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 suspected to be a promoter for the upcoming video game, Call of Duty 7. The flash site consists of an old television with five vertical lights (for each "channel") and as of April 22, 2010, there are only three which 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 – 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 hasn't been cracked yet. It has partially been decrypted.

"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: http://groups.google.com/group/alt.conspiracy/browse_thread/thread/a4e3132abd29b230/710c4334213d4dd7?lnk=raot

"-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"

- Nova Six

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.

The Marie Curie line:

Frequencies - 200, 800, 1800, 3200, 2400, 800, 200 * 200, 800,1800, 3200, 2100, 900, 200.

MOD 100 stand for : divided by 100.

Thats is :

2,8,18,32,24,8,2 = The number of electrons per shell in Plutonium - Element: 94 Symbol: Pu Discovered by Enrico Fermi

2,8,18,32,21,9,2 = 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

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.