Arweave Puzzle Series: Puzzle 13— Solved

Hi! This is a write-up on the Arweave Puzzle 13. The puzzle has already been solved and all credit goes to the solver!

SUMMARY

Announcement Date: May 22, 2020
Link: https://www.twitter.com/arweavep
Prize: 1 ETH

Address: 0x0a5C81F5bFb8Ec2f47defF466A1a4e55b8FC9319
Private Key: c79eac48c3334fc967d5aecb37222d9a4307027d0ec2bcd6f914417cf78d3c82
                                   ~Solved by lefevre(May 23, 2020)

START

Puzzle 13 is not required to be solved through the Arweave Permaweb unlike some of the Arweave Puzzles.

The task is to find the hidden private key to the ETH address which is also hidden in the puzzle image.

Here is the link to the puzzle: https://ly5fdipqkuag.arweave.net/icRlgZbXVq01wPrFdllafMvKXoQ6Kfo1mQMdmeyX514

Hints:
1. There are 8 images and each image has 8 HEX characters near it.
2. “Tail is your friend”
3. 0x0a5C81F5…

Inside The Puzzle

There are 8 images in the puzzle. This means we are not looking for a 12-word seed phrase but instead, are 8 words relating to the images. Reverse-Image search is the key here.

IMAGE 1

HEX: cf2e502d
Word: Terminator 2

The image is a scene from the movie “Terminator 2".

IMAGE 2

HEX: 3e5da2c2
Word: Bitcoin Genesis Block

The image is from a published newspaper featuring the “Bitcoin Genesis Block”.

IMAGE 3

HEX: 4ad1f6b1
Word: Tuberculosis

From the image alone, we knew it is a type of disease. And doing image search gave “Tuberculosis”.

IMAGE 4

HEX: 2adfe76a
Word: Big Brother

Image search alone did not help with this one. But fortunately, there were those people who were quite familiar with this image or logo. And they were positive this is the logo of “Big Brother”.

IMAGE 5

HEX: 41304211
Word: Arweave

This one was easy. Looking at it, it is clear that it is a chart. This didn’t look like the BTC price chart so we checked the Arweave prize chart, and turned out we were right.

IMAGE 6

HEX: 914ca46e
Word: Terror From the Deep

This was one of the hardest. The image clearly is something deep in the ocean but we were not sure what it relates to. Then, doing a little bit of research and ideas from fellow puzzle hunters did the trick. The image is from a videogame from the XCOM series — “Terror From the Deep”.

IMAGE 7

HEX: a1e51089
Word: Dyatlov

It may look like this one is out of a movie or a videogame but in reality, it isn’t. This image looked like it’s hard to look for but a simple reverse search was all it took. Doing reverse search resulted to “Dyatlov Pass Incident” and this is the tomb of the deceased in that incident.

IMAGE 8

HEX: 48b4f92b
Word: Vitalik Buterin

This was the hardest of them all. Nothing special came out from the image search. The only hint was the old computer and a hand of a child. Then, a puzzle hunter showed us an image of “Vitalik Buterin” when he was a child and the picture is exactly like this one.

SOLUTION

The final words are:
Terminator 2 
Bitcoin Genesis Block 
Tuberculosis 
Big Brother 
Arweave 
Terror From the Deep 
Dyatlov 
Vitalik Buterin

To get the private key from these, SHA256 each hexagon answers. The first 8 HEX should match with the 8 HEX characters given on each hexagon. Use the “Tail is your friend” clue and get the last 8 HEX of each and concatenate in order to get the private key.

Private Key: c79eac48c3334fc967d5aecb37222d9a4307027d0ec2bcd6f914417cf78d3c82

Acknowledgements

Thank you to Arweave Puzzle for this fun puzzle and riddle! Also, congrats to LeFevre in solving this puzzle.

Links to Solution of other Arweave Puzzles
Arweave P1: https://medium.com/@zorenskye/arweave-puzzle-series-puzzle-01-solved-59aa19a0ea2f
Arweave P2: https://medium.com/@zorenskye/arweave-puzzle-series-puzzle-04-solved-69ca109f3614
Arweave P4:https://medium.com/@zorenskye/arweave-puzzle-series-puzzle-04-solved-69ca109f3614
Arweave P8: https://medium.com/@zorenskye/arweave-puzzle-series-puzzle-08-solved-34a2b32fb308

If this helped you in solving similar puzzles, you may donate to…

BTC: bc1q4jeg5uh6hsrwkys5tntnm8jckquj2vs5lvwzuq
ETH: 0x6f448878BcB39743041b229E1740BAd3E67b74A9