Sombra ARG
| Sombra ARG | |
|---|---|
| The Sombra ARG - an ARG involving an unreleased Overwatch hero. | |
| Type | [[List_of_Investigations#Official|Official]] |
| Creator | Blizzard |
| Discovered | 06-12-2016 |
Contents
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...
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
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
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.
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
Soundwaves
Shortly after the release of the Summer Games video, Overwatch was updated. The main menu's background changed, and also added a small Olympics logo on the bottom right hand corner. Upon navigating the menus, the logo flickers and disappears briefly, revealing some sort of waveform:
Matching this waveform (done by Discord user Mayples) gave this audio file, which is incomprehensible. Analysis and a series of audio manipulations by Mayples led to this audio file, which is far clearer.
In the clear audio file, you can hear 6 dial tones. These dial tones translate to "283224".
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)
https://github.com/glv2/bruteforce-salted-openssl
