passwords and bow to your will if they don't ask for a password. Of course this is a shot in the dark method as well. I guess it'd require trying to unzip the file with some other application that has password protection ignoration, or try a really old version of winzip during a time before they  had password protection written into the evil software.

Of course yes this is a shot in the dark. Two things may or may not happen though. 1. following this method you'll have bypassed the zip file security and extract away. 2. can't extract **** because that password protection might just make the zip file incompatible with archive decompressors that don't support password encryption based on the fact that the archive is password protected, older versions of winzip may yield the same results. Sometimes security bypassing is very easy with easy stuff like popping out someones bios battery or using a simple replacement method, and sometimes it's not :no:

Why the heck would this need to be password protected anyway? IT'S NOT PORN! NO ONE ELSE IS LOOKING TO CALL THIS WORK THEIR OWN! Why the protection?
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: colecampbell666 on May 14, 2008, 01:07:09 pm
It's encrypted.
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: Mobius on May 14, 2008, 01:10:37 pm
I think we should try to do whatever it takes to contact the creator before spending time with the password. If the creator turns out to be MIA/KIA...well, brute force is the only option left.
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: Bob-san on May 14, 2008, 04:08:43 pm
I'm up nearly 6 trillion combos for brute-force. My attacker (Passware's Zip Key) is running 3 attacks right now--Brute-force, Xieve-optimized Brute-Force, and Dictionary on a PII 400 (1-15 characters, 4 distortions, 2 misspellings, all characters). As I said before, the Xieve attack will probably be the first/closest getting the password. I'm up at least on 7 characters with brute-force--the password definitely is at least 7 characters long, probably 8+. The Brute-force will go a max of 8 characters, but the Xieve and Dictionary is running up to 15. 5 trillion on brute-force, 4 trillion real on xieve, and 10 billion on dictionary.

BTW--Fubar--try overclocking. I'm not sure how much difference it'll have, but my E2140 has both cores ticking away at 3248MHz. You C2Q should be able to hit 3GHz on air at a minimum, and I've seen up to 3.4 or so on air. It should increase brute-force attacks significantly--30-45% or so.
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: Antares on May 14, 2008, 04:20:40 pm
Watch it turn out to be something silly, like 'muffins'.
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: FUBAR-BDHR on May 14, 2008, 04:22:33 pm
I don't think overclocking will help.  I'm only using about 50% on each core as it is without the overclocking.  I did think about creating a ram drive and putting the file on there to see how much faster it would go but I just don't have time or the software to do it.   I/O seems to be what's slowing me down.  I can still run FRED, Firefox, and Thunderbird at normal speed on the machine.  Slight slowdown on load but that's it.  My profiles for Firefox and Thunderbird are on my server so it's not hitting the local hard drive.

Started a numeric only brute force on another machine today up to 10 digits.  Never know might get lucky.  Also started using a p3 500 but that's not going to be much help.  Not enough memory on that thing.
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: Bob-san on May 14, 2008, 05:10:11 pm
Make sure you set core affinity correctly--you want each on its own core, so to not starve any attack.

Anyways--it's definitely not "muffins" or something stupid--it's a pretty good password, since standard attacks (dictionary mainly) failed quickly.
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: FUBAR-BDHR on May 14, 2008, 05:28:41 pm
I have each one set to run on one core. 

Still no luck. 
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: Bob-san on May 14, 2008, 05:34:59 pm
I average 22.4m or so attempts per second on standard brute-force. You?
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: FUBAR-BDHR on May 14, 2008, 07:32:23 pm
No idea but I don't think it's that high.  Probably this crappy freeware I'm using.  I did noticed when I used the trials of some of the other software out there it seemed a lot faster. 
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: Bob-san on May 14, 2008, 08:30:33 pm
Get me your numbers and I'll get you my three. I'll take a screenshot. The dictionary attack may have to wait a bit tonight--I want to get a few HWBot points for SuperPi. Anyways--my Xieve attacks are running well over 1b effective attempts per second.... again, numbers tomorrow.
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: FUBAR-BDHR on May 14, 2008, 08:47:27 pm
I'll have to update you tomorrow as well.  I'm not at the location where the attacks are running right now. 
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: ElGuillermo on May 15, 2008, 01:04:58 am
Hi.
I'm running a brute force attack using "ultimate ZIP cracker", on all digits+lowercase latin chars, 10 chars long.
It surely will take YEARS to complete, even on my q9450 @3.5 GHz (25.6 million tries/sec) ... Counting on luck...

PS : don't bother trying brute-force 10 digits... no results
Brute-force 11 digits is on its way...

Didn't get any reply from the different "Andrew Bryant" I've send mails to... Damn.
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: ElGuillermo on May 15, 2008, 08:38:45 am
Don't bother trying brute-force 11 digits... no results
Brute-force 12 digits is on its way...
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: colecampbell666 on May 15, 2008, 12:56:56 pm
I thought that it would take:
YEARS to complete, even on my q9450 @3.5 GHz (25.6 million tries/sec)
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: Herra Tohtori on May 15, 2008, 03:00:11 pm
I think digits means numbers from zero to nine. Lowercase letters, capital letters and signs added to that would take years.
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: ElGuillermo on May 15, 2008, 04:41:02 pm
Quote
I think digits means numbers from zero to nine.

They are for sure. I'm just eliminating possibilities... will eventually save time to note what has been tempted.
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: FUBAR-BDHR on May 15, 2008, 10:20:27 pm
Current status

Quick 1-5 character: nothing
Brute force 1-4 character all ASCII values: nothing
Brute force 5 character all ASCII values: tried up to starting character " so far
Brute force 6 character upper/lower/numeric:  run is almost up to word starting with H
Brute force 7 character lower/numeric: nothing
Brute force 7 character upper/lower/numeric:  6 currently running.  Still working on words stating with 0, a, A, M, m and t. 
Brute force 8 character upper/lower/numeric:  19 billion combos tried.  Nothing yet
Brute force 8 character lower/number:  2 running.  One started at 0 the other at j 17 billions combos tried so far.
Brute force 1-9 digit numbers running with all numbers up to 261 million ruled out.


Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: ElGuillermo on May 17, 2008, 01:56:57 am
Damn... This Andrew Bryant guy had a very good password.

That could teach us all a lesson :
Never choose a single word password.
Mine was a single word, meaning something, but not in usual dictionaries.
Now I realise it could have been discovered in one or two days by almost anyone.

Now I'll use a >8 chars password, using uppercase, lowercase and some digits.
Brute force attacks will find it for sure... but in a thousand years, even on the fastest personal computers available today.

BTW : still no answers from the guys named Andrew Bryant I've contacted :(
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: Titan on May 17, 2008, 07:34:38 am
hmmm... epock, exactly how much of this is irreplaceable? you said you know the general plot, right? So... maybe we can just start from the ground up?
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: Bob-san on May 17, 2008, 09:29:53 am
I've actually not been running for the past few days--I've been sick and I wanted my room to be less stuffy so I shutdown both systems. I'll get back to running it in a few days I guess... I'm not over it yet.
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: haloboy100 on May 17, 2008, 12:29:45 pm
Damn... This Andrew Bryant guy had a very good password.

That could teach us all a lesson :
Never choose a single word password.
Mine was a single word, meaning something, but not in usual dictionaries.
Now I realise it could have been discovered in one or two days by almost anyone.

Now I'll use a >8 chars password, using uppercase, lowercase and some digits.
Brute force attacks will find it for sure... but in a thousand years, even on the fastest personal computers available today.

BTW : still no answers from the guys named Andrew Bryant I've contacted :(
Mine is simple. No matter how good your password is, you're ****ed. The best way to avoid someone finding your password is to never even hint to it, ever, and don't make enemies. Simple.
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: Titan on May 17, 2008, 01:49:35 pm
once we find out were he is, someone should go to his house, and kidnap him until we get the passwords.
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: Griffon-UK on May 18, 2008, 04:09:05 am
It's hilarious that whilst everyone tried my ICQ, nobody thought of trying my MSN ;).  I just decided to start reinstalling the SCP and found this thread! :)

Sorry to actually be no help, but I can't actually 'remember' the password.  It was password protected because the thing was being sent to testers.

I'll have a sit down and work on it (damn, its been years since I even thought about this :))
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: Getter Robo G on May 18, 2008, 04:12:59 am
Heya Griffin, (been a while)


  Is the file really worth all the drama over the last week? In relation to the contents (without spoiling anything).
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: Griffon-UK on May 18, 2008, 04:31:00 am
Well, the music was nice, the Perseus 2 was sorta cool (although Dark may have released that a while back when the team fell apart) and the demo mission sorta worked, but this was made about 7-8 years ago whilst I was crashing and burning during my A-levels.

I'm actually worried about what i'll find if I managed to open the zip file :)

edit:  Ok, i've tried cracking it ARCHPR but that couldn't guess it and i'm drawing a blank on the password - it's just too long ago.

Call it a long shot, but Dark (if he's still around) might have the Perseus model file.
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: Titan on May 18, 2008, 09:24:19 am
Dark? as in the guy who made the gorgon and stuff? there was actually something a couple of months ago were a bunch of people wanted to contact him.
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: Snail on May 18, 2008, 10:13:37 am
Dark? as in the guy who made the gorgon and stuff? there was actually something a couple of months ago were a bunch of people wanted to contact him.
That's happened more than once. I think it's happened upwards of a dozen times over the years.
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: Titan on May 18, 2008, 10:17:20 am
so, how are going about this?
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: Goober5000 on May 18, 2008, 10:29:58 am
It's hilarious that whilst everyone tried my ICQ, nobody thought of trying my MSN ;).  I just decided to start reinstalling the SCP and found this thread! :)

Sorry to actually be no help, but I can't actually 'remember' the password.  It was password protected because the thing was being sent to testers.

I'll have a sit down and work on it (damn, its been years since I even thought about this :))
Awesome!  Welcome back, dude!  (I joined after your time, but it's always great to get a blast from the past.)

I don't think your MSN was on your profile (it wasn't when I checked just now). :D

The ZIP archive has a bunch of stuff that looks interesting.  A story outline, for one.  You can view the contents even if you can't actually extract them.

Inferno has a Perseus 2.  Is this (http://inferno.hard-light.net/Screens/Core/INFShot016.jpg) what Dark made, or is it a different take on the same concept?
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: Titan on May 18, 2008, 10:40:29 am
is that INF SCP? it looks awesome.
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: Mobius on May 18, 2008, 10:47:07 am
That's an upgrade of the original Perseus ADv but the shape is pretty much the same :)
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: Bob-san on May 18, 2008, 01:57:00 pm
Well, the music was nice, the Perseus 2 was sorta cool (although Dark may have released that a while back when the team fell apart) and the demo mission sorta worked, but this was made about 7-8 years ago whilst I was crashing and burning during my A-levels.

I'm actually worried about what i'll find if I managed to open the zip file :)

edit:  Ok, i've tried cracking it ARCHPR but that couldn't guess it and i'm drawing a blank on the password - it's just too long ago.

Call it a long shot, but Dark (if he's still around) might have the Perseus model file.
Hey--welcome back. Any chance you can give us a lead on what it could be? I mean more like what characters you used to use on it, how long the password is (or a small range), or better yet a piece of plaintext. If you get into contact with your old testers you may also be able to figure the password out. Anything you have, we likely can use.
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: phreak on May 18, 2008, 02:07:14 pm
or maybe he just has the files elsewhere so we don't need to unencrypt the zip anymore.
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: Bob-san on May 18, 2008, 03:12:24 pm
That's an even better scenario, but I doubt it.
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: Snail on May 18, 2008, 04:17:45 pm
Inferno has a Perseus 2.  Is this (http://inferno.hard-light.net/Screens/Core/INFShot016.jpg) what Dark made, or is it a different take on the same concept?
Inferno's version has extra gunpods at the bottom, which is a stupid idea IMO. :doubt:

Dark's version IIRC had 8 guns, the normal 4 plus 4 more on the extra dorsal missile thing.
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: Star-Epock on May 18, 2008, 04:39:56 pm
Hi sorry guys, just got back from final test. So Im now a Policeman  :pimp:

If/When the file is cracked I think Goober or another suitable candidate should keep a copy of the password cracked files.

Worst case scenario we have some nice music for the community to use.


Griffon, I remeber the readme etc vaguely, it was a few plot outlines, and a few big gaps. I know you had the "grand plan" in your head.....is it still there per chance?


Thank you all very much for your help and support with this!!  :nod:
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: Snail on May 18, 2008, 04:46:59 pm
Hi sorry guys, just got back from final test. So Im now a Policeman  :pimp:
Police officer!
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: Droid803 on May 18, 2008, 04:57:38 pm
Well, if Star-Epock is male, the term Policeman actually applies.
Police officer is used to talk about the profession in general, because it includes both policemen and policewomen.

That's how it is, right?  :nervous:
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: Snail on May 18, 2008, 05:02:20 pm
Me was quoting Hot Fuzz. There's quite a few vocab jokes in the movie:

Policeman/Policewoman/Policeman Officer = Police Officer
Police Force = Police Service
Car Accident = Traffic Collision (because accident implies there's no one to blame)


Anyhow, what other things by Dark are in Temporal Mechanics, or only the Perseus 2?
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: Kie99 on May 18, 2008, 06:14:29 pm
Well, the music was nice, the Perseus 2 was sorta cool (although Dark may have released that a while back when the team fell apart) and the demo mission sorta worked, but this was made about 7-8 years ago whilst I was crashing and burning during my A-levels.

I'm actually worried about what i'll find if I managed to open the zip file :)

edit:  Ok, i've tried cracking it ARCHPR but that couldn't guess it and i'm drawing a blank on the password - it's just too long ago.

Call it a long shot, but Dark (if he's still around) might have the Perseus model file.
Hey--welcome back. Any chance you can give us a lead on what it could be? I mean more like what characters you used to use on it, how long the password is (or a small range), or better yet a piece of plaintext. If you get into contact with your old testers you may also be able to figure the password out. Anything you have, we likely can use.

You've tried using some default text from the .FS2 mission files?  Try these if you haven't

#Music
$Event Music:
$Briefing Music:


Hi sorry guys, just got back from final test. So Im now a Policeman  :pimp:

Congrats :yes:
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: Titan on May 18, 2008, 06:27:28 pm
FRED
fred
fred2
FRED2
those sound good...
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: Bob-san on May 18, 2008, 06:40:03 pm
Well, the music was nice, the Perseus 2 was sorta cool (although Dark may have released that a while back when the team fell apart) and the demo mission sorta worked, but this was made about 7-8 years ago whilst I was crashing and burning during my A-levels.

I'm actually worried about what i'll find if I managed to open the zip file :)

edit:  Ok, i've tried cracking it ARCHPR but that couldn't guess it and i'm drawing a blank on the password - it's just too long ago.

Call it a long shot, but Dark (if he's still around) might have the Perseus model file.
Hey--welcome back. Any chance you can give us a lead on what it could be? I mean more like what characters you used to use on it, how long the password is (or a small range), or better yet a piece of plaintext. If you get into contact with your old testers you may also be able to figure the password out. Anything you have, we likely can use.

You've tried using some default text from the .FS2 mission files?  Try these if you haven't

#Music
$Event Music:
$Briefing Music:


Hi sorry guys, just got back from final test. So Im now a Policeman  :pimp:

Congrats :yes:
Plaintext refers to unencrypted files inside the archive. Complete files are what is necessary--then Passware Zip Key can basically instantly retrieve the password.
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: Androgeos Exeunt on May 19, 2008, 03:52:35 am
How about using sexp for a password? :nervous:
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: haloboy100 on May 19, 2008, 12:40:11 pm
how about using a sexp for a password?
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: blowfish on May 19, 2008, 03:43:15 pm
:wtf:
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: Griffon-UK on May 20, 2008, 02:23:25 am
That looks just like Darks original model with fancy bits.  Possibly worth contacting the person who made the alterations to see if they have the reference model to hand and bingo!
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: Androgeos Exeunt on May 20, 2008, 04:17:20 am
how about using a sexp for a password?

...or maybe some weapon names? :nervous:
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: Griffon-UK on May 20, 2008, 12:45:13 pm
Ok, thanks to the wayback machine, it turns out Dark didn't make the Perseus 2.  Styxx did!  Is he still around?
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: foolfromhell on May 20, 2008, 01:20:29 pm
This feels epic :drevil:

It does indeed.

By the way, are you the Haloboy from Sciforums? In that case... Star Trek>Star Wars!
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: foolfromhell on May 20, 2008, 01:29:30 pm
You won't find out unless you crack it yourself--whoever finds it will know the password and will also give it to Star-Epock. No reason for a normal member uninvolved with the campaign to know the password after the cat's out of the bag.

From the looks of it, Fubar and I probably have the best chance of figuring out the password.

Why not? After such a long search, I think everyone wants to know what the password is.
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: foolfromhell on May 20, 2008, 01:35:50 pm
It's hilarious that whilst everyone tried my ICQ, nobody thought of trying my MSN ;).  I just decided to start reinstalling the SCP and found this thread! :)

Sorry to actually be no help, but I can't actually 'remember' the password.  It was password protected because the thing was being sent to testers.

I'll have a sit down and work on it (damn, its been years since I even thought about this :))
[/quote

If you sent it to testers, the testers could still be contacted.

There might be an email record of you telling them the password.

Try something generic since the testers would need to remember it.

What about the name of that new GTVA Corvette or something?
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: Flipside on May 20, 2008, 01:37:29 pm
You won't find out unless you crack it yourself--whoever finds it will know the password and will also give it to Star-Epock. No reason for a normal member uninvolved with the campaign to know the password after the cat's out of the bag.

From the looks of it, Fubar and I probably have the best chance of figuring out the password.

Why not? After such a long search, I think everyone wants to know what the password is.

Because there is campaign spoiling stuff in there, I would suspect, so the less people know in advance, the better.
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: foolfromhell on May 20, 2008, 01:39:07 pm
Damn! People could get it spoiled, yes, but after all this...

After the thing is released? Then maybe?
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: Snail on May 20, 2008, 04:31:36 pm
Ok, thanks to the wayback machine, it turns out Dark didn't make the Perseus 2.  Styxx did!  Is he still around?
Rly? I don't believe so... Wait, maybe he did. I guess everyone thought DarkTM made it because DarkTM made a whole load of random renders for TM... But if Styxx made it I guess it would be in MT, not TM.
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: Gamma_Draconis on May 20, 2008, 05:51:46 pm
If they can't tell us the password, could they just tell us if it was a name or a just a sequence of random digits, letters, and symbols.
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: haloboy100 on May 20, 2008, 06:05:28 pm
This feels epic :drevil:

It does indeed.

By the way, are you the Haloboy from Sciforums? In that case... Star Trek>Star Wars!
Nope.
I've never heard of the sciforums...I used to play halo 2 like crazy way back when, and then I got pissed off by the immature punks that now inhabit the fan populaton
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: Stormkeeper on May 22, 2008, 12:47:21 am
This is interesting, and most definitely epic.

Maybe Griffon you could try and recall what was the most likely thing you would have used as a password back then ?
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: Androgeos Exeunt on May 22, 2008, 10:11:19 am
...I can't post random suggestions, can I? :nervous:
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: Griffon-UK on May 22, 2008, 02:53:28 pm
Maybe Griffon you could try and recall what was the most likely thing you would have used as a password back then ?

I've been trying...  Tried everything I would have used in and outside the campaign at the time...
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: Mongoose on May 22, 2008, 08:41:15 pm
...I can't post random suggestions, can I? :nervous:
There's no point in posting short random suggestions when people have already brute-forced out to several characters. :p
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: Androgeos Exeunt on May 23, 2008, 08:50:46 am
...I can't post random suggestions, can I? :nervous:
There's no point in posting short random suggestions when people have already brute-forced out to several characters. :p

:sigh:
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: Bob-san on May 23, 2008, 11:11:21 am
...I can't post random suggestions, can I? :nervous:
There's no point in posting short random suggestions when people have already brute-forced out to several characters. :p

:sigh:
Example: Don't post random suggestions or just smileys to boost your post count. I've not been brute-forcing it lately because New York is getting warmer, and I don't like my room being 80+ degrees and stuffy from the ozone.
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: FUBAR-BDHR on May 23, 2008, 11:21:50 am
Still have mine running 24x7.  Paused one of them for a few TBP multi games that's about it.  I check them about once a day.  Nothing yet.  Slows my weekly backups down quite a bit though.
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: Stormkeeper on May 24, 2008, 09:16:32 am
Try!!!

fargennugenfrawnwasleavingwithamonkeyinthesackandthreedoublech eeseburgersandwiches!

You can't remember whether it was letters, someone's name, combination of letters, numbers, dates ?

For the record, I already tried q1w2e3r4t5.

Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: haloboy100 on May 24, 2008, 11:07:28 am
For the record, I already tried q1w2e3r4t5.
What lead to the idea that that would work?
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: Herra Tohtori on May 24, 2008, 09:45:06 pm
For the record, I already tried q1w2e3r4t5.
What lead to the idea that that would work?


Well it is kinda more probable than just any gibberish, seeing how it occurred to Stormkeeper it probably has occurred to someone else as well to use the first five letters and numbers on QWERTY keyboard as a password.

It's a weak password though, seeing as it isn't as random as it might look. The only advantage in it is that it's ten characters long and thus getting to it with bruteforce takes quite a while... and the odds of single person figuring the system with random experiments is pretty low. Statistically, though, it's a weak password. Better than dictionary passwords, but significantly weaker than random character string of same length.
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: haloboy100 on May 24, 2008, 09:50:23 pm
The best way to not get password hacked is to change it on at least a weekly basis.
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: Droid803 on May 24, 2008, 10:03:23 pm
Typing in 1337 makes good passwords.
Try 73/\/\p0r41/\/\3c|-|4|\|1c5 or something :P (It's seemingly random, its got 27 characters in letters, numbers, as well as misc stuff like / or \, meaning it'll take a long time to crack, plus its easy to remember, and since everyone types their 1337 differently, its also impossible to crack.)
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: haloboy100 on May 24, 2008, 10:15:15 pm
Does that say temporal mechanics?

and is it weird that I read that just like normal latin letters? :wtf:
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: Droid803 on May 24, 2008, 10:19:05 pm
Yea, it says temporal mechanics. Which is why I approve of the existence of 1337, but only for passwords :P
The point is that someone that knows it can read it like normal letters, but the computer treats it as 27 random ASCII characters :P Kills brute force attacks. Plus its hard to guess.   ;7
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: blowfish on May 24, 2008, 10:35:22 pm
Why don't you try it...
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: Droid803 on May 24, 2008, 10:57:05 pm
Because...I don't have the file?  :confused:
(Yes, I'm a n00b)
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: blowfish on May 24, 2008, 11:15:52 pm
K, here it is.  Get cracking, everybody. :)

http://staff.hard-light.net/goober5000/TM.zip

Its right there...
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: Droid803 on May 24, 2008, 11:19:38 pm
Ah alright...better not be a virus :P

EDIT: Well, its not that. I've also tried 2000TemporalMechanicsTest and 1999TemporalMechanicsTest (based on info said by Griffon-UK about it being sent to testers 7-8 years ago). No cigar...
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: Stormkeeper on May 25, 2008, 04:42:50 am
The best way to not get password hacked is to change it on at least a weekly basis.

Luckily it is not possible to make an archive modify its own password on a weekly basis.

I'm gonna go ask my lecturers for help, plus call in my Ordos.

=edit=

Any one know who the testers at that time were ? They might know the password, since iirc the archive was meant for them.
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: Stormkeeper on June 02, 2008, 11:17:29 am
:bump:

Bumping for hope.
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: Akalabeth Angel on June 03, 2008, 02:44:00 am
         So you guys never cracked the egg yet? Oh Darn. Was watching this thread with mild interest for a while.
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: Turey on June 05, 2008, 12:24:59 am
God, I hope no one ever needs anything I've encrypted/password protected. My standard password is 18 characters long and includes quite a few punctuation marks.

I'll never forget it though, as there's a story behind it that's funny enough that it'll stay in my mind forever.
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: Stormkeeper on June 05, 2008, 12:34:45 am
Therefore Turey, I hope to hell you never ever forget it.
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: Fozzy on June 05, 2008, 04:42:32 am
what was the slogan for the TM website¿ also try Darkness Rising. :doubt:
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: haloboy100 on June 06, 2008, 07:28:14 pm
What's the progress now?
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: FUBAR-BDHR on June 06, 2008, 07:47:54 pm
The progress would be there is still no progress.
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: Tyrian on June 06, 2008, 07:55:08 pm
Unfortunately, if it's gone on for this long, it's unlikely that the password will be broken.  It's too long or has too high a level of entropy.  Unless someone discovers a weakness in the password protection scheme of WinZip archives, it's likely to stay that way.  And the odds of finding one are long, given that the standard has been around so long that many, many programmers have gone through it, fixing any problems they find.
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: Vretsu on June 06, 2008, 09:09:31 pm
Life is full of amusing little tradegies like this.

There it is...the data is all right there! But you can't touch it! Hahahaha!
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: haloboy100 on June 07, 2008, 11:06:11 am
"Take that, you poor stupid collection of Freespace fanboys!"
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: Titan on June 07, 2008, 11:46:12 am
i am PISSED... it should have opened by now... (not commenting the people that did all that hard work trying, i'm just saying that the zip is acting wierd...)
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: colecampbell666 on June 07, 2008, 12:17:46 pm
It's because every time you add another character to the password length, the time that it takes to break it multiplies exponentially.

You'll probably learn about it in school soon, but it's basically:

1/number of possible symbols * 1/PNoS * 1/PNoS adding a multiplication for every symbol.

With over a hundred possible symbols, it adds up fast.
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: Goober5000 on June 07, 2008, 12:54:31 pm
That's geometrically, not exponentially.
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: colecampbell666 on June 07, 2008, 01:00:32 pm
:wtf:

Multiplying a number by itself over and over again is exponentially.
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: Goober5000 on June 07, 2008, 01:13:34 pm
No, see here (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geometric_progression)...

If you have an alphabet of 26 letters, and a one-character password, the number of possibilities is 26.  If you have a two-character password, the number of possibilities is 26*26.  And so on...

26
26*26
26*26*26
26*26*26*26
26*26*26*26*26
...

In the formula described in Wikipedia, a is 1, and r is 26.
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: colecampbell666 on June 07, 2008, 01:15:07 pm
Exactly. So doesn't the product multiply exponentially?
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: Goober5000 on June 07, 2008, 01:32:00 pm
Oh, I see what you mean.  It's an exponential calculation, but a geometric sequence.

Yeah, the terms are kind of confusing.  Exponential series involve factorials.
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: haloboy100 on June 07, 2008, 04:37:44 pm
Why are we having this argument?

Oh. 'cause The Count is supposed to be a mathematician :P
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: Droid803 on June 07, 2008, 04:48:24 pm
It's cause the count counts.
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: esarai on June 09, 2008, 01:45:08 am
I'm not certain it's been suggested, and I may sound like a complete fool for suggesting this, but why not try damaging the zip extractor's code in order to make it ignore the password protection? Or, if it's something that invokes an access-denial function (what the hell would you call that?) inside the computer, edit part of the computer so that passwords no longer activate the denial function? I'm getting inspired by something I saw my friend do--he bypassed admin privileges by screwing around with the files needed to define what was password/admin protected and what wasn't.

I sincerely hope that this suggestions is actually of some help, and not ineffably stupid.
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: blowfish on June 09, 2008, 12:07:17 pm
That doesn't work if the password is part of the encryption scheme :doubt:
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: griffon67 on June 09, 2008, 01:39:02 pm
we don't know if the archive have this kind of encryption do we ? the ones interested in opening this archive could try it, we've nothing to lose.
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: colecampbell666 on June 09, 2008, 03:52:20 pm
It uses ZipCrypto encryption.
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: CaptJosh on June 09, 2008, 11:00:38 pm
ZipCrypto is supposed to be horribly flawed, but that doesn't seem to be helping getting into this thing.
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: FUBAR-BDHR on June 12, 2008, 04:19:23 pm
Still no luck.  Maybe if we had one of these:  http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/06/09/fastest.computer.ap/index.html

Think they would let us use it for a few? 
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: haloboy100 on June 12, 2008, 08:48:52 pm
Still no luck.  Maybe if we had one of these:  http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/06/09/fastest.computer.ap/index.html
I wonder if it can run Crisis ;7
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: colecampbell666 on June 12, 2008, 09:02:21 pm
(http://img217.imageshack.us/img217/6650/122bo0.jpg)
http://www.crymod.com/thread.php?threadid=21682&sid=cc5c071661dfb54aad46f3837587d3b1
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: DarthWang on June 12, 2008, 10:41:08 pm
What we need is a CTC computer

Someone go and invent one please
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: colecampbell666 on June 13, 2008, 01:18:08 pm
CTC?
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: DarthWang on June 13, 2008, 02:21:14 pm
Closed Timelike Curve. Like in Exultant. It computes the answer to the problem and then sends it back in time to when you started.
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: tinfoil on June 13, 2008, 02:49:17 pm
What we need is a CTC computer

Someone go and invent one please
\
Dude i have one of those in my basement. i can haul it out for you if you want. ;)
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: Androgeos Exeunt on June 13, 2008, 11:12:25 pm
(http://img217.imageshack.us/img217/6650/122bo0.jpg)
http://www.crymod.com/thread.php?threadid=21682&sid=cc5c071661dfb54aad46f3837587d3b1

 :wtf:

I thought the game designers should be able to run the game at its best!
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: qazwsx on June 14, 2008, 03:43:34 pm
What we need is a CTC computer

Someone go and invent one please
What we need is a quantum computer, by the time this get's cracked on a normal processor, quantums might be the norm.
Some of you might say that quantum computing is years off, the truth is that they are becoming a reality, it might take a while, but I'd be surprised if they didn't appear some day in the not-too-distant future.
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn3114-quantum-computing-making-tremendous-progress.html
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: DarthWang on June 14, 2008, 05:44:02 pm
Quantum computers are only better at solving certain types of problems, and not necessarily faster.

CTC would do it instantly
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: qazwsx on June 15, 2008, 05:23:59 am
Ah, but you'd still have to leave a CTC running to come up with the answer, god knows how long it would take.
Quantum computers are good at breaking encryption because (in theory) they can do thousands of processes similtaneously, they can try many different passwords/keys at the same time, individually, these might be the same speed, or slower than trying a password on a normal computer, but because many attempts are being done at the same time, it becomes a hell of a lot easier.
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: Stormstack on June 15, 2008, 12:33:17 pm
The idea with a quantum computer is that it exists in multiple states at the same time. Like Schroedinger's cat being alive and dead.
The computer exists in a different state for each possible key, at the same time. So, it can try an infinite amount of keys a the same time.
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: DarthWang on June 15, 2008, 02:56:23 pm
No, it doesn't work that way. There are only 3 possible states: 1, 0, and superposition where it could be either 1 or 0. It's not necessarily faster than a normal computer, just better at solving certain types of problems. To solve this encryption, it would take the square root of all possible combinations.... still a hell of a lot of time.

Whereas with CTC, you would get the answer as soon as (or even before) you asked the question. Breaking the problem up into smaller steps makes it more efficient, as well.

However CTC is completely theoretical while there are actually quantum computer prototypes, so the point is rather academic.

Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: Stormstack on June 16, 2008, 07:36:05 am
There are ore than 2 possible states, because you are usually dealing with more than 1 bit of data at the same time. There is certainly more than 1 transistor in your processor, so the possibilities increase more and more. The computer may only work with 1's and 0's, but that doesn't mean that it can only be in 1 of 2 states at the same time.
Say you have a processor with (for simplicity) 3 transistors, you can have:
1 1 1 or
1 0 0 or
1 1 0 or
1 0 1 or
0 1 0 or
0 0 1 or
0 1 1 or
0 0 0

More than 2 possibilities, no?
So you get every transistor in a supposition of both states, giving you a number of states as near to infinite as makes no odds. A Core 2 Extreme QX6700 has 582 million transistors so there are 2582000000 possibilities.
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: Androgeos Exeunt on June 16, 2008, 09:07:04 am
I'MA FIRIN' MAH LAZER!

:welcomered:
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: tinfoil on June 16, 2008, 03:44:35 pm
i thought we were trying to crack a password :rolleyes:
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: Droid803 on June 16, 2008, 04:18:28 pm
yeah, but you know, thread derailment happens. All the time.
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: tinfoil on June 16, 2008, 05:35:04 pm
i know. i happen to be quite good at it. however this is important and it would be good if we could come up with a solution rather than spam and **** that will just get this locked.
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: FUBAR-BDHR on June 16, 2008, 06:33:44 pm
Well I'm well over 10 Trillion passwords tried so far with one software and I don't even know how many with the other (found a faster program a week ago) still nothing.  So far I've pretty much ruled out all 5 character combinations.  Every combination of 6 characters between ASCII 32 and 127.  7 character run is up to thing beginning with ". 8 and 9 character word combinations  of the same sets are running but as you can imagine will take quite some time.  I also have 1 running 8 character combos of everything between 32 and 127 except caps.  All number combinations up to around 500000000000 are also out.  I'm not giving up though.  I'll let them run for years as long as the gods of power and hardware allow it.  Maybe I'll have it by the 20th anniversary of FS. 

Forgot to add I'm processing around 15 million passwords a second now.
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: Bob-san on June 16, 2008, 07:02:32 pm
I stopped--though I should probably continue. I was up a good deal of the way on ALL combos. I was thinking of something like bring it to a demonstration and have one of the password-hackers go at it for a few minutes--get us a definite answer!
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: FUBAR-BDHR on June 16, 2008, 10:38:56 pm
If you know of something that will run faster that about 4 million a second and is free let me know.  I have more processing power but the programs just aren't using it.  The fastest one uses an ini file so I can't run more than one copy on the same PC otherwise I could possibly be hitting 12 million as second on the one PC.
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: haloboy100 on June 16, 2008, 10:40:14 pm
and that's bad?
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: FUBAR-BDHR on June 16, 2008, 10:43:25 pm
Well if I could quadruple it on 1 computer and double it on 3 others that is a significant decrease in the time it would take to crack it. 
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: Tyrian on June 17, 2008, 04:05:01 pm
But that's assuming that you could coordinate between the machines to avoid them retrying each other's combinations.
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: FUBAR-BDHR on June 18, 2008, 04:03:39 pm
That's the easy part.  You just run them with different first characters and let them run until they the first character has already been tried.  Say start one with a another with A another with m, M, 1, special characters, etc.  Might get a few hours of overlap but that's about it. 
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: Bob-san on June 22, 2008, 08:57:00 am
I was running 12mil/second or so with Passware. Shoot me a PM and we'll see what we can come up with.
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: Fabian on June 22, 2008, 11:06:34 pm
I can now rule out WinZip as encryption tool, as the Zip file uses minimum version of 1.0 to extract stored files and minimum version of 2.0 to extract deflated files.

Also all WinZip versions of that time span (2002) (6.3,7.0,7.1,8.0,8.1) do not write an extended local header, which is also present.

This means that all attacks depending on the extremely weak PRNG of WinZip earlier 8.0 do not work.

The PRNG still is quite weak and the starting seed is (if Info-ZIP compatible was used) also guessable in between time(NULL) ^ PI as PI is used on win32 for xoring.

Also we know the plain text bytes of the 4 stored files that most probably start with the same header (PK...).

One file is unfortunately not enough as the time byte must be guessed correctly. (However this is only a manual brute force of 255 combinations).

However while this is enough to rule out the possible key combinations no published source code program exists, which uses plain text in several files at once.

So one you guys with the fast machines, you can try to get pkcrack running (on windows) and do a known some plain text attack on tables.zip with:

2d b0 50 4b 03 04 14 00  0a 00 08 00 ??

This assumes that the first file in tables.zip was deflated (08 00), is compatible using version 2 (14 00), and was using maximum compression settings and extended local headers (0a 00), using not another password (again 0 bit in 0a 00 is 0).

The other possibility would be:

2d b0 50 4b 03 04 14 00  08 00 08 00 ??

(Using standard compression settings, but still extended local headers)

Quite another possibility if another program was used for the other zip files is:

2d b0 50 4b 03 04 14 00  00 00 08 00 ??

(if no extended local headers were used)

The 2d b0 can be found in TM.zip as the time of day (in standard DOS format) (which is used instead of CRC-32 for files, which use extended local headers) and assumes that the zipper used for encryption was writing two checkbytes, however being compatible with version 1.0 this might hold true.

pkcrack needs to be started as follows then:

./pkcrack -C TM.zip -c tables.zip -p pt.zip -o -2

assuming that the pt.zip contains the bytes written above.

Another attack could assume that the zip file was packed together after the files were copied as we can see several files with 01 date have almost the same time stamp:

2d b0 50 4b 03 04 14 00  0a 00 08 00 ?? b0 36 2b

would then be our search string for tables.zip assuming that the first file in tables.zip has a last-modified date of approximately the same time as when it was packed.

(Risky but 4 times faster!)

That is all I can find for now,

Best Wishes,

Fabian
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: FUBAR-BDHR on June 22, 2008, 11:58:20 pm
Can you give those instructions in some no alien language?  Every time I try to run pkcrack with anything there I either get a message that the file isn't plaintext or the instructions for running pkcrack which seem to not even work when copied right from the readme for pkcrack. 
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: ElGuillermo on June 23, 2008, 02:06:47 am
Hi !

I've launched first method attack some minutes ago. Will keep you informed soon :)
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: Fabian on June 23, 2008, 10:18:53 am
More Info:

I've tried to launch an attack on the Pseudo random number generator, but I had no luck :-(.

The first byte after each header is encrypted with the state of the keys for the password.

Either this file was created with a program, which is not using real random() numbers as the first byte, which would explain why 0x90 and 0x1f do appear two times, which is not quite realistic given a random scenario.

Or the zip was created not in one zipping, but adding files later on, which would make this type of attack impossible.

So if the author of the zip does still remember anything of the program used at that time (did he use GUI toools, commandline tools, special programs, ...) or if the zip file was updated frequently that would really really help in the analysis.

Best Wishes,

Fabian

Edit: It seems to be WinRar around 3.0.0. WinRar 3.0.0 does produce similar files.
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: ElGuillermo on June 23, 2008, 11:41:55 am
Damn... no result. pkcrack reports "false positive hits... Strange" and that's all.
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: Bob-san on June 23, 2008, 05:20:26 pm
Anyone interested in some more powerful (well, faster) brute-force software, shoot me a PM and we'll figure something out.
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: Fabian on June 23, 2008, 06:32:59 pm
Damn... no result. pkcrack reports "false positive hits... Strange" and that's all.

As the cipher is linear, we might be quite close to some result such though.

Uh, you calculated all 255 values for the first entry?

i.e.

2d b0 50 4b 03 04 14 00  0a 00 08 00 00

till

2d b0 50 4b 03 04 14 00  0a 00 08 00 ff

? [ edit: The keyspace can be reduced by looking at the dos time format, actually the numers that need to be tried for the last byte are:

0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19,20,21,22,23,24,25,26,27,28,29,32,33,34,35,36,37,38,39,40,41,42,43,44,45,46,47,48,49,50,51,52,53,54,55,56,57,58,59,60,61,64,65,66,67,68,69,70,71,72,73,74,75,76,77,78,79,80,81,82,83,84,85,86,87,88,89,90,91,92,93,96,97,98,99,100,101,102,103,104,105,106,107,108,109,110,111,112,113,114,115,116,117,118,119,120,121,122,123,124,125,128,129,130,131,132,133,134,135,136,137,138,139,140,141,142,143,144,145,146,147,148,149,150,151,152,153,154,155,156,157,160,161,162,163,164,165,166,167,168,169,170,171,172,173,174,175,176,177,178,179,180,181,182,183,184,185,186,187,188,189,192,193,194,195,196,197,198,199,200,201,202,203,204,205,206,207,208,209,210,211,212,213,214,215,216,217,218,219,220,221,224,225,226,227,228,229,230,231,232,233,234,235,236,237,238,239,240,241,242,243,244,245,246,247,248,249,250,251,252,253

== 240 values, so 15 need not to be tried.

30,31,62,63,94,95,126,127,158,159,190,191,222,223,254,255 == 15 values that need not to be tried as they cannot occur as it would mean that the second == 60 or minute==61 or minute==60.

)

Because the attack on the one PC I started one is already running for a day and still has not finisched for:

2d b0 50 4b 03 04 14 00  0a 00 08 00 10

Best Wishes,

Fabian
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: Fabian on June 23, 2008, 10:13:54 pm
Good news on our quest of finding the key!

- The version used to encrypt the keys was indeed WinRAR 3.0 (compatible).

- The files were all added at the same time with the same password.

- WinRar 3.0 uses also Info-Zip sources, however it uses the Borland builtin random number generator.

This one works as follows:

srand() is not only initialized with the supplied value, but also a first rand() is done.

rand() works as:

seed = 0x15A4E35 * seed + 1;

return ((seed >> 16) & 0x7fff);

Note: That the +1 could be quite weak and allow a attack like "Yet another known plain text attack ... Winzip 8.0 attack".

That however means that we now have all the original random() bytes of all files and a reduced known plaintext attack is now possible.

Btw. The seed before the first byte gotten is:

0x15a28d66

And each byte is like: (mrand() >> 7) & 0xff;

(Note that these are encrypted so this is not more known plaintext.)

Unfortunately no program known with source implements those ...

However the paper for it is available and this means that this .zip _can_ be cracked in reasonable time.

Best Wishes,

Fabian
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: Stormkeeper on June 23, 2008, 10:35:14 pm
What do you mean by "the paper for it is available" ?

And define resonable time.
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: Goober5000 on June 23, 2008, 10:45:51 pm
Excellent progress update, Fabian. :)
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: Stormkeeper on June 23, 2008, 10:47:57 pm
If he cracks it, means that the Temporal Mechanics should restart, yes?
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: Fabian on June 23, 2008, 10:56:20 pm
What do you mean by "the paper for it is available" ?

And define resonable time.

http://www.woodmann.com/fravia/mike_zipattacks.htm

It is very popular and a proof of concept exists in written form (http://archive.cert.uni-stuttgart.de/vuln-dev/2003/02/msg00019.html"), which runs in under 2 hours on a Pentium II, 500 Mhz. (uhm, yeah I know pretty old)

The complexity of the attack is for worst case around:

"The work done in the first stage dwarfs the rest of the work needed.� The total work is therefore about the same as encrypting 2^39 bytes.� Cracking a file created with this kind of weak PRNG usually takes about two hours on a 500 MHz Pentium II.� One can then take the three keys and use [BK94]�s second algorithm to derive a password, if one desires, although the three keys suffice to decrypt the files."

Well, with todays machines I guess it would be around 20-30 minutes or even faster, because we have 10 files in archive (instead of only 3)!

Best Wishes,

Fabian
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: Stormkeeper on June 23, 2008, 11:02:47 pm
.. So are you running the attack now ?
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: Mongoose on June 24, 2008, 01:10:40 am
If he cracks it, means that the Temporal Mechanics should restart, yes?
If he or someone else manages to crack it, there's no way that this community is letting this campaign die at this point. :p
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: ElGuillermo on June 24, 2008, 01:13:07 am
Fabian :
Quote
Uh, you calculated all 255 values for the first entry?

Damn no... :) I thought pkcrack did it automatically... Password cracking noob :)

So, I'll start at 80.

Didn't understand your last post. I'm not a programmer, so the proof of concept is far beyond my understanding too :(
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: haloboy100 on June 24, 2008, 09:30:26 am
Wait a sec...


What's so special about this campaign that there is an announcement for it?
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: Stormkeeper on June 24, 2008, 10:02:43 am
Actually, the announcement was for help about cracking the archive.
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: colecampbell666 on June 24, 2008, 02:48:06 pm
But why? What's so special? Cool models? Intriguing story? Finished (or near enough) campaign?
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: Goober5000 on June 24, 2008, 03:18:22 pm
Time travel.
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: colecampbell666 on June 24, 2008, 03:19:57 pm
Sync.
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: NGTM-1R on June 24, 2008, 03:30:27 pm
It was cool enough to make people spend hours or days of their computer time. Ain't that enough to wait for release? :P
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: Mongoose on June 24, 2008, 04:12:33 pm
Exactly.  It's not even about how cool the campaign may or may not be; it's about the challenge of trying to get at its data and resurrect it. 

(Hmm...I wonder if someone could make a mission out of all this.  "Scan that Shivan destroyer, pilot!  It should take only three weeks to break its encryption systems!")
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: haloboy100 on June 24, 2008, 05:14:14 pm
That should be an easter egg mission at the end :P

Time travel.
Doctor Who in Freespace?
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: phreak on June 24, 2008, 05:15:22 pm
That and it was one of HLP's first hosted projects.

Who remembers Fifth Sun?
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: Stormkeeper on June 24, 2008, 08:06:24 pm
I remember Black Sun, but not Fifth Sun.
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: Sandwich on June 26, 2008, 04:21:23 pm
I have that file on HDD, from a Volition Watch backup I have. It's located under \volition watch\freespacewatch\us\yogi\tempmech\TM.zip I contacted Yogi but he can't remember the password either. :-/
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: Bob-san on June 26, 2008, 05:15:26 pm
I sent Fubar a different program. He reports 12 million attempts per second on his Core 2 based stuff--which is about what I was getting before. In fact, I was getting 14m or so--but that's probably because I was overclocking and had 3.25GHz.
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: FUBAR-BDHR on June 26, 2008, 05:22:36 pm
That's 12 million per core with the old program still running at between 3 and 4 million.   :D  Off the top of my head I'm doing around 50 million per second now.
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: haloboy100 on June 26, 2008, 08:20:31 pm
wait until the thing reaches critical mass :rolleyes:
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: FUBAR-BDHR on June 28, 2008, 09:27:50 pm
Lost power today so there goes a couple of weeks of work down the tubes.  Going to try to figure out where I left off.   :hopping:
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: Sandwich on June 29, 2008, 06:04:14 am
That stinks...
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: FUBAR-BDHR on June 29, 2008, 01:09:42 pm
Well most of the runs did pick back up where they left off.  A few didn't.  Looks like even though you can run multiple instances of some of the programs they only save the settings from one of the instances.  J

Just about lost power again.  Flashed off 3 times while typing that.  Some nice hail hitting the window too.

I also started a few more runs.  Up to almost 75 million a second now.  Could add another 25 to that if I can figure a way to start a run from somewhere other than the beginning. 
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: Bob-san on June 29, 2008, 01:38:22 pm
Overclock (more).
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: Fabian on July 08, 2008, 06:38:45 pm
I got it, I got it!

The zip is decrypted and the password was sent via PM to Goober5000.

The quest is over and I won!

Best wishes,

Fabian
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: Stormkeeper on July 08, 2008, 07:25:32 pm
Okay ... everybody grab Fabian and toss him into the coolant pool to congratulate him! :P
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: Droid803 on July 08, 2008, 07:46:38 pm
Okay ... everybody grab Fabian and toss him into the coolant pool to congratulate him! :P

:lol:

I got it, I got it!

The zip is decrypted and the password was sent via PM to Goober5000.

The quest is over and I won!

Best wishes,

Fabian
How many processors did you burn?
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: Bob-san on July 08, 2008, 08:42:21 pm
How long was it? As in, number and type of characters?
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: Kie99 on July 08, 2008, 08:49:09 pm
I got it, I got it!

The zip is decrypted and the password was sent via PM to Goober5000.

The quest is over and I won!

Best wishes,

Fabian

You deserve a new custom title of some kind.
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: tinfoil on July 08, 2008, 09:04:04 pm
Shweeeeeet!  :yes:
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: Mongoose on July 09, 2008, 12:03:41 am
Woo!
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: S-99 on July 09, 2008, 03:02:21 am
So what's in there?
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: Fenrir on July 09, 2008, 05:08:04 am
You`re winner!
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: pecenipicek on July 09, 2008, 09:30:16 am
you is a winrar XD


congrats and lets actually use the files now that we can access them :p
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: Snail on July 09, 2008, 09:31:51 am
What's with the secrecy now? Do we have to kill the admins too now?
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: Stormkeeper on July 09, 2008, 10:01:37 am
You`re winner!

(http://i15.photobucket.com/albums/a354/sohmingjian/YOU27RE_WINNER_trophy.jpg)

Big Rigs for the abso-****ing-lute win.
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: Tyrian on July 09, 2008, 03:42:28 pm
How long was the password????  What was it like???  Tell us!!!  Tell us now!!!
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: Goober5000 on July 09, 2008, 11:22:53 pm
The password was eight characters long.  There were seven lowercase letters and one number.

Black Sheep officially cancelled the campaign on or about April, 28th 2002.  So the data may be free to distribute; I dunno.  I'd ask Star-Epock, but he hasn't been online since May 18th.
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: Stormkeeper on July 09, 2008, 11:40:59 pm
E-mail him ? Or do we have to start another manhunt for him?
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: Bob-san on July 10, 2008, 12:05:55 am
The password was eight characters long.  There were seven lowercase letters and one number.

Black Sheep officially cancelled the campaign on or about April, 28th 2002.  So the data may be free to distribute; I dunno.  I'd ask Star-Epock, but he hasn't been online since May 18th.
Somewhat interesting. I coulda sworn I searched that specifically. In fact, I know I didbut nothing came up. Maybe the passware kit Ihave was incompatible or something?
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: FUBAR-BDHR on July 10, 2008, 12:21:47 am
I had 3 different programs a running couple of different 8 character combos.  Still have 3 running including one lowercase letter/number/space/symbol and they haven't found anything yet.  Oh well guess I can shut all those processes down tomorrow. 

Man can't believe I had those processes running for over 2 months. 
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: Bob-san on July 10, 2008, 12:46:47 am
I had 3 different programs a running couple of different 8 character combos.  Still have 3 running including one lowercase letter/number/space/symbol and they haven't found anything yet.  Oh well guess I can shut all those processes down tomorrow. 

Man can't believe I had those processes running for over 2 months. 
Calculate how much electricity you used! :lol: Anyway--I ran for only a week or so. Upon second thought--I think the initial xieve attack was only up to 6 char...=(
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: FUBAR-BDHR on July 10, 2008, 01:44:59 am
Well my bill was about $50.00 higher last month but I turned the AC down on a cool night so it would run to keep the computers cool (thermostat upstairs computers downstairs) and forgot about it being set that low for a couple of weeks.  Figured it out when it was 90 outside and 60 in the basement.  Computers where happy though. 

I don't think that xieve thing is a good as it says.  I was all the way up to working on 13 and 14 characters with that.  12 finished either late Tues or early Wed.  The 7 character brute force was only about 20% done.  The 8 character about 5%. 

The 7-8 character lower case/number combo was one of the processes I lost during the power outage and had to start over again.  Not sure how far along it was.  With my luck it will be solved when I go next door to check on them tomorrow. 

Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: Fabian on July 10, 2008, 08:35:42 pm
Thanks for the title.

Actually I used the method written in the paper and with lots of optimizations I can now crack this file in around 12 minutes and with some additional brain power even after 5 minutes with one additional information in 30 secs.

If I have only 5 files, it takes a bit longer, but is still possible.

The program will be released as an addition to pkcrack later.

Brain versus Computer brute force *g*.

It was really surprising when I saw that the password was only 8 characters.

With this method I can also crack infinity long passwords that will never be cracked via bf though, which was the reason why I implemented the paper.

Best Wishes and Take Care,

Fabian
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: Kie99 on July 10, 2008, 08:43:25 pm
So what's actually in it?  Anything release worthy?
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: Goober5000 on July 10, 2008, 09:44:09 pm
It's got several (presumably playable) missions.  Surprisingly, none of them appear to have anything to do with time travel.  Maybe they're just what would have been the first act.
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: Bob-san on July 11, 2008, 01:33:19 am
Scripts? Plot overview? Plans for ships, weapons, or missions?
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: Goober5000 on July 11, 2008, 07:15:35 pm
If Star-Epock doesn't show up by July 15th (one week after the password discovery), I'll post the password the decrypted archive.
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: Stormkeeper on July 11, 2008, 07:41:52 pm
The clock is ticking ....
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: FUBAR-BDHR on July 11, 2008, 09:10:28 pm
Well I just came in to check on the status of my attempts.  I got it too.  Day late and a dollar short as usual.   :rolleyes:

BTW:  To whoever made that comment about meltdown or whatever it happened.  I had a machine overheat.  Don't think it was entirely due to the cracking attempts since that machine took a lightning hit last year but I'm sure it didn't help it any either.  Hope that MB is still under warranty.  Actually I hope it was just the MB that I can replace the 3.6 Pentium D might be a little harder to find.   :hopping:
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: Tyrian on July 12, 2008, 11:42:11 am
If the campaign is released, will the password be released with it...?
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: Bob-san on July 12, 2008, 12:59:29 pm
Well I just came in to check on the status of my attempts.  I got it too.  Day late and a dollar short as usual.   :rolleyes:

BTW:  To whoever made that comment about meltdown or whatever it happened.  I had a machine overheat.  Don't think it was entirely due to the cracking attempts since that machine took a lightning hit last year but I'm sure it didn't help it any either.  Hope that MB is still under warranty.  Actually I hope it was just the MB that I can replace the 3.6 Pentium D might be a little harder to find.   :hopping:
Any P965 board (there's a Foxconn one with everything for cheap but no real OCing), most P35, and many P45 boards will all support FSB800 Pentium Ds. Other than that, think about an E7200 ($130) and a P35 or P45 board ($100).
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: DarthWang on July 12, 2008, 06:38:24 pm
If the campaign is released, will the password be released with it...?

They should incorporate the password into the campaign. Like make it the name of a ship or something.
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: Droid803 on July 12, 2008, 06:42:39 pm
If the campaign is released, will the password be released with it...?

They should incorporate the password into the campaign. Like make it the name of a ship or something.

Naw, make it more subtle. Like cargo inside a certain cargo container.
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: Snail on July 12, 2008, 06:52:55 pm
Cargo gags are old as FREDding itself.
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: Droid803 on July 12, 2008, 07:06:16 pm
Yeah, well, its not as blinding obvious (nor as stupid) as having a cruiser named password1 or something.
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: Goober5000 on July 12, 2008, 07:17:33 pm
I'm not going to release the password, in case Star-Epock used it in anywhere else.  (It's unlikely, but possible.)
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: FUBAR-BDHR on July 12, 2008, 07:20:56 pm
Any P965 board (there's a Foxconn one with everything for cheap but no real OCing), most P35, and many P45 boards will all support FSB800 Pentium Ds. Other than that, think about an E7200 ($130) and a P35 or P45 board ($100).

First I'm going to check to see if it's still under warranty.  Second I'm going to try to find the same model so I don't have to mess with reloading XP. 

Funny part is it was almost exactly a year from the time it got hit by lightning until it died.   Not really that worried about it.   
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: Snail on July 12, 2008, 07:37:01 pm
I'm not going to release the password, in case Star-Epock used it in anywhere else.  (It's unlikely, but possible.)
How about releasing the contents, then?
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: Goober5000 on July 12, 2008, 10:55:56 pm
If Star-Epock doesn't show up by July 15th (one week after the password discovery), I'll post the password the decrypted archive.
Read before posting.
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: Androgeos Exeunt on July 14, 2008, 09:16:12 pm
If Star-Epock doesn't show up by July 15th (one week after the password discovery), I'll post the password the decrypted archive.
Read before posting.

...or you could lock this thread, since there is no problem now. :drevil:
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: Stormkeeper on July 14, 2008, 09:28:09 pm
Its the 15th of July. (In Singapore)
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: Androgeos Exeunt on July 14, 2008, 09:34:30 pm
/me sees the quotes on his last post.

Ahh, but it's still 14th in North America.
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: colecampbell666 on July 15, 2008, 10:01:47 am
Not anymore.
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: Grizzly on July 15, 2008, 10:39:16 am
Cargo gags are old as FREDding itself.

Not really. X-Wing had cargo gag's as well (In the first mission, you must blow up some cargo crates which had some very special names...), Mechwarrior 2 had some as well (Nothing, Nothing, Nothing, Still Nothing)
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: Stormkeeper on July 15, 2008, 11:05:55 am
Cargo gags are in every possible game where you would have cargo, and the ability to scan said cargo.
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: Goober5000 on July 15, 2008, 08:15:16 pm
Voila. (http://staff.hard-light.net/goober5000/TM_decrypted.zip)
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: Stormkeeper on July 15, 2008, 10:07:24 pm
Huh. So what do we do with it then ? Anyone gonna restart TM ?
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: FUBAR-BDHR on July 15, 2008, 10:30:06 pm
Well I never looked at anything but the readme but I did see what appeared to be plots or scripts.  So the real questions are probably what is there and who is interested in taking it up. 
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: Grizzly on July 17, 2008, 04:14:36 am
Let me geuss: The Password was Babylon5?
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: Stormstack on July 18, 2008, 04:00:50 pm
Alas, t'is not. That was probably one of the first things tried.
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: haloboy100 on July 28, 2008, 12:52:11 am
It'd make an awesome easter egg!
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: Chucker on August 01, 2008, 12:04:31 pm
Oh wow. Talk about a blast from the past! I was one of the people who helped the TM project get started, and I was supposed to do the voice acting for Terran Command in this campaign. I haven't played around with Freespace for years and I just happened to stumble onto this thread when the Temporal Mechanics name caught my eye. I miss working with GriffonUK. He was a cool guy.  :)

Chucker
Formerly of Volition Watch - Another blast from the past  :)
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: Mongoose on August 22, 2008, 12:48:16 pm
Not to do the mini-bumpage thing here, but has anyone with a modicum of skill out there thought about doing something with this?  With the effort required to crack this puppy, it seems a damn shame to let it fall back into oblivion again.  From the little I read of the documents it contained, there were some cool ideas going on.  I'd kind of like to know where Star-Epock disappeared to after dropping this off, too.

(Good to see a veteran poking their head in, Chucker. :))
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: Jeff Vader on August 22, 2008, 01:00:16 pm
Umm... no? (http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php/topic,55052.0.html)
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: Snail on August 22, 2008, 01:07:46 pm
So release files or get new team? Or just let it die again?
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: Mongoose on August 22, 2008, 02:24:13 pm
Umm... no? (http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php/topic,55052.0.html)
What point you're trying to make by linking to an announcement that I created with information that's older than this current thread is kind of lost on me. :p
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: Droid803 on August 22, 2008, 02:44:45 pm
Well, since its like...been released to public, I guess anyone that wants to can get together and make it work.
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: Jeff Vader on August 22, 2008, 02:45:19 pm
Umm... no? (http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php/topic,55052.0.html)
What point you're trying to make by linking to an announcement that I created with information that's older than this current thread is kind of lost on me. :p
A quick glance at the announcement clearly indicates that the campaign has buried its head into the ground and is not going to resurface any time soon.

 :nervous:

Sorry. Reading comprehension while intoxicated has never been my specialty.
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: Admiral_Stones on August 22, 2008, 04:12:06 pm
Not to do the mini-bumpage thing here, but has anyone with a modicum of skill out there thought about doing something with this?  With the effort required to crack this puppy, it seems a damn shame to let it fall back into oblivion again.  From the little I read of the documents it contained, there were some cool ideas going on.  I'd kind of like to know where Star-Epock disappeared to after dropping this off, too.

(Good to see a veteran poking their head in, Chucker. :))

If we finance a Mac Pro all together or rent a Cray for a few days, we shall try again!
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: FUBAR-BDHR on August 22, 2008, 04:18:49 pm
Why would you need to try again?  It's already cracked and the cracked version was posted. 
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: Jeff Vader on August 22, 2008, 04:39:57 pm
Why would you need to try again?  It's already cracked and the cracked version was posted. 
Now that my state of mind has cleared up a bit, I am interpreting Mongoose's message so that even though the archive was cracked, it seems that no faction is working on continuing the campaign itself -> life sucks and then you ****in' die, as they say.

Right?
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: Snail on August 22, 2008, 10:23:09 pm
It's already cracked and the cracked version was posted. 
Where? Must've missed it. :(
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: FUBAR-BDHR on August 23, 2008, 12:30:21 am
http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php/topic,53749.msg1115235.html#msg1115235
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: Mongoose on August 23, 2008, 02:12:06 am
There are some spectacular miscues going on all-around here.  Good work, gentlemen. :p

Now that my state of mind has cleared up a bit, I am interpreting Mongoose's message so that even though the archive was cracked, it seems that no faction is working on continuing the campaign itself -> life sucks and then you ****in' die, as they say.

Right?
Yes, that's what I was getting at.  I didn't have anything personally invested in cracking the archive myself, but I was thoroughly impressed at the dedication that many showed in doing so, and I feel like that effort would be all for nothing if the half-completed campaign just sits on someone's hard drive collecting virtual dust for years.  The fact that the campaign's concept seems to cover some ground that I've yet to see one pull off makes me all the more interested in seeing something come of it.  What puzzles me the most is that Star-Epock came here with the file asking for the community's help, saw that work on it was proceeding...and then never returned to follow up on whether or not the effort had been successful.  It could be that he simply forgot about it, or had some personal issues come up, but I do find it strange that someone would seek help and then neglect to obtain said help.
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: Snail on August 23, 2008, 02:14:04 am
He's probably busy. He'll turn up and say thanks sooner or later.
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: Jeff Vader on August 23, 2008, 02:56:03 am
There are some spectacular miscues going on all-around here.  Good work, gentlemen. :p
No problem, sir. Just doin' our best.  :yes:
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: Griffon-UK on November 17, 2009, 03:55:37 am
As mentioned in the other thread...

Wow, congratulations...  I still wrack my head over it every so often when someone mentions 'FS2' and it still eludes me.  That's one less thing to think about :)

I've seriously got no desire to continue this campaign - occasionally I mull over the concept and realise how hackneyed it actually was, so if someone can do something better, be my guest!  :yes:

Wow, Chucker, long time no speak!
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: Androgeos Exeunt on November 17, 2009, 05:03:10 am
:wtf:

/me fires his SABeam.

(http://public.blu.livefilestore.com/y1p-G1dauKpg0ftd52EHdG-2P8n8ouZkPfg8W4PbErJZUga5I7uVCBK7IP2JsMNZbKMmEeVrVvYybFJWXmA1y7NtQ/necroancient.png)
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: Mongoose on November 17, 2009, 05:37:20 pm
*ahem* I believe I've made my views on using that beam clear in the past. :p

Seriously, it's someone who hasn't been around for a long time posting in a relevant thread.  No problems here.
Title: Re: Last Hope FS2 Temporal Mechanics Campaign Please Help!
Post by: Stormkeeper on November 18, 2009, 08:18:14 pm
And if I'm not wrong, he's one of the original team to boot.