Sombra ARG

Sombra ARG
Active since 06-12-2016
The Sombra ARG - an ARG involving an unreleased Overwatch hero.
Type	[[List_of_Investigations#Official|Official]]
Creator	Blizzard
Discovered	06-12-2016

The Sombra ARG is an ARG involving Overwatch, a game made by Blizzard. Sombra is the name of an unreleased Overwatch hero that has been hinted at by Blizzard as being an upcoming playable character. Clues and ciphers referencing Sombra were found in various developer updates and short animations released by Blizzard, and this ARG is comprised of those clues.

Ana Origin Video

On July 12, 2016, a video for a new Overwatch hero named Ana was released. By pausing the video at the 2:11 time mark, a bunch of hexadecimal numbers were discovered:

65 76 2E 2E 2E 7B 76 20 66 62 72 20 63 7E 72 79 72 20 7B 76
20 7E 79 71 78 65 7A 76 74 7E D4 A4 79 2C 20 63 7E 72 79 72
20 72 7B 20 67 78 73 72 65 2E 2E 2E 7B 76 20 66 62 72 20 63
7E 72 79 72 20 7B 76 20 7E 79 71 78 65 7A 76 74 7E 04 A4 79
2C 20 63 7E 72 79 72 20 72 7B 20 67 78 73 72 65 2E 2E 2E 7B
76 20 66 62 72 20 63 7E 72 79 72 20 7B 76 20 7E 79 71 78 65
7A 76 74 7E 04 A4 79 2C 20 63 7E 72 79 72 20 72 7B 20 67 78
73 72 65 2E 2E 2E 7B 76 20 66 62 72 20 63 7E 72 79 72 20 7B
76 20 7E 79 71 78 65 7A 76 74 7E 04 A4 79 2C 20 63 7E 72 79
72  20  72  7B   20   67   78   73   72   65   2E   2E   2E

From Hex to ASCII this decoded to:

ev...
{v fbr c~ryr {v ~yqxezvt~Ô¤y, c~ryr r{ gxsre...
{v fbr c~ryr {v ~yqxezvt~Ô¤y, c~ryr r{ gxsre...
{v fbr c~ryr {v ~yqxezvt~Ô¤y, c~ryr r{ gxsre...
{v fbr c~ryr {v ~yqxezvt~Ô¤y, c~ryr r{ gxsre...

When passed through an XOR Cipher with constant 23, this returned:

ra...
la que tiene la información; tiene el poder...
la que tiene la información; tiene el poder...
la que tiene la información; tiene el poder...
la que tiene la información; tiene el poder...

In Spanish, this means

Whoever has the information; has the power...

A second frame of hexadecimal numbers was discovered at the 1:16 time mark of the video:

When put through the same process, the same string was discovered, but at the end, the letters SOMB appeared. The two were combined to create SOMBRA, the name of an unreleased hero that has been hinted at by Blizzard in the past. This led us to believe that this ARG had to do with Sombra, and the ARG was named accordingly.

Dev Update Video

The vertical barcodes found at the end of the Ana Dev Update video

At the end of this video, a series of vertical barcodes were discovered. The barcodes were solved to be binary, a dump of which is available here, credit of redditor /u/zapu.

Discord user Crauss turned the ones and zeroes into black and white pixels, which formed a QR code:

Scanning this QR code yielded the following message:

Estuvo eso facilito? Ahora que tengo su atencion, dejenme se las pongo mas dificil

And translated from Sombra's native language of Spanish into English:

Was that easy? Well, now that I have your attenion, allow me to make things much more difficult

Summer Games Video

The base64 cipher in the Summer Games video

On August 2, another cipher was discovered in this video - this time, the ciphertext was in base64:

U2FsdGVkX1+vupppZksvRf5pq5g5XjFRlipRkwB0K1Y96Qsv2L
m+31cmzaAILwytX/z66ZVWEQM/ccf1g+9m5Ubu1+sit+A9cenD
xxqklaxbm4cMeh2oKhqlHhdaBKOi6XX2XDWpa6+P5o9MQw==

Decrypting the above yielded the following string:

Salted__ifK/Ei9^1Q*Qt+V= /عW'͠/ _V?qfF"=q[ z * Zu\5kLC
(Note: copy/pasting this string will not work; some of the characters will not paste properly)

The "Salted__" header at the start of the string indicates that the rest of the string is another code, which is "salted". Salting is a way of obfuscating a cipher by adding additional characters that are not part of the cipher. The header also indicates that the remainder of the text is encoded in OpenSSL, which requires a key.

Temporary resources (This content will be deleted after we've solved the riddles. It serves currently as a repo of tools for the Discord community)

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https://github.com/glv2/bruteforce-salted-openssl

http://axxim.net/ow/gol-guesser/

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSffsP2WlNE9ypugLmH6uIqXxvRQHZunhyPNScwjNDoLAV2kKg/viewform?c=0&w=1

Current leads

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Directions & Letters

TODO: Link timestamps, place screencaps - Aya There appear to be clues hidden throughout the video about directions. These clues are found during the time stamps below:

0:17 Mercy - East
0:19 D-VA - Center
0:21 Torb - North
0:22 Genji - South
0:24 Mccree - Southeast
0:30 Symmetra - West
0:34 Bastion - Southwest
0:46 Winston - Northeast
0:47 Tracer - Northwest