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

Prelude

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...

Note the "ra" preceding the Spanish message. It translates to

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. These letters were combined with ra from the first cipher 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

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 remainder of the text is encoded in an OpenSSL cipher, which requires a key. The key has yet to be discovered.

Directions & Letters

There are references to directions that are present in the North American version of the video. These references are conspicuously absent from other versions of the trailer. These references are shown below, with the relevant heroes and timestamps:

• 

  East - Mercy - Route 66 - 0:17

• 

  Center - D. Va - Temple of Anubis - 0:19

• 

  North - Torbjorn - Nepal - 0:21

• 

  South - Genji - Hanamura - 0:22

• 

  Southeast - McCree - Hollywood - 0:24

• 

  West - Symmetra - Watchpoint: Gibraltar - 0:30

• 

  Southwest - Bastion - Hollywood - 0:34

• 

  Northeast - Winston - Volskaya Industries - 0:46

• 

  Northwest - Tracer - King's Row - 0:47

Here are the screencaps, arranged according to their directions:

Album of full screencaps

A Code In the Sky

On the developer livestream that happened on August 3rd, Jeff Kaplan and other members of the dev team were asked about the compass (video) (mirror):

"I'm being told to ask you guys about the compass.  Are you allowed to make any comments on that?"
"The compass."  "The compass?"  "The compass?  That sounds like deep CIA level stuff.  Way above our heads."

The phrase "above our heads" led solves to look towards the sky. They found that on the Dorado map, looking directly up at the sky would reveal this image after some editing. Even more visible images are available here, the bottom two pictures have been "unwrapped" to be a square. This pattern was not visible in previous updates.

It is confirmed that the code in the sky is not a regular ShotCode, since a regular ShotCode can only contain 40 bits of data, and the code we are seeing in the sky is atleast 128 bytes big. It is also not an Annular Barcode since those need to have a startpoint, which ours does not.

References

Media Appearances

Kotaku, Polygon, PCGamesN and Team Dignitas featured the ARG and Game Detectives on Aug. 3 2016.

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)

---

Potential Clues / (mostly) Speculations: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1D-VSNpY1gpNwCDJ2Ocl2VM6bdiggU-NsZJbfDvLOOAk/edit?pli=1

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

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