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Thread: Eon8

  1. #1
    Senior Member
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    Eon8

    I'm not sure this is the best place to put this, but I guess this place is as good as any.

    There is a site at http://www.eon8.com that seems to have some very odd things going on. First, its a countdown to Friday night/saturday morning midnight EST (US time). This by itself is just curious. Adding some other facts is what makes it stranger.

    First, I purposely DID NOT link the URL above. You will see why in a bit.

    On the main page near the bottom there is some black text on black background. It seems to be some sort of time stamp. It is constantly changing and seems to never repeat.

    The deployment tracer seems to be adding red dots to the map every hour. I think its linked to some of the later facts.

    The deployment log seems to be updating as time passes. Its not fast, but has changed over the last two hours.

    The Project X21-B | Project Z-Theta9 | Login links all lead to a login prompt of which I have no clue what the login or password is. The failure links are P1205-X21-B/, P1105-Z-T9/, and / respectively.

    There is a link that is not on the main page www.eon8.com/security. This is the really puzzling part. There are three sections, green, red, and yellow. Green seems to be approved, red disapproved, and yellow unchecked. From what I can tell these sites are the referer of a URL. This is the reason I DID NOT link the URLs. My personal site is now on this list. When you refer from one of these yellow sites it tells you:

    You are accessing this site from an UNVERIFIED HTTP REFERER. The site you were referred by has been recorded, and has been queued for a security audit by ES-12.

    Site: www.site.com

    Audit Status: Pending ES-12 Verification

    If you visit it from a site in red, i.e. google (72.14.203.104):

    You are accessing this site from an UNAPPROVED HTTP REFERER. The site you were referred by failed the ES-12 security audit and has not been approved. Please immediately consult C22:S13 of your handbook for further instructions.

    Site: Google (English)

    Audit Status: ES-12 Verification Rejected

    It looks like this site is doing security audits of any refered that links to it?!?

    I don't really know how all of these links in with the countdown, but the ideas that come to mind are a virus release, a botnet attack, or even a zero-day exploit that its pre-checking these sites to see if they are vulnerable.

    Lets get some discussion going on about this.

    If anyone has a good crypto background maybe they can share some info about these hashes.

    Edit: it autolinked!@#

  2. #2
    hmmm

    theres another forum that has done some work trying to solve work out what this site is about.

    http://forums.unfiction.com/forums/v...er=asc&start=0

    seems interesting enough..

  3. #3
    Senior Member
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    I also meant to mention that the dots on the map seem to corolate to the red links in the database. My yellow link just moved to being a red link.

    I was attempting to get snort up on that box before it went red to see if there was any active scanning involved, but didn't get it up.

  4. #4
    what is X13600? Is it possible that this site is some sort of "bait"?

    edit: its an ARG Alternate Reality Game, and it hasn't started yet.

  5. #5
    didnt want to double post but anyway. eon8.com is in its last hour of the countdown if anyone cares. Im waiting to see what it is. there is so much speculation, an fake evidence of what it is.

  6. #6
    Senior Member
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    {eon8} Complete

    As of July 1st, 2006, the E8 Project has completed.
    The purpose of this project was to determine the reactions of the internet public to lack of information.

    History

    The domain eon8.com was chosen, as it is short, easily remembered, and eon9 was already registered.
    It was originally posted on www.msfn.org, but was promptly removed as 'spam'. It was enough time for it to be copied to other forums throughout December 2005.

    Results

    We were amazed to discover that the site was instantly linked with terrorism, simply for the fact that it seems mysterious. Evil was the number one first impression people had of the site, in spite of the fact that there are no threats on the site. The only thing Eon 8 says is "We don't want you here". Nothing else.
    Other less disappointing opinions were social experimentation (which was correct), James Bond movie viral marketing, and promotions for video games.
    For many people, being faced with a countdown timer was an instant reason to try to shut down or hack the site. This is a worrying reaction, that if someone doesn't understand something they must destroy it. As a result, the servers have been hit quite hard these last few days, but luckily 99% of the 'hackers' could easily be described as 'l4me n00bs'.
    Another worrying example of paranoia was how quickly people would jump to conclusions, such as telephoning the registered owner of a dog seen in a photograph on a server that hosts a page that links to eon8.
    Surprises
    The folks at Unfiction.com were the most resourceful and inventive, they successfully managed to decrypt several of the 'codes' on the site, forcing them to be re-encrypted using more secure methods.

    FAQ

    What about eon5.com?
    Nothing to do with us. Pure coincidence, but worked in our favor.

    What about the 8th eon being the end of the world?
    We picked Eon 8 because Eon 9 was already taken. We didn't know about the significance of this. Eon is a cool sounding word!

    Why July 1st?
    We didn't know how long it would take to get the word out using our subtle promotion methods. We allowed over 6 months.

    What do the codes on the site mean?
    They're mostly randomly generated integers encrypted with md5, but with certain letters removed and replaced. The Logs page is simply based on the current timestamp, encrypted and modified. You can't decrypt them, they really are random numbers.

    What is the Deployment Map?
    They're dots placed over major cities and several random locations, it was done mostly from memory. The random gif filename is an added touch to force a slight delay on loading, which looks more impressive in Internet Explorer, but not as much in Firefox.

    What's the password?
    There isn't one. If you did somehow manage to get in, you'd see an empty folder with a single text file that says "This is a decoy folder. Please connect to the internal secure network".

    Can I see your website statistics?
    Yes, click here.

    Are you anything to do with Scientology?
    Did you see anything talking about a Free Personality Test or Xenu? Use your brain.

    Who are you, really?
    The most I can tell you is I am a 23 year old web designer from Florida named Mike. I can't narrow it down anymore than that. When I say 'we', I really mean 'me'.

    Conclusions

    People take things too seriously and panic over the most trivial things. But at the same time there are many people out there who think things through without jumping to conclusions. You can't let pointless speculation rule your lives and force you to live in fear.

    In Closing

    Thanks to everyone who kept things interesting, especially to the folks at unfiction. Sorry there is no ARG for you to play, but at least you had fun while it lasted.

    Origin: http://www.eon8.com/deployed21b.php
    And their last message: http://www.eon8.com/eon21b.mp3; always look on the bright side of life.

    An interesting project, with even more interesting results..

  7. #7
    Well i guess that has cured my curiosity about this site..

    I thought that there was something note right about the site, i mean it was so mysterious. Kudos to the site owner, he has obvisouly planned this and has done a good job at that.

    cheers
    kris.!

  8. #8
    Master-Jedi-Pimps0r & Moderator thehorse13's Avatar
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    No surprise here. This experiment has been conducted time and time again over the past century. I can't see why they are surprised with the results as they are the same every time.

    --Th13
    Our scars have the power to remind us that our past was real. -- Hannibal Lecter.
    Talent is God given. Be humble. Fame is man-given. Be grateful. Conceit is self-given. Be careful. -- John Wooden

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