ARG Toolbox

List of Investigations > ARG Toolbox

This page is an archive of helpful tools and resources one might use in the course of solving puzzles typically found in ARGs, including encipher/deciphering, audio encoding, and steganography.

ARG Training

Game Detectives Academy

https://gamedetectives.net/academy/

Game Detectives Academy is a series of instructive challenges that are meant to teach common ARG techniques. Made by the Game Detectives admin team.

ae27ff

http://ae27ff.challenge.pt/

ae27ff is a series of puzzles that use techniques common to ARGs. Made by Discord user crashdemons.

Text-based Tools

Anagrams

http://anagramscramble.com/ Word de-scrambler

http://textmechanic.com/text-tools/obfuscation-tools/word-scramblerunscrambler/ Word scrambler

Missing letters solver

https://www.unscramblerer.com/crossword-solver/

Ascii85

https://www.tools4noobs.com/online_tools/ascii85_decode/

Decodes ascii85 messages. (there's a version for encoding as well)

asciitohex

http://www.asciitohex.com/

Converts ASCII to hex and vice versa, as well as to other number-based encryption methods.

Ave Maria Cipher

http://de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Datei:Trithemius-Polygraphiae-71.jpg

Ave Maria cipher.

Browserling

https://www.browserling.com/tools/

Lots of encodings and encryptions.

Chaffing & Winnowing

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaffing_and_winnowing http://people.csail.mit.edu/rivest/Chaffing.txt

Everything you need to know about Chaffing and winnowing.

Cryptii

https://cryptii.com/text/text

Site with a lot of ciphers.

CryptoCrack

https://sites.google.com/site/cryptocrackprogram/

Has a lot of classical ciphers and more.

Cryptomathic

http://extranet.cryptomathic.com

EMV tag search. TLV (Tag, Length, Value) byte strings into their constituent tags and sub-tags. Useful for analysing APDU traces, responses and so on. CAP calculator. Features many more features.

Cryptool-Online

http://www.cryptool-online.org

Features enciphering (enigma, navajo, vigenere), encoding (ASCII, Code39, Huffman), text analysis, etc.

Crypto-Tools

https://github.com/Hegz/crypto-tools

Set of crypto-tools.

CyberChef

https://gchq.github.io/CyberChef/

MULTIPLE methods of enciphering/encoding, uses more complicated methods and can have more processes going on at once.

Darkfader

https://www.darkfader.net/toolbox/convert/

Online conversion utilities.

Dcode

http://www.dcode.fr/tools-list

Contains a list of mathematical problem calculations, encodings, encryptions, and many more.

HTTP Referer Extension

LEGACY FIREFOX: https://addons.mozilla.org/En-US/firefox/addon/refcontrol/

QUANTUM: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/referer-modifier/

CHROME: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/referer-control/hnkcfpcejkafcihlgbojoidoihckciin?hl=es-419

Extensions for Legacy Firefox, Quantum and Chrome to help modifying HTTP referers.

Iterative Anagram Solver

http://boulter.com/anagram/

Decodes multi-word anagrams word by word.

Kryptographiespielplatz

https://www.kryptographiespielplatz.de/index.php?

List of a lot of ciphers. (It's in German, but common sense is enough. Test them out on the part where it says [ausprobieren]

Link Identifier

https://a4x.me/tools/link/

A tool that will guess what site a link identifier could belong to given the length. Made by Discord user A4.

Linux Command Line Encode / Decode

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb897439.aspx

Use linux command line strings to encode and decode.

md5hashing

https://md5hashing.net/hash_type_checker

Allows you to decode many variations of MD5 and Sha ciphers.

Omniglot Conscripts

http://www.omniglot.com/conscripts/english.htm

Has a list of alternate fonts that can be used for writing english.

OPENPGP

http://openpgp.org/software/

PGP and GPG downloads.

PharmaBraille

https://www.pharmabraille.com/pharmaceutical-braille/the-braille-alphabet/

Contains a detailed list of the Braille alphabet, including numbers and punctuation.

Polygraphic Substitution Systems

http://www.umich.edu/~umich/fm-34-40-2/ch7.pdf

Breaking polygraphic substitution systems.

RICHKNI

http://www.richkni.co.uk/php/crypta/freq.php

Word frequency analysis, can be really useful for substitution ciphers with no key.

Rumkin

http://rumkin.com/tools/cipher/

Contains big list of ciphers.

SNOW Whitespace

http://www.darkside.com.au/snow/

Whitespace steganography.

SpamMimic

http://spammimic.com/

Hides a message in what appears to be a harmless block of spam.

The Black Chamber

http://www.simonsingh.net/The_Black_Chamber/chamberguide.html

Has a set of text enciphering and encoding methods.

WeChall Encryption tools.

https://www.wechall.net/tools/

Features JPocketKnife, a conversion tool, JDicTac, a bruteforce for homemade ciphers and hashes, etc.

Wikibruce

http://ref.wikibruce.com/hub

For text encryption, it features ROT-n, Hexadecimal, Binary, ASCII, Morse, Pattern Recognition, and separating byte data to 8 bit planes.

Xlate

http://cyber.meme.tips/xlate

Multiple methods of encoding, including a personalized radix, or base, decoding. (Supports Base 2 - 36)

XOR / Byte Shift

http://otp22.com/xlate/shifts.html

Is used to show all 255 XOR and Byte Shift instances.

Audio Analysis

Audacity

https://www.audacityteam.org/

Useful program used for audio inspecting.

Direwolf

https://github.com/wb2osz/direwolf

Software "soundcard" AX.25 packet modem/TNC and APRS encoder/decoder. It can be used stand-alone to observe APRS traffic, as a tracker, digipeater, APRStt gateway, or Internet Gateway (IGate).

• NOTE: Not user-friendly!

DTMF

http://www.teworks.com/dtmf.htm

Dual Tone Multi Frequency tones decoding.

fldigi

https://sourceforge.net/projects/fldigi/ (fldigi)

Can encrypt/decrypt a lot of audio encryption. Manual can be found here.

• NOTE: Not user-friendly!

Ham Radio Directory Downloads

https://radio.linux.org.au/?sectpat=digital

Includes 35 ham radio tools.

• NOTE: It may not work on certain OS, and not all of them are user-friendly.

Kansas City Standard Cassette Audio Data

http://www.dabeaz.com/py-kcs/index.html

Can be used to encode/decode Kansas City Standard Cassette Audio Data.

MM-SSTV

http://hamsoft.ca/pages/mmsstv.php

Slow Scan Television Program. Alternative to RXSSTV.

OTP22 Signal Decoders

https://github.com/otp22/decoders

Directory for multiple methods of encryption used in otp22, ABISM tone decodings (Modified ASCII tones), NATO 5gram decoder, and another XOR program.

RX-SSTV

http://users.belgacom.net/hamradio/rxsstv.htm

A program that deciphers SSTV encryption on audio tracks.

SonicVisualiser

http://sonicvisualiser.org/

Creates spectographs of audio.

Sorcerer

http://www.kd0cq.com/2013/07/sorcerer-decoder-download/

Has more radio recieving modes than fldigi, like Harris RF-3560 PSTN TIU,IRA-ARQ (ASCII-ARQ), etc. (only for decoding)

Wavepad FFT

http://www.nch.com.au/wavepad/fft.html

Audio spectogram analysis.

Image Analysis

Binvis

http://binvis.io/#/

Gives a visual representation of binary files.

Ceefax

http://edit.tf/

Can be used to upload ceefax images.

EXIF

http://exif.regex.info/exif.cgi

Used to find EXIF data and ID3 tags.

Futureboy

https://futureboy.us/stegano/

Allows to compare the differences of two images, and unlock steganography with passwords.

GIMP

https://www.gimp.org/downloads/

Free program. Alternative to photoshop. Can export and import raw files.

JHead

http://mirror.otp22.com/jhead

Allows for the viewing of jpeg headers, abnormalities, and outgress output.

Magic Eyes

http://magiceye.ecksdee.co.uk/ To solve magic eyes

http://www.easystereogrambuilder.com/3d-stereogram-maker.aspx To make them.

Nonograms

http://nonomaker.com/ Used to make nonograms aaaaand

http://a.teall.info/nonogram/ to solve them.

Outguess

http://filehippo.com/mac/download_outguess/

Outguess steganography.

• NOTE: Only works on mac. Try using a virtual machine for opening it.

Photo Forensics

https://29a.ch/photo-forensics/#forensic-magnifier

Magnifier, clone detection, error level analysis, and more tools.

Pixlr

http://pixlr.com/editor/

Online GIMP-style editor.

Punchcards

http://www.kloth.net/services/cardpunch.php

Punchcards simulator.

QR Codes

http://www.qrcode-generator.de/ and https://dnschecker.org/qr-code-generator.php For making QR codes.

https://webqr.com/ and https://dnschecker.org/qr-code-scanner.php For reading QR codes.

Rawpixels

http://rawpixels.net/

Visualizes .raw files.

Tinkercad

https://www.tinkercad.com/

Web-based 3D modeling.

WeChall Tools

https://www.wechall.net/tools/

Features JColorSucker to grab pixel values from images.

Wikibruce

http://ref.wikibruce.com/hub

For image steganography, wikibruse can submit delimited list of pixel bytes. Resulting file is a single plane greyscale PNG. (eg: 255,0,255,0,255,0,0,255,0 with width 3)

General Steganography / Tools

Hex Editors

https://hexed.it/

• Online hex editor.

https://mh-nexus.de/en/hxd/

• Offline hex editor (has more utilities).

http://www.chmaas.handshake.de/delphi/freeware/xvi32/xvi32.htm

• Another Offline hex editor but without needing to install it and has scripting.

HTTP referrers

https://addons.mozilla.org/En-US/firefox/addon/refcontrol/

Firefox extension to find HTTP referrers.

Notepad++

https://notepad-plus-plus.org

VERY useful program. Similar to Notepad but has many more utilities.

OtpXor

https://github.com/otp22/decoders/tree/master/OtpXor

Made by the creator of ae27ff, allows for the xoring of two large files together.

Repl

https://repl.it/

Website used to run and debug code.

XorJ

https://github.com/crashdemons/XorJ

Made by the creator of ae27ff, allows for the xoring of two relatively small files together.