Dharma Secret’s LOST-n-Found: A Blog Dedicated to the T.V. Show Lost

On June 16th, gamers were first introduced to Rachel Blake through a video that was found on Monster.com. Many, including yours truely, felt that since it wasn’t directly linked to one of the ARG sites, that it was just another fan made video.

It is among the general concensus on the various forums that Monster.com may have posted the video too early, and the video has since been removed from their site.

On June 19th, a ghostly image appeared on Persephone.thehansofoundation.org.

Audio can be heard in the background of the site. When the audio is reversed, gamers found that it was a voice reciting the following numbers. Well, it took some doing, especially with the ghetto audio program that I have, but here is the audio with the number string. The first part is how it is played on the Persephone site, and the second half is the audio reversed so that you can hear the numbers.

101 118 105 100 101 110 116 3297 103 101 110 100 97

By using an ASCII translator, we find the password “evident agenda”.

Next, we view the source which is where were find a new url which leads up to rachelblake.com

By entering the password you will be redirected to Rachel Blake’s personal blog.


If you look in the comments to her blog entry, you will find messages from different people. Two in particular are binary codes from Persephone and Alvar Hanso.


The Hanso binary code, has an error in it however, and can’t be traslated at this time.

Another comment includes a url which was previously discovered through the lock out message on the Hanso site.

The main problem with the comments however is that anyone (I even posted something) can post a comment hence it is impossible to tell if the various posts are ARG related or not.

UPDATE:
Although it is getting harder and harder to sift through all the posts in Rachel’s comments section because more and more people are posting remarks, many have noticed that there is a dialogue going one between Rachel and poster by the name of Mel0Drama. The following transcript is compliments of perro2 from 4815162342.com:

Mel0Drama:
Rachel… I don’t know if you really look through all these
threads, but if you do, I NEED to talk to you.

Mel:
>>Rachel… I don’t know if you really look through all these
>>threads, but if you do, I NEED to talk to you.

>>Hello?

Rachel? Hi? Hello?

RB: Hey, Mel0Drama - what’s up?

Mel:Call me Mel.

RB:What’s up, Mel?

Mel:Nobody ever listens to me. This is stupid.

RB:I just looked back through the posts. You say you NEED to
talk. About what? you got info on Hanso? Mittelwerk?

Mel:No… not really. I can’t specifically link either of
them…

RB:So… what, Mel? Girlfriend problems? Need a stock tip?

Mel:Don’t. make. fun. of. me.

RB:This conversation is about ten seconds from over.

Mel:He’s in our heads, Rachel.

RB:Who is?

Mel:Hackett. Dr. Hackett.

RB:Okay… I’ve never heard of a Dr. Hackett.

Mel:I used to work for him. He’s here, with the rest of them.
In Atlanta. At the EDC. They sneak it in, we lap it up. I have proof!

RB:Mel, it’s been fascinating. Truly.

Mel:WAIT!! You need safe passage for your videos. You said so
yourself. Places you can hide them. Places THEY can’t find them. I have a place. Nobody can get to it but ME. I have all the keys. Your videos will be safe for all to see.

RB:What are you talking about?

Mel:I work in the archive of the Engineering Development
Center. It was a punishment. I asked Hackett too many questions. But he never could have guessed… the ARCHIVE was the last place he should have sent me to work. I have the proof. The DOCUMENTS are all there. Sealed in a vault. Untouched by human hands. Ready to convict. And, I need you to help me expose them.

RB:So, why don’t you just post your evidence here and get done with it?

Mel:BECAUSE NOBODY BELIEVES ME. They have to see for
themselves. They have to see the documents. Sitting in the company vault. On the company mainframe. Please.

It’s a fair exchange.

RB:What is?

Mel:I’ll hide your video, secure it for your users to access
online. Password-protected. On a CORPORATE mainframe. Untouchable. All you have to do is tell your followers to go to my archive portal and hear my story… once they do, I’ll place your video in the archive vault. They can watch it through my portal!

RB:No. Here’s how I work. You host my video, keep it secure.
If I’m satisfied people can see it, that The Hanso Foundation can’t hack it, that YOU’RE not part of the Foundation yourself, THEN I’ll put the word out to my friends to check out your “evidence” about Hackett and whatever the heck you think he’s doing. Deal?

Mel:… Deal.

Aside from the above dialogue, there was a message from Rachel addressing her Monster.com video.
Wow.


So, I’ve looked through my comments, and I’ve looked all over the web… and frankly, I’m a little blown away…

I’ve already got a problem with my videos!!

This may be recap for those of you at the bleeding edge of the story - but, before my blog even went live, my first video was out there, all over the web, for EVERYONE to see.

Now, that, in and of itself is not a bad thing. I mean, I WANT everyone to see what’s going on.

But, the very fact this has happened? It’s made me realize my site might not be as secure as I think it is. And, I can’t sit by idly waiting for something to happen again.

What I have to say is important. Too important for me to post my video diaries to a site that THEY could hack or shut down.

So, I’ve made a decision. Rather than risk these posts not being seen, I’ll be sneaking all the videos to come onto some major corporate websites.

They’ll be password protected - you’ll have to check back for the keys.

I apologize in advance for the bold commercialism. But in my mind, if you have to sit through an ad or two… that’s a price worth paying to hear the truth.

ENOUGH about that!

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Of course on my day off nothing ARG related happens, but on the day I have to work, the internet is flooded with LOST Experience updates.

The first clue for the Worldwide Wellness page came from the combination of the hole3 and hole3 pictures. By superimposing the two pictures together, we find the embeded message “d2o“, which is the chemical formula for deuterium oxide or “Heavy Water”.

Compliments of Jacksloststepkid from lostpodcast.proboards2.com:

We learn from the RSS feed that the Worldwide Wellness page was updated. Many have noticed that the word “miracle” in the Press release is clickable when you float your mouse over it, but up until now, the link lead no where.

After the June 1st update, the link is not active, and when you click on it, the following login box appears.

Login with the password “heavy water“, and the following message appears.


After reading the message, you can proceed by clicking the center of the screen. An old style microfilm viewer appears. Simply move your mouse over the knobs at the bottom to scroll through the pictures. The following screencaps are taken from the

Click on the highlighted area, and a then you will the sound of a telephone ringing.

When you click on the phone the screen goes dark, and an audio message plays.

Transcript:

PHONE RINGS

UNKNOWN CALLER: The retraction, I was forced to make it. They bought the paper that same day.

PERSEPHONE: The Hanso Group did…

UNKNOWN CALLER: I’ll swear on any bible, they bought out my newspaper to cover up what they did to those people. Now no body will talk, I’m going crazy here, I’m going to lose my job! I did a little digging. The same thing happened at a hospital last year. Another one of those Hanso Foundation hospitals. The reporter that did that story, he died in a car crash. Yeah, sure a car crash. Man I wish I never heard of these Hanso people… They’re sharks, that’s what they are!

PERSEPHONE: Have any Hanso Executives been in touch with you you?

UNKNOWN CALLER: Yeah h-hey look, what’s your name again?

PERSEPHONE: (Pause) You can just call me Persephone.

UNKNOWN CALLER: Yeah-yeah look Persephone I gotta go!

If you recall the first screen of the microfilm viewer, there was a third picture on the strip right below the page described above, but when you go to the place that it should be, there is nothing there. Simply click on the blank page, and the following images will appear with an ominous message for Persephone. I have over layed text over the last screencap to make it easier to read.

One thing worth noting, is that the font used to type the message is Verdana, yet, the “I” in the message is not an “I” but a lower case “l”.

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By far the hardest clue to crack to date, this picture found at hole2.thehansofoundation.org (see “Persephone’s Numbers Explained” post for explination on how it was found) has had LOST geeks, including yours truely, stumped for almost two days now.

Speculation has been rampant on the internet. Stenography decoders, ASCII, Binary codes, Q9 translators, and Base 64 cyphers had not been able to produce anything to crack this clue.

At the center of the speculation is the name of the image, “q9als2002″ which was discovered when you right click-”Save As” the image. The general consensus is that “als2002″ means “Alvar Last Seen 2002″. Another interesting observation is that “q9″ refers to the alphanumberic association of numbers and letters on the telephone keypad. However, like the other coding methods mentioned, “q9″ has not produced anything definitive.

One person on 4815162342.com speculated that the because the theme of twins has appeared in the ARG that the clue may lay there, so they Photoshopped the original image.

Compliments of gringosteve from 4815162342.com:

Compliments of ASR from 4815162342.com:

View uncropped image here.

UPDATE:
On May 31st, Persephone’s numbers were changed, and now reads “+1“.

Using this clue, we now go to hole3.thehansofoundation.org, and find the following image.
When you zoom in on the left eye, you will find some strategically colored pixels which spell out the message “Save Me”.

Uncropped images can be viewed here:
t9agen75
saveme1
saveme2

UPDATE:
On June 12th, a new set of numbers appeared from Persephone.


After translating the numbers, we find a message that leads us to thefollowing image on “Hole4″.

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Okay, here are instructions on how to find the number string if you don’t know about it yet.

Of all the explanations that I have read, and there are A LOT, this is the only one that I have found that makes sense. Thanks to this post, along with the help of some online decoders, I was able to duplicate the results.

Compliments of phn0rd from thetailsection.com:

Okay, everyone, listen up. I’m going to explain to you what the actually answer is, how to arrive at that answer, and why the post about ROT-18 is bs.

So, lets start with the numbers. Ever character stored on the computer is actually stored as a number - and that number represents that character. There is a table, called ASCII, which associates numbers with characters. For example, “a” is 97, “b” is 98, “A” is 65, “B” is 66, ” ” is 32, “.” is 46, and “1″ is 49.

Upon translating the numbers on http://persephone.thehansofoundation.org to characters via an ASCII table (or having a program do it for you), you arrive at the string “jbo ubs rsnf fv fveG 1 lnZ tub.SEG gn ov tbI”

After puzzling over this string for a while, you may notice that many of the words end in capital letters, leading to the conclusion that the string is in reverse. Reversing this string gets you “Ibt vo ng GES.but Znl 1 Gevf vf fnsr sbu obj”

jbo ubs rsnf fv fveG 1 lnZ tub.SEG gn ov tbI
becomes
Ibt vo ng GES.but Znl 1 Gevf vf fnsr sbu obj

At this point, it becomes somewhat obvious that this follows English grammar and formatting (capital letters at the beginning of words, spaces between words, and the. in the middle of a word probably representing a file of some kind), but the letters seemed to be substituted for other letters. This is called a substitution cypher.

The most common and easily crackable variant of a substitution cypher is a rotation cypher. This is when the alphabet is essentially “rotated” - if you were to rotate it by 1, a becomes b, b becomes c, etc.

The most commonly used rotation cypher is rot-13. The reason for this is when you rotate the alphabet by 13 characters (half-way across the 26 letters in the alphabet), rotating it by another 13 you will arrive back at the original letter. Therefore, a will be come m, and m will become a.

So, upon applying rot-13 to this string, we get “Vog ib at TRF.ohg May 1 Tris is safe foh bow”

This is starting to look promising, with words like May, is, safe, and at coming out. However, it is obvious that some letters still need more substitution applied to them. By pondering this for a while, we arrive at the conclusion: swap V’s and l’s, b’s and n’s, and r’s and h’s.

This brings us to the final string: “Log in at THF.org May 1 This is safe for now”

There is only one issue with this: May 1st has already passed. Many people have come up with arguments of different dates to substuite in for 1. The best argument I can find is as follows: ROT-13 works on a 26 character system of the alphabet because it shifts the characters half-way across the set. If you were to apply that concept to the 10 character system of decimal numbers, ROT-5 would translate characters half-way across, turning 1 into 6 and 6 into 1. Any other ROT would only work one-way: for example, ROT-4 turns 1 into 5, but 5 into 9.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
6 7 8 9 10 1 2 3 4 5

Therefore, if we apply this logic to the date of May 1, we arrive at May 6, making the string “Log in at THF.org May 6 This is safe for now”

Now, to show you why the ROT-18 is BS, take a look at what happens to the string when we apply ROT-18: “Atl ng fy YWK.tml Rfd 1 Ywnx nx xfkj ktm gtb” Not only are we left with a string of gibberish, but the 1 never changes to a 6.

One final note: I have reverse-engineered the Shockwave scripts on thehansofoundation.org, and have found that there is no login or password currently: no matter what you enter, you’ll can’t login. Therefore, I am led to believe that the May 1 date is inaccurate, and that they may update the site on May 6 to allow logins; that will remain to be seen tommorow.

The one thing that has been debated about this topic, is the validity of the date. After thinking this over a bit. It is possible that since there afre 26 letters in the alphabet, then the ROT13 cypher could be applied to the numbers 1-26. Using this formula, then that would make 1 = 14. Based on this could the actual date be May 14th?

Another theory as to the date mentioned in the message is that it is May 8th. By using a reverse number cypher, we get 1 = 8.

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0

UPDATE
Sometime during the late night of May 6th and the early morning of May 7th, a new set of numbers was loaded on to persephone.thehansofoundation.org.

By using the same ASCII cypher as before, we get: “HAS WIN HOST PC IN NIL URGE. 8, not 1 and 6.”

It is a common belief on many forums that “HAS WIN HOST PC IN NIL URGE.” is an anagram. Among the many anagrams suggested were:

Cenedra345 from the thetailsection.com: “LOGIN HUNCH WAS INEPT SIR. 8, not 1 and 6.” or
“SUN. CIPHER LOGIN HINT WAS 8, not 1 and 6.” SUN. being abbreviated Sunday? That would account for the periods as well.

From lostpodcast.proboards2.com:
CHRISTIAN HELPING US NOW. 8, not 1 and 6.

The common consensus however is that the actual message is: “SIGN IN WITH HANSO PR CLUE. 8, not 1 and 6.”

Many believe that the “PR clue” could refer to the word “miracle”, which is found on the WWPDP page.

Screen cap from the WWPDP page. If you move your cursor over the word “miracle” the cursor indicates that it is a link.

UPDATE: A new set of numbers were posted on May 16th. Using the same ASCII cypher as the previous messages, we get the decoded message: “Standby”.

UPDATE:
On May 18th, another set of numbers were posted on persephone.thehansofoundation.org.

By using a “Base 64″ Cypher, we get: amedoustesonehonotrelyonjleous

Compliments of psytor from 4815162342.com:

Anagram for: A mouse does not rely on just one hole.
Which is a phrase from the blast door map.

UPDATE:
On May 18th, another set of numbers were posted on persephone.thehansofoundation.org.

By using a “Base 64″ Cypher, we get: amedoustesonehonotrelyonjleous

Compliments of psytor from 4815162342.com:

Anagram for: A mouse does not rely on just one hole.
Which is a phrase from the blast door map.

UPDATE:
On May 20th, another set of numbers were posted on persephone.thehansofoundation.org.

This clue is the first numeric message which doesn’t involve decoding in some way. This clue is ment to be used in conjunction with Persephone’s previous message, “A mouse does not rely on just one hole”. By using the url, hole2.thehansofoundation.org, you will find the following picture.

an uncropped image can be viwed here

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Website: http://www.thehansofoundation.org

To start things out, here is the Hanso Foundations commercial which aired May 3rd during the premier of “Two For The Road”. The LOST Experience ARG officially started in the U.S. when it showed a phone number that fans could call into to get the first clue which would allow them access to thehansofoundation.org.

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