User:AndrewNeo/Analyzing ApertureScience.com
I am beginning to analyze ApertureScience.com by means of extreme sneakiness. Due to the length, questions and answers will not be displayed on this page. Play with it if you want to find out!
Site Ownership
The site's reverse DNS is unknown.valvesoftware.com, same as steampowered.com. It's obviously owned by Valve. Look on the Talk page for the WHOIS, which I didn't grab because it wasn't really nessicary.
ApertureScience16.swf
I have extracted the SWF file's ActionScript and analyzed it. There are three input stages, as follows:
Stage One
You are presented with a blank terminal prompt. You can do two things: LOGIN/LOGON/USER, which lets you log in, or you can type ?/HELP which will display a useless 'help' menu.
If you choose to log in, you can type any username that is greater than two characters, and use the password PORTAL or PORTALS. Then you'll move on to stage two.
Stage Two
You are presented with a version string and yet another prompt, GlaDOS v1.07 (c) 1982 Aperture Science, Inc.
Here you can enter several things, with different results:
| Command | Result |
THECAKEISALIE
|
This is important! See the They Lied About the Cake section. |
DIR/CATALOG/DIRECTORY/LIST/LS/CAT
|
Lists the APPLY command.
|
IP
|
Reveals your UID(+L) code. See the #UID section for more information. |
HELP/LIB
|
Lists the commands in this list. |
LOGOUT/BYE/LOGOFF/VALVE
|
Plays a sound and sends you to your homepage if you have one, or SteamPowered.com if you don't. |
APPEND/ATTRIB/COPY/FORMAT/ERASE/RENAME
|
Gives you an error about the disk being write protected. |
INTERROGATE
|
Gives an error if no parameter is provided, otherwise gives an error about 'illegally initiating diciplinary action'. |
TAPEDISK
|
Gives an error about the user not being authorized to transfer system tapes. |
APPLY/APPLY.EXE
|
Begins the registration process, and Stage Three. |
| Anything else | Gives an error about the file not being found. |
Oddly enough, even though these commands emulate a DOS prompt, there is an LS command, which is from UNIX. Ironically, the actual webserver (this very server, to be exact) is running Debian.
They Lied About the Cake
They lied. Trust me!
UID
Your UID is generated by the #gdxt.php script by giving it a unique variable that Flash provides.
gdxt.php
I have poked at this script's interaction with the flash file. It doesn't seem to do a whole lot other than provide you with your UID and reply with an okay to your questions.. but it may be storing that information in a database for all we know.
Results
At this point in time, the site only reveals a couple things. Namely, it appears that you'll be stuck in the testing center without help, but we already knew that from the trailer. Also, it appears the main character won't talk, big suprise.
Log
9/05/06: Extracted the flash file's AS and looked at it. 9/06/06: Begun this page. More to come soon.