A Message In The Package...

Yeah, I noticed that, which is why I was wondering if it was another clue...

 

And all this seems to point to these guys.

 

This is that awkward moment when we're overthinking the shit
*violently smashes his head repeatedly on his desk*

 

Just in case anyone jumps to the last page of the thread: I've updated the OP with the relevant steps so far.

 

Yeah, we did it again...dammit!

 

That is so cool!

 

Interesting, my zip file gives an error when I use that password, but it does unzip to 6:03 seconds of the full 7:50 seconds of the reading. Now is that a bug, or feature... I'll investigate further after raid time.

 

so a report from lab working on brains and with an aid that may be behaving peculiarly, and Whitechapel incites a direct point towards H.P. Lovecraft again and another gate trial...and the Golden Dawn...I still sense a trap, but better to prepare or wits and guard who we tell what in private communications

 

I'll prepare the rations.

 

In the off chance it's relevant, here's how my zip differs. There are 61 bytes different, this is the binary values in hex.
http://pastebin.com/YE8HzXdB

 

You probably have a crc error indicating actual corruption.

 

That seems most likely. The file dates and stored CRC in the file are identical. So actual corruption or intentional change are the only options. Stupid paranoia!

 

oranges and melons
oranges and melons
oranges and melons
DON'T OVERTHINK !

 

If you look up the Lovecraft story, you'll find the whole file except for the aforementioned temple

 

Here kind sir:

Spoiler: Oblivion by Whitechapel

When the last days were upon me, and the ugly trifles of existence began to drive me to madness like the small drops of water that torturers let fall ceaselessly upon one spot of their victim’s body, I loved the irradiate refuge of sleep. In my dreams I found a little of the beauty I had vainly sought in life, and wandered through old gardens and enchanted woods.
Once when the wind was soft and scented I heard the south calling, and sailed endlessly and languorously under strange stars.
Once when the gentle rain fell I glided in a barge down a sunless stream under the earth till I reached another world of purple twilight, iridescent arbours, and undying roses.
And once I walked through a golden valley that led to shadowy groves and ruins, and ended in a mighty wall green with antique vines, and pierced by a little gate of bronze.
Many times I walked through that valley, and longer and longer I would pause in the spectral half-light where the giant trees squirmed and twisted grotesquely, and the grey ground stretched damply from trunk to trunk, sometimes disclosing the mould-stained stones of buried temples. And always the goal of my fancies was the mighty vine-grown wall with the little gate of bronze therein.
After a while, as the days of waking became less and less bearable from their greyness and sameness, I would often drift in opiate peace through the valley and the shadowy groves,
and wonder how I might seize them for my eternal dwelling-place, so that I need no more crawl back to a dull world stript of interest and new colours. And as I looked upon the little gate in the mighty wall, I felt that beyond it lay a dream-country from which, once it was entered, there would be no return.
So each night in sleep I strove to find the hidden latch of the gate in the ivied antique wall, though it was exceedingly well hidden. And I would tell myself that the realm beyond the wall was not more lasting merely, but more lovely and radiant as well.
Then one night in the dream-city of Isis-Urania I found a yellowed papyrus filled with the thoughts of dream-sages who dwelt of old in that city, and who were too wise ever to be born in the waking world.
Therein were written many things concerning the world of dream, and among them was lore of a golden valley and a sacred grove with temples, and a high wall pierced by a little bronze gate.
When I saw this lore, I knew that it touched on the scenes I had haunted, and I therefore read long in the yellowed papyrus.
Some of the dream-sages wrote gorgeously of the wonders beyond the irrepassable gate, but others told of horror and disappointment. I knew not which to believe, yet longed more and more to cross forever into the unknown land; for doubt and secrecy are the lure of lures, and no new horror can be more terrible than the daily torture of the commonplace. So when I learned of the drug which would unlock the gate and drive me through,
I resolved to take it when next I awaked.
Last night I swallowed the drug and floated dreamily into the golden valley and the shadowy groves; and when I came this time to the antique wall, I saw that the small gate of bronze was ajar.
From beyond came a glow that weirdly lit the giant twisted trees and the tops of the buried temples, and I drifted on songfully, expectant of the glories of the land from whence I should never return.
But as the gate swung wider and the sorcery of drug and dream pushed me through, I knew that all sights and glories were at an end; for in that new realm was neither land nor sea, but only the white void of unpeopled and illimitable space. So, happier than I had ever dared hoped to be, I dissolved again into that native infinity of crystal oblivion from which the daemon Life had called me for one brief and desolate hour.

"Ex Oblivione" is a prose poem by American horror fiction writer H.P. Lovecraft, written in late 1920 or early 1921 and first published in The United Amateur in March 1921, under the psudonym Ward Phillips.
It is written in first person and tells of the dreams of a presumably dying man. In his dreams, the man is walking through a valley and encounters a vine-covered wall with a locked bronze gate therein. He longs to know what lies beyond the gate.

Isis-Urania Temple
Hermetic Order of the Goden Dawn

I'm not sure if Whitechapel likes Lovecraft or if this is a taunt. Either way, if we're dealing with sleepwalkers of some sort things could get very ugly.
Beware the sleepcrawlers...

 

Or perhaps he's alluding to a sleeper-agent among us?!

*stares intently and begins to hum the X-files theme*

 

N.Lacoste at Rosenberg's is a doctor in sleep med/science, add the bells and the sound they make, take a quick reading of the intercepted e-mail and you'll start seeing links

Edit : Maybe the next step is finding the password of her rosenberg account

 

I think it's Deadalus! (ominous music here)

 

Well, I'm going back to trying passwords on the Rosenberg clinic site until we get another clue, and linking the previous Googledoc spreadsheet so we aren't going over old stuff. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet...p_zJNjeQvCyCcWv8cZ8/edit?pli=1#gid=1954864479

 

After recovering from the giant Derp! that was our password investigation into this, I attempted to regain some dignity by at least figuring out how there could possibly be two passwords that seemed to work. There is nothing here that will help toward the mission, but if you were going WTF like me and just want to know what the deal with this little side trek, here is what I found out...

Spoiler

I used some code in python to walk through a zip file extraction step by step and found that the very last thing it does before actually extracting a file is perform a checksum validation. Zip encryption is extremely weak in general, and the validation works on just a single byte. It only compares the 12th byte in the header of the file it is attempting to extract with the 12th byte of the header it calculates should be there using a given password. If the bytes match, the password passes validation and an attempt to extract the file using that password is then made. A single byte only allows for 255 possible values, so statistically 1 in 255 attempts will get past this point. This doesn't mean the file is now able to be decrypted, just that the next step of attempting to extract the file will be taken. That next step still requires the password and should always fail if the password is in fact incorrect.

The “scrivener” password fell into the 1-in-255 category. It passed the validation and so did not generate the standard up-front “bad password” error, but it was not the actual password, so on the next step it generated the “corrupt archive/maybe step-one was wrong and this really is not the correct password after all” error. Just FYI, the checksum value that “scrivener” and “orangesandlemons” both had was 239.