Cryptic Elite Instagram/Twitter posts?

The western wave was all aflame,
The day was well nigh done!
Almost upon the western wave,
rested the broad bright sun.
When that strange shape drove suddenly,
Betwixt us and the sun.
 
So the english listening-post code is:

Listening post english.jpg

8BFGTY4PLU67-RTYO06.45:GN63-74PHGJI E67-: F563-21-574.9 ER34.6-DER8+WEST U.5 -RTG10 RTH8-4 6T.WR4564-21 +G134.2 RT55.4 GDW THE42.1LY 764.2Y-45TG4.BTJ-Y. 6ORT437.1D341-67.Y5DS 243 45TY-3234

Corrected some minor typos, but it's hard to transcribe from screen shots, and errors hinder decryption. Can we agree the above is accurate? (esp zero v's O, 1 v's I and spaces)
Does not download to codex as a file that can be copied (for me).



Trivial example using the above and taking every 8th character (as denoted by the leading 8) we get LONG: and some numbers. Long could refer to longitude as we would expect in this type of message, and the numbers might be longitudinal co-ordinates. BUT I'm not convinced this is not purely a random pattern throwing up short words, especially as the numbers do not seem to "fit". Accurate transcription is essential and any confirmation of original message appreciated please.


edited to add example above
 

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Yeah but the second group of eight begins FU so thats a trail I dont want to follow :)

how many characters are there, im too lazy to count? 8x8 grid maybe? Rail cipher of some kind? No codeword makes sense. What code uses numbers and letters and will transcribe to and from both? (and maybe characters like + - . or spaces as well)

Are we supposed to solve this by tonight?
 
So the english listening-post code is:


8BFGTY4PLU67-RTYO06.45:GN63-74PHGJI E67-: F563-21-574.9 ER34.6-DER8+WEST U.5 -RTG10 RTH8-4 6T.WR4564-21 +G134.2 RT55.4 GDW THE42.1LY 764.2Y-45TG4.BTJ-Y. 6ORT437.1D341-67.Y5DS 243 45TY-3234

Corrected some minor typos, but it's hard to transcribe from screen shots, and errors hinder decryption. Can we agree the above is accurate? (esp zero v's O, 1 v's I and spaces)
Does not download to codex as a file that can be copied (for me).



Trivial example using the above and taking every 8th character (as denoted by the leading 8) we get LONG: and some numbers. Long could refer to longitude as we would expect in this type of message, and the numbers might be longitudinal co-ordinates. BUT I'm not convinced this is not purely a random pattern throwing up short words, especially as the numbers do not seem to "fit". Accurate transcription is essential and any confirmation of original message appreciated please.


edited to add example above

There is not a space between "E67-:" and "F563". Otherwise I agree with the above:

8BFGTY4PLU67-RTYO06.45:GN63-74PHGJI E67-:F563-21-574.9 ER34.6-DER8+WEST U.5 -RTG10 RTH8-4 6T.WR4564-21 +G134.2 RT55.4 GDW THE42.1LY 764.2Y-45TG4.BTJ-Y. 6ORT437.1D341-67.Y5DS 243 45TY-3234
 
found...something (?)

looking at only the brightest bits in the binary message we get the following: 01111110000001010000001100100101101101100110110000

which is gibberish when converted to ascii. however, the bit count is 49. which led to me to a character count of each line in the encrypted log.
CORRECTION: bit count for the brightest bits is 50

8BFGTY4PLU67-RTYO06.45:GN63-74PHGJI E67-:F563-21- (49)
574.9 ER34.6-DER8+WEST U.5 -RTG10 RTH8-4 (40)
6T.WR4564-21 +G134.2 RT55.4 GDW THE42.1LY 764.2Y- (49)
45TG4.BTJ-Y.6ORT437.1D341-67.Y5DS 243 45TY-3234 (47)

there are two lines with a character count of 49. perhaps the binary is a clue in how to decrypt the log? has someone done a complete analysis on the color variations to isolate the remaining binary code by color? using just my eyes i was able to count out a second set of binary with a different shade at 48, but its hard to tell if i was including another shade variant and getting the count wrong.

if we can extract each binary string for each color variation from the binary message then do a char count that might give us a hint if this is indeed the right direction.

EDIT: so using the image from the following link: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1-IVoNbF8vkGfC8D5McX3R9slI3uV5b9JrXPEjY-LLnk/edit#gid=0

I get the following
<binary string> (color) (char count)
01111110 00000101 00000011 00100101 10110110 01101100 00 (yellow) (50)
01110001 01000110 10001100 11111100 (blue) (32)
00011010 00001011 11011101 11010010 11000111 (purple) (40)
00111100 10000110 10000101 01110000 10111001 100 (green) (47)
 
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i'm starting to wonder if the binary message does in fact have any more value at this point. of all the clues the binary message was the only one given to us by FDev rather than something in game which adds a level of ambiguity to its origin and when it was sent. there is also the fact that it has been solved - a clue that led to another clue.

from carvers log dated 10, 20, 3111 she transmitted an encrypted message regarding the geo teams findings to azimuth. the binary message could be that message.

the encrypted log from the LP however, should only be controllable by the entity that placed it there. namely azimuth.

so why would carver send an encrypted message on the 20th, before she knew the adamastor would be deployed, which contained a secret key to decrypt a log from a listening post she doesn't know exists?

if the binary message was the one sent on the 20th then i think we are done with the binary code. if the message was sent after the geo teams encounter with the adamastor then it may still be relevant.

if the binary code is no longer relevant then another clue is needed to decode the log.

here is the other thing that is nagging at me. what is left to find? we already know a lot:

10/13: a geo team commissioned by azimuth identifies an odd signal in the coalsack nebula and discovers a thargoid site complete with barnacles and a crashed thargoid ship.​
10/20: they extract something from the crashed ship, presumably a thargoid sensor, attempt to secure it then notify azimuth of their findings.​
10/26: the adamastor sets sail.​
10/27: azimuth orders the geo team to cease all transmissions and notifies the team the adamastor is in route.​
10/29: the adamastor reaches a listening post which redirects them to the geo team in the coalsack nebula.​
10/30: the adamastor reaches the geo team securing the sample and destroying the comms array at the camp. in concert a thargoid ship descends on the camp and all hell breaks loose. the adamastor takes off with half the geo team along with half their compliment of mercs leaving poor murphy to stare at rocks for the rest of his life.​
10/31: the adamastor experiences systems failures prompting carver and her crew to abandon ship​
sometime later carver's sidwinder parks face first in the dirt and the adamastor, having never recovered from her injuries, limps back home to azimuth.​
so then what do we expect the encrypted log to tell us? where the adamastor was redirected to? we know where. what their orders were? we can see the fruits of their orders from carver's and murphy's log.

my brain hurts...
 
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found...something (?)

looking at only the brightest bits in the binary message we get the following: 01111110000001010000001100100101101101100110110000

which is gibberish when converted to ascii. however, the bit count is 49. which led to me to a character count of each line in the encrypted log.
CORRECTION: bit count for the brightest bits is 50

8BFGTY4PLU67-RTYO06.45:GN63-74PHGJI E67-:F563-21- (49)
574.9 ER34.6-DER8+WEST U.5 -RTG10 RTH8-4 (40)
6T.WR4564-21 +G134.2 RT55.4 GDW THE42.1LY 764.2Y- (49)
45TG4.BTJ-Y.6ORT437.1D341-67.Y5DS 243 45TY-3234 (47)

there are two lines with a character count of 49. perhaps the binary is a clue in how to decrypt the log? has someone done a complete analysis on the color variations to isolate the remaining binary code by color? using just my eyes i was able to count out a second set of binary with a different shade at 48, but its hard to tell if i was including another shade variant and getting the count wrong.

if we can extract each binary string for each color variation from the binary message then do a char count that might give us a hint if this is indeed the right direction.

EDIT: so using the image from the following link: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1-IVoNbF8vkGfC8D5McX3R9slI3uV5b9JrXPEjY-LLnk/edit#gid=0

I get the following
<binary string> (color) (char count)
01111110 00000101 00000011 00100101 10110110 01101100 00 (yellow) (50)
01110001 01000110 10001100 11111100 (blue) (32)
00011010 00001011 11011101 11010010 11000111 (purple) (40)
00111100 10000110 10000101 01110000 10111001 100 (green) (47)

I think the highlight in the binary was just random and to help realize where each piece of the puzzle went (though it all looks right in the 3x3 instagram grid)
I tried turning the listening post data into binary through ascii and making it into a 48x31 black and white image:
test.png

That didnt seem to work, neither it would make much sense to work in the first place since it's supposed to be a flight plan

I can't seem to fit some things like system names in the message in case it is just simple substitution. If it is just substitution, 4 appears a lot, but because this is probably not just a common english message, i cant tell what 4 would replace
 
It wouldn't make much sense if the binary Instagram message had anything to do with the listening post data. That data is the flight plan set for the Adamastor. The binary message describes Murphy looking at the barnacles.

It would be really weird if you could use one to decrypt the other
 
Some thoughts.

Of course this whole endeavour is continually confounded by the human talent at seeing patterns that don't exist, and short of describing a process that produces something everyone recognises as meaningful (i.e. something everyone can see is the completely decryted plaintext) it's very hard to tell good leads from red herrings.

That said, I feel like this is a substitution cypher, where the alphabet consists of capital letters, digits, and five additional symbols, namely the space, the fullstop, the colon, the hyphen and the plus. Bearing the "pattern recognition" warning in mind, here is the distribution of frequencies in the message
Frequency.png


and here is the distribution of frequencies of letters in English - remember the above includes numbers but the below does not

frequency.jpg


(you could of course say "Yes, it's a graph that goes down from left to right and there is no more significant similarity to them than that", and that may very well be the case)

Now people have tried programs that cycle through possible keywords for a Vigenere cypher but does anyone have something that can do this for substitution? It would need to be able to use a custom alphabet. Alternatively people may be able to make educated guesses, but the likely nature of the plaintext makes this hard. One thing that stood out to me however are the following strings: GTY, RTY, RTG, RTH, RT5, 5TG, RT4, 5TY. This is of course really just "pattern matching" in the way I warned against at the start but I thought I should at least share it.
 
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