GKNOVA6

"Men have sought to make a world from their own conception and to draw from their own minds all the material which they employed."

- GKNOVA6

GKNOVA6 is a viral website functioning as a promoter for the upcoming video game, Call of Duty: Black Ops. The flash site consists of an old television with five vertical lights (for each "channel") and as of May 5, 2010, five are active. The site contains many references to the Cold War and nuclear weapons such as a photograph of John F. Kennedy delivering a speech about the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Discovery of the site
In early April, an unmarked USB storage device has been sent to several video game sites such as IGN and Kotaku. It contained a text file with the following words: Cryptography Isotope Philanthropy Hydrogen Ember Rebirth The acronym of these words forms "CIPHER".

It also contained an audio file in which a man says: "What we wish, we readily believe, and what we ourselves think, we imagine others think also." This is followed by a woman saying: M O D [sound of 3 chimes] Z Z Z J N Q R Y D 3 F R p The quote is from Julius Caesar. These suggest to use the Caesar cipher which consists in shifting each letter to Nth position after the original (N is fixed for each text) to encrypt it. In this case, the 3 sounds indicate that it has been shifted 3 times to encrypt it, so the letters must be shifted back 3 times in order to decrypt the code: W W W G K N O V A 6 C O M

This code has been first decrypted by video game blog Joystiq.

1st transmission
The male voice says: "Men have sought to make a world from their own conception and to draw from their own minds all the material which they employed." It is a quote from Francis Bacon followed by a female voice saying: M O D [sound of 2 chimes] Then both voices spell the letters "N O V A S I X" repeatedly (some letters are spelt by the man, and others by the woman but the scheme is irregular). "Hell is Purple" can eventually be heard.

Bacon's quote indicates that it has been encrypted using the Baconian cipher. Since this cipher is too complicated to be decrypted manually, "Hell is Purple" suggests to use the Internet site, Purple Hell featuring a tool for encrypting/decrypting Baconian ciphers. The cipher consists in replacing each letter of a plaintext by a group of five of the letters A or B. It must be considered that each letter spelt by the woman is A and each letter spelt by the man is B during the "N O V A S I X" scheme. There are two versions of the Baconian cipher: the two sounds after the M O D indicate to use the second version of Purple Hell's converter.

Ciphertext: AAAAAABBBBBAAABABAAAABABBBABBAAABAAAABAAABABABAABBBABBAABBBA Plaintext: APRIL WEEK TWO

It points out that the site's update will occur during the second week of April. The 2nd transmission indeed came on April 9, 2010 during the second week of April.

2nd transmission
"On the Lower Rhine and in Westphalia he commanded for the League."

- GKNOVA6's male voice

M O D 1 9 6 9 – D U G B T R L R F M * G W O X A W D N S N O C * Y X N M

Count Gronsfeld is the person the man was talking about. So the code has been encrypted using the Gronsfeld cipher, a variant of the Vigenère cipher. 1 9 6 9 is the cipher key.

C L A S S I F I E D * A N N O U N C E M E N T * S O M D

Matt_Teddy on Twitter cracked the code, which he thought to be "CLASSIFIED ANNOUNCEMENT SOLD." It was later found out that it was actually "Classified Announcement SOMD."

This lead to SOMD.com, a website for Southern Maryland which is where the packages were sent from. The website is used for local news, event planning and community announcements. There was an announcement within this site pertaining to GKNOVA6, posted by a user named "Eve Reign." The posted announcement was a long and entirely lettered cipher: NOVA Posted by: Eve Reign on Friday, 9 April 2010, at 3:20 p.m. LWLXRMSYWN.GVVOXXPXBVOKTPXAVSFTMBK -AONTHLRDOF.DHXSWEJHCQSQFWTCZUBCAM LWLXRMSYWN.LRDOFUINENYMGNPBMSYWNHAM, -YFTTXEWPGJL.XVORLUINEASPTCZUBJWGILVF LWLXRBGG.CCGRNYMGNAEMOWXAAGMSYWNGVVO, -GCYSRZYKXR.YBCBGCYGVVOXDOKSWEJUINE LWLXRMSYWN.XVORLCCGRAONTHLVFCWKYG, -FMFWCMXIMX.RTLHGPBWTMBKNSNTZBIM XXPXSQFW.HYORVPAKYHAMCAMMBKAONTH, MUZOWHYORV.CAMIGRAONTHLRDOFHYORVOAVBM You can find me at the Cheeping River. It’s near the Cheering Viper.

Cheeping River and Cheering Viper are anagrams of Vigenere cipher. Using the word "SPUTNIK" as the passphrase for this cipher, MrToasty on movieviral.com decrypted it : THREEEIGHT.NINEFIVEONESEVENNINESIX -SEVENSEVEN.ONEFOURSIXFIVEEIGHTSIX THREEEIGHT.SEVENFOURFOURTWOEIGHTONE, -ONEZEROFOUR.EIGHTFOURSIXEIGHTZEROSIX THREETWO.NINEFOURTHREEEIGHTEIGHTNINE, -ONEZEROSIX.FOURONENINEFOURFOURFOUR THREEEIGHT.EIGHTNINESEVENSIXSEVEN, -SEVENSEVEN.ZEROTHREESIXFIVEFIVE FIVEFIVE.SEVENFIVEONESIXSIXSEVEN, THREESEVEN.SIXONESEVENSEVENSEVENEIGHT

When put into numbers, this decrypted code indicate five major locations during the Cold War:
 * 38.951796, -77.146586 – CIA Headquarters
 * 38.744281, -104.846806 – Cheyenne Mountain / NORAD
 * 32.943889, -106.419444 – White Sands (Missile Complex)
 * 38.89767, -77.03655 – White House
 * 55.751667, 37.617778 – Ivanovskaya ploshchad, Russian Federation (Kremlin)

3rd transmission
The 3rd transmission which came out on April 21, 2010.

"They used the earth's magnetic field X the information was gathered and transmitted."

- GKNOVA6's male voice

M O D [sound of 4 chimes] – 10 21 26 1 26 19 * 25 16 22 2 20 1 21 23 16 26 22 19 3

The quote is from the decrypted plaintext of the Kryptos sculpture's second part. It has been solved using a keyed Vigenère cipher also known as Quagmire III.

"Nothing in life is to be feared it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more so that we may fear less."

- Marie Curie

M O D 1 0 0 – [Tones follow at these frequencies in Hz] 200 800 1800 3200 2400 800 200 * 200 800 1800 3200 2100 900 200

"Outside of consciousness there lies the cold and alien world of actual things."

- Heinrich Hertz

M O D Can’t you see the whole spectrum? - [Weird sounds repeated twice]

"-Kenneth what’s the frequency? -Linear not algorithmic."

- GKNOVA6's male voice and Kenneth

The quote from Kryptos may first seem to suggest using the Quagmire III as the cipher following the previous transmissions. But this is only a misleading, and the 4 sounds after the M O D indicate the 4th tableau of the Kryptos' transcript. The letters of the tableau's first line must be numbered: N G H I J L M N Q U V  W  X  Z  K  R  Y  P  T  O  S  A  B  C  D  E 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26

Then, each number spelt by the woman must be replaced by its associated letter from the tableau's first line: U S E N E T * D R A G O N S B R E A T H

A Google search with the keywords "usenet", "dragonsbreath" and "nova six" leads to a thread within the conspiracy discussions of Google Group. A user named Nova Six posted the following:

NOVA TRUTHSEEKERS I want this story told. This is the tip of the iceberg. Tell All But Ultraviolet November. Send All Relevant Items Now. Situation Offers Many Appropriate Nights. we’ll have a GAS. The elements are in the sounds and words. Look and listen. -DRAGONSBREATH Tell All But Ultraviolet November. = TABUN Send All Relevant Items Now. = SARIN Situation Offers Many Appropriate Nights. = SOMAN

These are all nerve gases of the G-Series.

The first part of the transmission has been solved by Shizzire of the CoDz forum.

For the Marie Curie code, MOD 100 stands for : divide by 100. Each frequency must indeed be divided by 100: 2 8 18 32 24 8 2 * 2 8 18 32 21 9 2

2 8 18 32 24 8 2 is the number of electrons per shell in Plutonium (Element: 94; Symbol: Pu; Discovered by Enrico Fermi).

2 8 18 32 21 9 2 is the number of electrons per shell in Uranium (Element: 92; Symbol: U; Discovered by Martin Heinrich Klaproth).

This was found thanks to Cpt Rutger of www.wethegamerz.com.

4th Transmision
A male voice is heard saying "Azure has the task." This is repeated three times.

If the temporal frequency is analyzed, the following words are found: Napoleon = d Karl = b.

The NOVA TRUTHSEEKERS group was updated with a new post from Nova Six:

Azure: Since you have provided us with this information, we give you a new task, and see if you can deliver. We are looking for a specific document, one that we would very much like to find. This document is posted by someone who remains just out of our reach…for now. We have intercepted communications with a code that we haven’t been able to crack. Post this document in a public place, and we will correspond again in the future. Transmission is as follows: They came in a black helicopter to try and aid the dead president. Even the cabal could not stop the spy. An interesting Conspiracy, one the world would not soon forget, had they ever known.

Searching the third line of the "transmission" revealed another Google group with a link to a download. The download required a password, which was found when another group started by the same user had the fourth line spell out with the first letter of each word, MASON. A document that was supposedly signed by John F. Kennedy (the blotted out signature looked nothing like his) was found in the download with the first letter of each sentence spelling out TREYARCH, confirming the developer's involvement in the viral site.

Azure later posted the following in reply to Nova Six's post.

As Requested http://www.flickr.com/photos/27543574@N06/4566876865/

The link leads to a picture of a top secret document from the White House posted by Azure and under it in text is what Azure deciphered from the picture. A Flickr user by the name of GKNova6 commented the following.

Well done. We will be in contact. EOM.

5th Transmission
The 5th Transmission which came out on May 5th 2010.

The woman starts out the transmission by saying this: M O D N S A M 55

By performing a spectral analysis upon the sound, following text can be found: Subject: NOVA project - We are on schedule thus far. Stability has be however, are promising and yield results beyo The remaining issues and action items are as  a) Stability is still an issue - We are h      - Stability Report No: NOVA.SR 2010032(This may be NOVA.88 2010032 or anything.)      Testing with trial batches to derive th Note that the text is cut from its rightmost side.

If this is shuffled around something like this shows up, appearantly it all fits together perfectly:



Searching about NOVA.SR 2010032 doesn't yield any meaningful result yet, although 2010/(0)3/2 also appeared in the teaser trailer for Call of Duty: Black Ops, hinting that it may have some significance.

Searching about nsam55 brings up a letter sent from JFK to the chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in 1961 (during the cold war). The letter is hard to read and is typed above the actual letter. DISPATCHED N.S.C. Jun 29 3 02 PM '61 June 18, 1961 National Security Action Memorandum NO. 55 TO:		The Chairman, Joint Chiefs of staff SUBJECT:	Relations of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to the President in Cold War Operations I wish to inform the Joint Chiefs of Staff as follows with regard to my views of their relations to me in the Cold War Operations: a. I regard the Joint Chiefs of Staff as my principal military advisor responsible both for initializing advice to me and for res- ponding to requests for advice. I expect their advice to come to me direct and unfiltered. b. The Joint Chiefs of Staff have a responsibility for the defence of the nation in the Cold War similar in that which they have in con- ventional hostilities. They should know the military and paramilitary forces and recources available to the Department of Defence, varify their readinace, report on their adaqaucy and make appropriate recommen- dations for their expansion and improvement. I look to the Chiefs to contribute dynamic and imaginative leadership in contributing to the access of the military and paramilitary aspects of Cold War programs. c. I expect the Joint Chiefs of Staff to present the military view- point in governmental councils in each way as to assure that the military factors are clearly understood before decisions are reached. When only the Chairman or a singe Chief is present, that officer must repesent the chiefs as a body, taking such paramilitary and subsequent actions as may be nessesary to assure that he does in fact represent the corporate judgement of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. d. While I look to the Chiefs to present the military factor with- out reserve or hesitation, I regard them to be more than military men and expect their help in fitting military ewquirements into the over-all context of any situations, recognising that the most difficult problem in Government is to combine all assets in a united, effective pattern. cc: Secretary of Defence General Taylor cc: Mrs. Lincoln Mr. Smith McG. Bundy*s file



6th transmission
The screen shows that a password is required to access the screen.

At the beginning of the transmission, a woman starts off by saying:

MODGK0984242P

After that, she says letters that could be the possible password.

TRD*SRA*SRC*DRB*IRE

After reading the swf, it reads /(--FREEDOM)+-. It can be rearanged with the five three letter code resulting in TRD/(SRA-SRC-7)+DRB-IRE. Substituting identification numbers results in 1915032/(2010032-2010022-7)+0510032-0002036 and adds up to 1146340. 1146340 is the password for the screen. Upon entering the password, it shows the full screen of what appears to be a medical area. You can hear a man breathing heavily, some meachines, and a EKG machine.



PerdíElJuego of unfiction.com solved the message.





Trivia

 * Of the seven recipients of the packages, four had been to Treyarch Studios. Another had met with Josh Olin, Treyarch's community manager, a week before the packages were delivered. Additionally, Treyarch had asked carbonfibah, one of these five recipients, if his address was the same just before the delivery of the packages.
 * It is rumoured that the lights emitted by the TV at its bottom right say "C O D 7" or "R A I S" in Morse code. "R A I S" could stand for Revert, Age, Impulse, Stasis, the four announced functions of the Time Manipulation Device found in Singularity, another upcomming Activision-published game related to the Cold War.
 * It has been first thought that the game being promoted by the site was Fallout: New Vegas as its publisher Bethesda Softworks is located in the Maryland (the packages were sent from Southern Maryland), and because of the numerous references to nuclear weapons. But a community manager of the publisher confirmed on its official forum that the site is not related to any of their games.
 * The domain is most likely registered by Activision as sites for Activision games hold the same Google Analytics Publisher ID.
 * The packages were also sent to some "high-profile" Call of Duty community members such as the We Play Call of Duty blog or CHEFS, an administrator on the official Call of Duty: World at War and Infinity Ward forums.
 * If the second transmission is clicked, it will show a group of officials and a picture of J.F.K. on a television screen.
 * The configuration of the sound file in the USB device may be a reference to the numerous shortwave "numbers stations" that countries use to send coded messages to foreign agents.
 * The design of the television changed since the fifth transmission came out.
 * If you repeatedly press the same transmission button, the audio of that transmission will play the number of times you pressed it, and will play them all at once. All the transmissions will stop once you click a different one. Be careful to not press it too much times as your computer can get loading issues, or worse, freeze because of so much things going on all at once.
 * It appears that the site expands after Transmission 6 and may possibly expand further in the comming months.
 * The expanded site design, after typing in the password for the 6th Transmission, look very similar to the medical room in the Call of duty: Black Ops.