Rock Band’s hacking-themed secret website hacked

On Friday, Pal Kovacs was listening to the long-awaited new album from the rock and metal giants bring me The Horizon when he noticed a strange sound at the end of the record’s final track.

Kovacs, who has a passion for solving puzzles and cracking encrypted codes, wondered: Is there a hidden message hidden in this sound?

His guesses led him to a hidden hacking-themed website that had indeed been hacked at some point.

Kovacs opened the song in audio editing app Audacity and as he suspected, there was indeed a spectrogram – basically a visual representation of the audio – which was actually a scannable QR code. Excited, Kovacs shared his findings take me to the horizon Subreddit.

The QR code led to a hidden website, which is protected by a passcode that turned out to be a number (93934521) written on the album cover art, over the head of a character named M8. This M8 character speaks in some tracks, and also appears on the hidden site as a kind of guide.

The website is essentially an “alternate reality game,” or ARG, much like the band nine Inch Nails They’ve done this before to get fans more involved with the band’s music and history.

In this particular case, the game included a website where, among other things, the band uploaded some unreleased tracks, a folder protected by a “cipher”, which led to more password protected files, more secrets and more hidden Easter eggs, some of which are still unsolved and locked by unknown codes.

The discovery of Kovacs set off a wild, decentralized search that involved thousands of people. bring me The Horizon Fans tried to uncover all the secrets hidden within the site. Even days later, fans are still at it, as the site’s creators keep adding new challenges and puzzles to solve. Fans have a dedicated Discord server with about 3,000 people, and a shared Google document that is about 5,500 words in length at the time of writing.

Perhaps as expected, when fans first found the site, someone hacked it in an attempt to get ahead in the game. This forced the developers to temporarily shut down the site and replace it with a warning asking fans not to do so. Real Hacking a hacking-themed website.

“It appears that user/s are illegally hacking the M8 servers in order to decode the hidden secrets,” reads the message from the album’s guide M8, which several fans have spotted in a chat with TechCrunch. “It is my duty to inform you that this behavior is both mischievous and repulsive! You see, the whole idea of ​​this program is to uncover secrets at an engaging pace, allowing everyone to enjoy the thrill of discovery. By bypassing the system and sharing the secrets prematurely, you are spoiling the fun for everyone!”

It is unclear what the developers meant by “hacking” the servers, nor who was responsible. The band’s record label, Sony Music Entertainment, did not respond to a request for comment.

Discord server owner xDarkMagicianGirl told TechCrunch, “An email address was found after solving a puzzle on the site, we found it legitimately but when we emailed this email as the site told us to, we received a warning message saying we had been hacked and could be blacklisted if we tried again, we believe this was an old error from back in the day when these hackers extracted information from the site.”

xDarkMagician has shared a copy of the email that some people received after the hacking attempts.

“So a friendly warning: your recent unauthorized access to our website has not gone unnoticed. Although I admire your enthusiasm, it is time for you to consider the consequences of your actions. If you continue to hack the system, you will be permanently blocked from accessing any part of it,” the email read.

“Let’s play fair and enjoy the journey together. After all, a little patience goes a long way in making this experience a truly enjoyable one for everyone. So, stop being frustrated and play fair!”