There’s a sinister cryptographic puzzle sweeping the Internet, with forums abuzz with people trying to decode the clues held within a creepy video. Can you help work out what it all means?
The whole thing started when Johny from GadgetZZ.com posted a video online from a CD he received in the mail. The disc had nothing but an alpha-numeric string written on the front, but when he popped it into a computer (which was, uh, brave), it turned out to contain a video. A very creepy video, which people have since found on YouTube. It’s pretty weird, so brace yourself if you watch it below.
It shows someone dressed in robes and what appears to be a mask with a bill, a little like the ones worn by doctors during the black death. There appears to be a blinking light in his hand, along with a torturous soundtrack — which also seems to contain hidden information, using a technique known as steganography.
Indeed, some folks have already been looking at the audio track in a spectrogram, which shows the variations in frequency content over time. And there are some weird messages hidden in there, like the one at the top of the page and the one just below. There also some NSFW images hidden in the sound’s frequency content, that seem to show a woman being tortured.
There’s a Reddit string where people are contributing their insights about what they can find in the video. So far, people have identified GPS co-ordinates of the White House, a morse code message that translates to ‘RED LIPSLIFE TENTH’, and a binary string that says”You have one year or less” in Spanish all hidden in there or in associated data.
It’s impossible to say if the puzzle is some kind of artwork, a genuine threat, or an incredibly elaborate publicity stunt at the moment. But the Internet is no doubt going to try and work it out.
[GadgetZZ — Thanks, Ben!]