Watch the Footage

Hey, Metaguards!

Dana and I are running the social media / transmedia campaigns for a movie set in a high security prison.

The guards are terrified of the prison gangs, who are connected enough that they can order hits on the guards' families. The prisoners run the show, until the Warden buys the Goliath, a giant death robot, to keep things in line.

As these things go, the robot goes insane. It's up to a few convicts from rival gangs to band together and bring the Goliath down, with six shivs and a flashlight.

We'll be crowdfunding this soon. I hope you guys think this is as fun as I do.

https://www.facebook.com/GoliathFilm

https://twitter.com/GOLIATHFilm

Sounds like a good premise, I'm definitely gonna support it anyway I can

Guys, you had me at 'giant death robot'. Just let me get logged into twitter...

Well, as things currently stand, I can't think of anywhere else to put this, and I feel that I ought to put it somewhere.
Because, y'know, always publicize emails you receive.

(for context: on twitter I flipped an image from a newspaper that, uh, the mysterious twitter account for this movie tweeted, and discovered an email address which I wrote to for more information. Because. That's a normal thing to do these days.)

James Van Treese wrote:I must admit, I was surprised to receive your email. No one at DC Corp has used this address since we shut down the home appliances division to focus more on defense contracts years ago. How old is the paper you read?

I'm afraid we no longer sell the automated vacuum you saw advertised. There was a class-action lawsuit which canceled production. Vastly exaggerated claims, but the judge bought it.

Am I to take it that you would be interested in hearing additional information about DC Corp's current range of products?

Qara-Xuan Zenith wrote:Well, as things currently stand, I can't think of anywhere else to put this, and I feel that I ought to put it somewhere.
Because, y'know, always publicize emails you receive.

(for context: on twitter I flipped an image from a newspaper that, uh, the mysterious twitter account for this movie tweeted, and discovered an email address which I wrote to for more information. Because. That's a normal thing to do these days.)

James Van Treese wrote:I must admit, I was surprised to receive your email. No one at DC Corp has used this address since we shut down the home appliances division to focus more on defense contracts years ago. How old is the paper you read?

I'm afraid we no longer sell the automated vacuum you saw advertised. There was a class-action lawsuit which canceled production. Vastly exaggerated claims, but the judge bought it.

Am I to take it that you would be interested in hearing additional information about DC Corp's current range of products?

<_<
>_>
Sequel

Qara-Xuan Zenith wrote:Well, as things currently stand, I can't think of anywhere else to put this, and I feel that I ought to put it somewhere.
Because, y'know, always publicize emails you receive.

(for context: on twitter I flipped an image from a newspaper that, uh, the mysterious twitter account for this movie tweeted, and discovered an email address which I wrote to for more information. Because. That's a normal thing to do these days.)

James Van Treese wrote:I must admit, I was surprised to receive your email. No one at DC Corp has used this address since we shut down the home appliances division to focus more on defense contracts years ago. How old is the paper you read?

I'm afraid we no longer sell the automated vacuum you saw advertised. There was a class-action lawsuit which canceled production. Vastly exaggerated claims, but the judge bought it.

Am I to take it that you would be interested in hearing additional information about DC Corp's current range of products?

Can I assume that you responded with "Yes, please, I would be delighted to hear about DC Corp's current range of products"?

I would have asked if they carry combustible lemons, but that works too. This is looking cool. I might have to get involved after finals.

I'd replied to their last email expressing general interest in their other projects, and just got the following reply:

James Van Treese wrote:Sadly, I can't provide you with more information about products that would be within our price range. If you ever become the acquisitions manager for a multinational corporation with millions of disposable dollars, here's our website: http://dccorp.biz

Qara-Xuan Zenith wrote:I'd replied to their last email expressing general interest in their other projects, and just got the following reply:

James Van Treese wrote:Sadly, I can't provide you with more information about products that would be within our price range. If you ever become the acquisitions manager for a multinational corporation with millions of disposable dollars, here's our website: http://dccorp.biz

Oooh interesting.

If only we knew how to log in...

Well, based on mysterious knowledge I have, login information will be given to the people who supported the kickstarter once the actual kickstarter ends?

This is the part where I say "Here we go again", isn't it?

Sicon112 wrote:This is the part where I say "Here we go again", isn't it?

Wait for the kickstarter to end, it'll be more dramatic that way.

eli_gone_crazy wrote:

Sicon112 wrote:This is the part where I say "Here we go again", isn't it?

Wait for the kickstarter to end, it'll be more dramatic that way.

So we have 19 days left so far til the kickstarter ends.

Now we wait...

The Latin reads "Not peace but the sword."

Tom said in the chat that we could solve this in an hour. Let's do it!

We have to figure out a working username AND a working password.

So, it says "Clients and Employees: Log in here." "Client" or "Employee" could be the usernames.

Any idea about passwords?

There was an article on the Twitter feed: https://twitter.com/GOLIATHFilm/status/ ... 1931606016 .

On the back is an advertisement: http://neo.theblob.org/dccorp-article-2.jpg . It reads (where [...] means the text gets cut off):

Try the New

DC Corp Automatic Room [...]

It'll Rake your Room [...]

Rarely goes hayw[...]

"I Guarantee It!"

For ordering information [...]
thedccorporation@gmai[...]

Obviously, the next step is to email thedccorporation@gmail.com. Or has that already been done?

[edit: Apparently I didn't read the thread. Oops!]

Sophira wrote:There was an article on the Twitter feed: https://twitter.com/GOLIATHFilm/status/ ... 1931606016 .

On the back is an advertisement: http://neo.theblob.org/dccorp-article-2.jpg . It reads (where [...] means the text gets cut off):

Try the New

DC Corp Automatic Room [...]

It'll Rake your Room [...]

Rarely goes hayw[...]

"I Guarantee It!"

For ordering information [...]
thedccorporation@gmai[...]

Obviously, the next step is to email thedccorporation@gmail.com. Or has that already been done?

The results of Qara's email exchange with them can be seen above.

Right now I'm trying to think of username/password combos. I can't find anything that looks like a direct clue for a password yet.

But as for usernames, we have three names of employees at the DC Corporation.

One is James Van Treese, who replied to the email.

One is Robert Darmody, whose resignation letter is here.

One is Brent Harlowe, who has some videos we can watch here.

Note: Brent refers to Robert Darmody as "Rob" or "Bob" at one point, and calls James Van Treese "Jim." The username might include one of these nicknames.

Lots of companies have a standard formula for usernames, like first initial + last name or something like that.

Of course, without the correct password we have no way of knowing that we've gotten a correct username.

Qara, when you're on, could you verify that the email you received was sent from the same address you wrote to? Because if not, then the other email address is likely to be a valid username.

So, I'm crazy.

This piqued my interest, because only Qara emailed that address. So, I decided to try something of my own.

Hello,

I'm a reporter for the Dublin Times. I heard about your company's law suits and the subsequent shut down of the vacuum line and I was wondering if I could conduct an interview with you. If you wish to do so, I would be delighted to ask you a few questions, get the real story. I feel you were wrongfully villified, and I want to try to find out what really happened.

Many Thanks,

Morgan Jones.

Obviously it's a misnomer, but I'm posing as a journalist looking for the real story. The last email mentioned some class-action lawsuits, and no one ever looked into it, so I decided to give it a try. I got this response.

ugh, more dirty laundry from brentharlowe. i have just about had it with that guy. i tell you though, he was right about one thing--aLcohol. yes yes yes. as good for mourning as celebration. tonight's a little bit of both.

the vacuum line was a bust from the beginning. he was supposed to clean up after darmody but he just shoveled things under the rug. spent more time thinking about SPORTS than answering emails from junket pressers, i can tell you that much.

why are you even emailing me this late? don't you have sleep in ireland?

cheers,

jim

<_< Little does he know that there's actually a place called Dublin, Georgia. That's where I pulled from. xD I guess I should take this as a chance to probe further, I'm just a bit too distracted at the moment to focus on questions. Any suggestions?

The fact that he referred to the guy as brentharlowe, no spaces, suggests that we should try that as a username. That's all I've got right now.

aLcohol. Try that as a password?

Edit: It didn't work with brentharlowe.

Okay, new idea: Try brentharlowe username and the names of sports teams he mentions in these videos. I'll get to work on it now.

Username: brentharlowe
Password: orioles

Eeyup, I was useless getting the password, but hey, look at that. There was a Cipher in there!

It's cracked now.

Signing Out.pdf wrote:Okay. I gotta be honest. I didn't think anyone would get this far. I guess I
can't know for sure right now if anyone will… But you're reading this, so you
know.

I'm not leaving a note explaining why. Oh, no. That’s not how I do things. All
those feelings and thoughts and crap I just don't have time for.

I'm leaving this message so that my successor can avoid my mistakes.(Hi
there.) You might have to work quickly. If IT decides to decode this
message first, it'll definitely end up getting wiped.

Of course, IT is notoriously overworked. They have millions of files on this
repository. I doubt it will even occur to them to clear mine out. But who knows?

As my dad said: if you get lost, look around you. You won't find the key in this
letter. IT would check that first. You know how many of those assholes I catch
checking my email every month? 7! Zipideedoodah.

Brent Harlowe
Project Manager

For those curious, it was a Vigenere Cipher (Hi there Tom. XD) and the key was orioles. Yes. And I don't know why I didn't try that first thing, though I had an issue copy-pasting out of the .pdf that added more characters to the ciphertext, making it impossible to crack. Dilly corrected me and there it is. Plain text for us all.

So here's where we stand. Logging in to http://dccorp.biz with username brentharlowe and password orioles gets you a page with some PDF downloads, one JPEG (the same image seen here) and one 7z file, which I am informed is a type of zipped file. I lack the setup to even attempt to open it, but Pixel has informed us that it is password protected.

Password ideas (I know some of these have been tried but I'm just throwing them out here because I can't try any myself):

orioles
aLcohol
swordfish
Derleth / derleth
Zipideedoodah
eedoodah
ideedoodah
DARPA
james

There's also the "if you get lost, look around you," definitely seems like a clue but I'm not sure what it's pointing us towards.

all of the files open in adobe with the exception of the resignation letter, which opens in paint.

... I don't know what that means, but it's kind of weird.
That resume is crazy awesome.
EDIT:

I sent another round of emails to Mr. Drunk dude.

Hello,

Since, you responded fairly genially, I'll go ahead and ask a few questions.

What was IRDA's involvement in the case? And why do you believe the judge ruled against DC corp?

As far as the company goes, what were the terms of Harlowe's resignation from DC corps? Was it infighting between different sectors of the coorporation? Or did he resign in order to prevent more lawsuits?

As for sleep, news doesn't wait until 9 am.

Thanks for allowing me the opportunity to interview you.

Morgan Jones.

I was tempted to add, "and what are you doing drunk off your ass answering company mail, corporate American guy?" but I figured that would be a bit rude.
Regardless, I got this response.

Please accept my humblest apologies for my unprofessional email last night. I must have thought I was replying to an email from a friend, or something like that. I usually hand my phone to a friend when I drink, but last night, I forgot.

Sadly, I don't know what you're talking about. IRDA is an infrared communication standard. The organization which developed this standard has never sued DC Corp.

As for the lawsuits Harlowe mentioned, those should never have become public knowledge. They were settled out of court with gag orders enforced. Obviously, I cannot comment on them, even if it would be better PR if people actually knew what had happened.

Brent Harlowe did not resign from DC Corp. His death was ruled a suicide.

I hope these answers will be sufficient, as I do not have time to do a voice or face interview. Thank you for your interest.

-James

At least he apologized, though now we know that Harlowe is dead. I think the lawsuits are a dead end, I'm pretty sure I'll only offend the guy if I try to press further.

I also feel like an idiot for no googling IRDA before mailing. >////<