"Ana" ARG thread

Author Topic: "Ana" ARG thread  (Read 112863 times)

i know there's already a thread asking about who ana is and a couple things were posted there, but this is for general discussion about the actual arg itself.
pretty much, you may know ana as a supposed "chatbot" that goes around blockland servers. lately, some weird stuff has been going on with her, tho.
the first thing was she posted in that forum thread:
i'm just trying to play the game..
this isn't really much, but what is strange is this:
So when you go to Ana's profile this stuff pops up.


blocking a website called "blocklandana.science". huh, that's strange, and it turns out that if you click the "skype" link on ana's profile you'd get there. platypi dug further into it:
So I did a little snooping into blocklandana.science. The whois doesn't seem to give any leads, nor does the HTML code of the first page. I tried looking up the latitude and longitude of the site's IP, but all it gave me was generic coordinates for the US.

Then I did a search for hidden directories. Sure enough, one comes up. I go to it, and get a 404 error. However, I noticed this 404 error was distinctly different from the other 404 errors I was getting. There was a hyperlink on the page, so I clicked it. It brought me to this page. The title of the page is "Zeitung". On it is a picture of a road and a wav file looping in the background. In case the page is deleted in the future, here is the audio file and here is the image reuploaded:

The original image was uploaded 5 days ago today. I can't seem to figure out who posted it. That may provide some clues. I also have a hunch that the image may contain some secret message, through stenography or something similar. I haven't yet explored this possibility, though.

I tried search a few Blockland player databases for "Zeitbung", but with no results. It looks German, but Google Translate translates it to "time Bung", which makes no sense.

I also noticed that the sound playing the background sounded a bit choppy. Wanting to make sure this wasn't just lag, I downloaded the file and opened it in Audacity. Sure enough, several segments of the audio are cut out. My first guess is that this must be morse code. If you treat the portions with sounds as dashes and dots, the Morse code is ".._. ..---". If you run this through a Morse code translator, you get "/2"

Sure enough, I entered blocklandana.science/newspaper/2/ into the URL, and came up with this page. On it is a black background with the following, peculiar text on it:
Code: [Select]
2
B



2/????
B/AFIC
What this mean I have no clue. But, what I am pretty sure of now is that this puzzle was intentionally put here. These aren't just some webpages that someone forgot to delete from their web server. Otherwise, why would the Morse code point to the second page?

Any ideas, guys?
so, now, we have to solve out the rest of this thing. could we have a cypher like platy suggested?
So my hunch is that "B/AFIC" is a cipher of some sort, and we need to use it to decipher "2/????", which lead us to the next URL.
lets /discuss this stuff
edit: platypi figured out the cipher
I figured it out. "B" is the second letter in the alphabet, which corresponds to "2". So if we translate "AFIC" to their corresponding numbers in the alphabet, we get "1693". Then, if we go to blocklandana.science/newspaper/2/1693/, we get our next clue: an image with the words "- COVER PAGE - " in the middle. There are some characters on the bottom that appear to read "001", perhaps a page number. If you flip the page over, this number reads "100", and you can see that the top portion of the image appears to be a word crossed out, with "- *C -" printed over it. Here's the image reuploaded for historical purposes:
[
edit2:
pretty much it's an nsfw gif of someone's richard that zapk has a weird obsession over, which i really damn hate because, well, i posted a link in a drama post to a site that zapk owned and zapk proceeded to change the site to show it, which could have banned me from the forums.
actually, wait a minute, what. i did a whois lookup on both blocklandana.science and one of zapk's websites, and they both use namecheap and cloudflare. i swear to god, is this a coincidence or am i thinking what im thinking? i swear to god if zapk is the one behind this arg
use caution if you decide to continue with this arg. it might be zapk doing his ballhole thing again.
« Last Edit: October 21, 2017, 10:20:36 PM by Mr Queeba »

Here's what I just posted on the previous thread.

I figured it out. "B" is the second letter in the alphabet, which corresponds to "2". So if we translate "AFIC" to their corresponding numbers in the alphabet, we get "1693". Then, if we go to blocklandana.science/newspaper/2/1693/, we get our next clue: an image with the words   "- *C -"  and  "- COVER PAGE - " near the top. There are some characters on the bottom that appear to read "001", perhaps a page number. If you flip the page over, this number reads "100", and you can see that the top portion of the image appears to be a word crossed out, one that was stamped on (notice the square edges the stamp left behind). Here's the image reuploaded for historical purposes:

and the flipped image:

Given that this is a "COVER PAGE", I tried incrementing different numbers in the URL, but to no avail.
« Last Edit: October 21, 2017, 09:42:06 PM by Platypi »

at one point the site with ballhole which replaced the L's in blockland.us with another similar letter had this kind of thing with some text above it. It was removed.

at one point the site with ballhole which replaced the L's in blockland.us with another similar letter had this kind of thing with some text above it. It was removed.
Ballhole? What are you referring to?

C* is a programming language that appeared in 1987. Can't seem to find anything about a cover page relating to it though.

Ballhole? What are you referring to?
pretty much it's an nsfw gif of someone's richard that zapk has a weird obsession over, which i really damn hate because, well, i posted a link in a drama post to a site that zapk owned and zapk proceeded to change the site to show it, which could have banned me from the forums.
actually, wait a minute, what. i did a whois lookup on both blocklandana.science and one of zapk's websites, and they both use namecheap and cloudflare. i swear to god, is this a coincidence or am i thinking what im thinking? i swear to god if zapk is the one behind this arg
« Last Edit: October 21, 2017, 10:13:02 PM by Mr Queeba »

pretty much it's an nsfw gif of someone's richard that zapk has a weird obsession over, which i really damn hate because, well, i posted a link in a drama post to a site that zapk owned and zapk proceeded to change the site to show it, which could have banned me from the forums.
actually, wait a minute, what. i did a whois lookup on both blocklandana.science and one of zapk's websites, and they both use namecheap and cloudflare. i swear to god, is this a coincidence or am i thinking what im thinking?
Could go either way. Would need more evidence. How would a GIF of a richard be in any way similar to the COVER PAGE picture?

I think we should also look into PumpkinMan57's possible connections with Ana, given that he started his thread on Ana so soon after the puzzle apparently went live (5 days being how long ago the road picture was posted). I looked at his forum account and his post history, and there's nothing telling that I could find. Granted, I didn't look through everything. It seems Ana has been making their presence more known recently, so maybe someone was bound to mention it.

I swear to God, if this game just leads to a picture of that God damn richard... it would be pretty funny.
« Last Edit: October 21, 2017, 10:14:44 PM by Platypi »

So what you're saying is that the Holy Grail we've been looking for for over 2000 years is a picture of a mans richard?

nah pumpkinman is just a regular user although i havent seen him since around when the thread was made

So what you're saying is that the Holy Grail we've been looking for for over 2000 years is a picture of a mans richard?
Most likely.


So I tried extracting data from the picture with two different steganography tools, but neither could find anything.

I'd be in on this if puzzle solving was something I was good at
You go, platypi

Alright, so I tried add "001" to the URL, and got a hit. Here's the image from the next clue at blocklandana.science/newspaper/2/1693/001/:

Frankly, I feel like an idiot for not trying this URL sooner. My guess is that the next URL is indicated by whatever was covered by lowest black box. The black boxes over the X's probably indicate what it is.
« Last Edit: October 21, 2017, 10:22:32 PM by Platypi »

youre gonna get your loving key stolen by cvg or some stuff if you keep going on that website

youre gonna get your loving key stolen by cvg or some stuff if you keep going on that website
Whatever I'll just use TOR. But I'm pretty sure it's not a problem. I have not yet seen anything remotely malicious in the site's code or any of the GET requests I've looked at. Although, given how old the Blockland forums are, I wouldn't be too surprised if it wasn't protected from cross-site scripting. At worse, they might get access to your Blockland forum account. I doubt someone would do through the effort of setting up a puzzle just for this purpose, though. There are easier, more subtle ways to phish. If anyone wants to be safe, just visit the site in incognito mode. That'll clear your cookies, which should be sufficient.

youre gonna get your loving key stolen by cvg or some stuff if you keep going on that website
that is literally not how computers work at all