A Message In The Package...

In any case you seem to have discovered the password. Congrats! It would be strange if the error 0x80004005 itself is a further clue to something else.

 

This is the output of 7zip:



It mentions a data error in the mp3 file and suggests a wrong password....

 

I tried changing the extension to other zip formats (.gzip, .lzip, etc.). The archive can still be browsed, but extraction attempts give the same error with the extensions I have tried so far. It could still just be a matter of finding the right program and protocol to extract the file.

 

It'd be a hell of an elaborate solution if the error code itself was somehow the password, but it's not.

 

The error 0x80004005 is "Access denied" in windows 8 zip utilities.

 

Possibly a dumb idea, but it's late (ish) for me and I have had a drink. The USB key appears to contain hidden files that look like apple stuff to me. Anyone tried to access this on a mac?

 

For posterity's sake:

 

*looks at the post above, blinks*
.. the hell ?
Is that that kind of file you can only read on a specific OS ? Do we need to run virtual machines ?

 

Yup. Got a friend with a Mac to try it and he also got errors.

 

This came up in the ARG I set up. Due to the way the encryption works, I believe it's possible to get wrong passwords that decrypt to something, but that something then fails a comparison to the CRC and the file is reported as corrupted (because it is, really, the decryption is outputting garbage due to wrong password).

 

My package arrived, with something interesting stuck inside...

http://i.imgur.com/NGO3f5I.png

 

I FOUND THE REAL PASSWORD.

We are all so stupid.

REAL PASSWORD:

Spoiler

orangesandlemons

As for what the sound file is:

Spoiler

It's a reading by Whitechapel of Ex Oblivione by H.P. Lovecraft.

 

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaggggggggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

 

Well done ^^

 

Fixed that for you ;]

 

___ .. ___

 

[angrily flails for 10 minutes on end]

That aside, Vom says in IRC that their player is showing the sound file as being from a Mastodon album called Crack the Skye.

Interestingly, the theme of the album is astral travel, like Ex Oblivione (arguably).

 

Spoiler: Oh history, you

 

My next question is: is that the end? or is this the next clue to something?

 

There's a discrepancy in H.P. Lovecraft's rendition of Ex Oblivione and Whitechapel's reading.

Spoiler

Lovecraft calls the story 'Zakarion".

Whitechapel calls it "Isis Urania".

Isis-Urania is the first temple of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn.