Mr Robot ARG

Mr. Robot ARG
Active since 2017-09-28
An ARG set in the universe of Mr. Robot.
Type	[[List_of_Investigations#Official|Official]]
Creator	NBC Universal
Discovered	2017-09-28

Main Page > List of Investigations > Mr. Robot ARG

SPOILER WARNING: This wiki page may contain spoilers for the show Mr. Robot. The ARG is best played after catching up on the show. You have been warned!

The Mr. Robot ARG is an alternate reality game pertaining to the popular television show Mr. Robot. Throughout the course of the ARG, players interacted with characters and factions from the show, in order to solve puzzles. In particular, some players were recruited into fsociety, a fictional underground network of hackers. One of fsociety's main goals in the show is to disrupt a multinational corporation called E Corp.

Post Season

The following recaps the ARG events that took place after the season finale.

Red Wheelbarrow Activity Sheet (Looking Glass Enabled)

Red Wheelbarrow Activity Sheet

Overlay of 3 Activity Sheets

After the season finale aired the Red Wheelbarrow website updated again, with a new file in the Kid Wheelbarrow section. The file would change based on the user agent and if an extension named Looking Glass, a custom extension created for the Mr. Robot Season 3 ARG, was enabled. One file would be shown if Firefox was not being used, another would be shown if Firefox was used without the Looking Glass extension enabled, and another by using Firefox with the Looking Glass extension enabled. If you were to align posters of the three activity sheets, you would get this binary:

0000.0001:1111
0000.0100:0100
0000.0101:0110.0001.0101
0000.0110:1000
0000.1001:1100.0010
0000.1100:1110.1101.1001
0000.1110:0011
0000.1111:1010
0001.0010:0000.0111
0001.0100:1011

Converting the left column to decimal from binary, gives numbers, that have to be converted to letters using A1Z26 and the right column just to decimal gives you this translation:

1	(A) :	15	
4	(D) :	4
5	(E) :	6, 1, 5
6	(F) :	8
9	(I) :	12, 2
12	(L) :	14, 13, 9
14	(N) :	3
15	(O) :	10	
18	(R) :	0, 7
20	(T) :	11

If you use the numbers in the right column as the position of the letters, you get this:

R  E  I  N  D  E  I  R  F  L  O   T   I   L   L   A
0  1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9  10  11  12  13  14  15

The string REINDEER FLOTILLA, is a reference to Tron. The rest of the image either has no meaning, or has yet to be solved.

Red Wheelbarrow Clock

On the DA_remote on WIMR, in the Documents folder epilogue.docx a hint for what to do is given.

Red Wheelbarrow clock

Jonathan consulting his trusty Semaphore manual (for doesn’t every sailor carry one?), realizing the whirling flags are spelling out a single word, over and over, like a drumbeat calling to him across the waves: “DESTINY”.

The only command that has been found to work in the terminal is destiny, leading to a clock on the Red Wheelbarrow website. Using the quote from the document as instructions, the word destiny can be converted into semaphore flags, a way of distance communication that uses flags in positions.

Converting the position of the flags to the hands of a clock, you get the following 7 times:

12:30
6:05
9:20
10:00
7:50
7:20
10:15

Red Wheelbarrow Network Map

After inputting those times, the site will change and give you a message. After it is done, it will redirect you to the home page that now shows that you are signed in as admin of the Red Wheelbarrow site.

Red Wheelbarrow Network Map & Vincent

After being signed in as admin on the Red Wheelbarrow website, you will be able to click on the Network Map in the top left corner, redirecting you to this page. Going to that page requests a password, and inputting REINDEERFLOTILLA, previously found from the Red Wheelbarrow activity sheet, it will show the Red Wheelbarrow network map. Using the map, you can connect to the firewall by going to https://www.red-wheelbarrow.com/vincent/.

Firewall Access page

At the firewall (Vincent) site, the license has many references to the movie The Black Hole. The main references are MarcusT, Marcus Tullius Cicero, and reference to a Cicero misquote being referenced in The Black Hole. "V.I.N.CENT: To quote Cicero: rashness is the characteristic of youth, prudence that of mellowed age, and discretion the better part of valor." Turning that quote into only lowercase letters, you get rashnessisthecharacteristicofyouthprudencethatofmellowedageanddiscretionthebetterpartofvalor. Using that as the password, and Cicero as the username you get access to the 4 other sites referenced on the Network Map.

The firewall site updated on January 26th to have an option to update, giving this message:

Current Base System 03673.12.18
Latest Base System 03701.8.2

Warning: to maintain Dutchman system compatibility administrative level 33 rotational access is required and system time must sync.
Proceed with update?

The first system version is a reference to The Black Hole, with 03673 being octal for 1979, and 12.18 being the date for it's release. The same logic was used on the second version, being a reference to the movie Fright Night (Releasing on the date August 2nd, 1985). There currently has been no use for the Fright Night reference.

ProboscusMonkey/theWolf

The Proboscis Monkey Network Map

Proboscis Monkey (theWolf) is the IDS, Intrusion Detection System, for the Red Wheelbarrow network. The site unlocked on January 26th along with the Firewall update. The firewall message, Warning: to maintain Dutchman system compatibility administrative level 33 rotational access is required and system time must sync. gave a hint on what to do.

Dutchman sytem -> Proboscis Monkey
Administrative -> <code>admin</code> username
Level 33 -> Red Wheelbarrow commercial
Rotational Access -> Hint at password

An additional hint was given by Crypt from Curious Codes, "As the days go by, I leave this thing [bowl on a lathe] rotating over and over". This lead people to investigate and found out if you were to use PLASTICFORKS (previously found from the Red Wheelbarrow commercial) and ROT it by the day of the month, you would get the password. For example, if the day was June 15th, using ROT15 the password would be EAPHIXRUDGZ.

NOTE: To find the current password, you can use this site.

Harvey

Harvey resistor image.

Using the network map found inside of Proboscis monkey, Harvey was found with the message 500 Internal Server Error Harvey is CURRENTly down. Sorry for the trouble. with a picture of resistors. The word CURRENT is a hint to get the current of the resistors. If you were to use this chart on all but the tolerance and multiplier bands (last 2 bands) you would get a message:

0 - Black
1 - Brown
2 - Red
3 - Orange
4 - Yellow
5 - Green
6 - Blue
7 - Violet
8 - Gray
9 - White

BROWN BROWN VIOLET - 117
BROWN BROWN BLACK  - 110
GRAY VIOLET        - 87
VIOLET GREEN       - 75
GRAY RED           - 83
GRAY BLACK         - 80
BROWN BROWN RED    - 113
BROWN BROWN WHITE  - 119
BROWN BROWN        - 11
BROWN GRAY         - 18
NONE               - 0
YELLOW             - 4
VIOLET             - 7
NONE               - 0
ORANGE             - 3
VIOLET             - 7
ORANGE             - 3
RED                - 2

Cistern image

You get the string 117 110 87 75 83 80 113 119 11 18 0 4 7 0 3 7 3 2 Translated the first part using ASCII decimal codes you get unWKRPpw 11 18 0 4 7 0 3 7 3 2. The last number is a reference to Van Eck's sequence, which occurred during Kor Adana's interview with the Hollywood Reporter. Using those numbers as a clue to find a password from those interviews, it was found that hackjamtor was the password for Octo Proxy.

Cistern

Cistern message

Using the network map Cistern was found with the message Down for Maintenance for Approximately 24 Hours and an image. It was found that if you were to keep the site open for 24 hours (or manipulate the site cookie) the screen would become black and show the following message:

YOUR HIDE IS RAW FROM
GRABBING AT DOLLARS

IT DOES NOT MAKE SENSE TO YOU,
AS WE TWIST YOUR THOUGHTS AS SPAGHETTI

AROUND THE FORKED PATH YOU THOUGHT
YOU UNDERSTOOD

UNFORGIVEN YOU WILL SEE
THE RESULT OF ABSOLUTE POWER

AS WE REVEAL YOUR TRUE CRIME-
THE DOXING YOU WILL NEVER SAY GOODBYE TO

CHANGE YOUR NAME THREE TIMES COMBINED,
IT WILL NOT MATTER

YOU WILL HAVE NO NAME
TO USE THAT WE WON'T ROUTE

The message is laden with references to Clint Eastwood movies. "Rawhide", "a Fistful of Dollars", "Spaghetti Western", "Unforgiven", "Absolute Power", "True Crime", "Never Say Goodbye", (The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly [changing names 3 times]), and "The Man With No Name."

Octo Proxy/theRunningMan

Octo Proxy Control Panel

Octo Proxy (theRunningMan) is the proxy on the Red Wheelbarrow network. The username and password WKRP/hackjamtor was found in the Proboscis Monkey Harvey image. Inside of Octo Proxy is a control panel with the only options being available are status and Webfilter Databases. In the status tab of Octo Proxy it had the following statistics:

20 Days of statistics
2 requests
4 Visited web sites
4 Categorized websites
10 Phishing URIs
36 Viruses URIs
46 Not categorized
30 categories
6 Websites to export
22 KB Downloaded flow
50% Cache performance

The solution to the puzzle was found by removing all the text, going from the top to the bottom, and using the 50% on all numbers. After doing that, translating using A1Z26 you got the following:

10 - J
1  - A
2  - B
2  - B
5  - E
18 - R
23 - W
15 - O
3  - C
11 - K

On the Webfilter Databases tab, there is the login to DB1, and text at the bottom:

Brace yourselves-
Let the idea sink in...it's on the
tip of your tongue you know.
Core truths, when heard will
ring out, calling you out of ignorance.

The password for DB1 was found by finding the origin of Jabberwocky, which is Through the Looking-Glass, a source commonly referenced throughout the ARG. Using a synonym for looking glass, it was found that mirror was the password to access DB1.

DB1

DB1 console

Once signing into the DB1 console, you are given a terminal that is running MySQL, and has a limited amount of commands. It was then discovered that cat mydb_tables.sql was a working command that gave you the contents of the file shown to be generated above:

PRAGMA foreign_keys=OFF;
BEGIN TRANSACTION;
CREATE TABLE "DB1"

INSERT INTO "DB1" VALUES(1,JoeBSaltPassKeyEncDuplex,'LUNAR','CHAR');
INSERT INTO "DB1" VALUES(2,JoeBPassKeySaltEncDuplex,'HERON','MESON');
INSERT INTO "DB1" VALUES(3,JoeBPassKeySaltEncDuplex,'PANE','THERE');
INSERT INTO "DB1" VALUES(4,JoeBPassKeySaltEncDuplex,'HERO','RINGO');
INSERT INTO "DB1" VALUES(5,JoeBPassKeySaltEncDuplex,'RACING','PIERCING');
INSERT INTO "DB1" VALUES(6,JoeBPassKeySaltEncDuplex,'TAKER','BOOKER');
INSERT INTO "DB1" VALUES(7,JoeBPassKeySaltEncDuplex,'MINER','USER');
INSERT INTO "DB1" VALUES(8,JoeBPassKeySaltEncDuplex,'ACTION','ORION');
INSERT INTO "DB1" VALUES(9,JoeBPassKeySaltEncDuplex,'ANKLE','TICKLE');
INSERT INTO "DB1" VALUES(10,JoeBPassKeySaltEncDuplex,'MERGER','MANAGER');

The output seems to be creating a database with a list of words. JoeB is a reference to Meet Joe Black, a movie that Brad Pitt is in, likely referring to the Honeypot. For each set of words, if you were to remove the common ending, then combined what is left, you would get another word.

LUNAR  - CHAR     | AR   | LUNCH
HERON  - MESON    | ON   | HERMES
PANE   - THERE    | E    | PANTHER
HERO   - RINGO    | O    | HERRING
RACING - PIERCING | CING | RAPIER
TAKER  - BOOKER   | KER  | TABOO
MINER  - USER     | ER   | MINUS
ACTION - ORION    | ION  | ACTOR
ANKLE  - TICKLE   | KLE  | ANTIC
MERGER - MANAGER  | GER  | MERMANA

Honeypot/bradPitt

The login for the Honeypot was found by using the first of the list of ten words pairs found in Octo Proxy, excluding the last pair, as the username and then using the word found by removing the common ending as the password. The following is a list of the working usernames and passwords.

LUNAR/LUNCH
HERON/HERMES
PANE/PANTHER
HERO/HERRING
RACING/RAPIER
TAKER/TABOO
MINER/MINUS
ACTION/ACTOR
ANKLE/ANTIC

After logging in, a picture of glyphs appear:

Image of the glyphs solved.

By using process of elimination, it was found that there were 10 different glyphs, representing 1-10. Then it was determined that the glyphs read, bottom right, top left, bottom left, top right. Using that method of reading the glyphs, the message PREACHER PASSWORD HELLFOLLOWEDWITHHIM a quote from Revelation 6:8.

DB1

Inside of Honeypot there is a link that leads to the database. Once you go to that site, it shows the following numbers:

0152052216.9000302595
1599901684.0679734511

The numbers were the ISBN for 4 books:

East.Password
Dangerous.Demons

DHCP/preacher

The login for DHCP was found by using the solution from Honeypot, and the text from Cistern in Proboscis Monkey, hinting at Man with No Name. Using the 3 nicknames and combining them, you get the username joemoncoblondie and the password hellfollowedwithhim.