Okay, here are instructions on how to find the number string if you don't know about it yet.
Screen cap of the press release link.
Press release. Notice the strange highlight at the bottom.
Number string found at the web site address found at the bottom of the press release.
Okay, I’ll admit that when I found out about the string of numbers and how people decoded the message, I was VERY skeptical. The main reason was because almost every post that I read was all hear say. No one had a link or proof in the form of an explanation that could produce repeatable results. Well, after a long search, I have found it! 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
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 objAt 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 [url=http://members.tripod.com/~BraunzGuy/rot13.htm
]rot-13[/url] 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 substitute 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 halfway across the set. If you were to apply that concept to the 10-character system of decimal numbers, ROT-5 would translate characters halfway 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 tomorrow.
i'll go try some passwords 