enigmatic puzzle - Fwd: Re: Karen is missing!

From: Ada Hughes
Sent: Thursday, April 7, 2016 7:03 PM
To: Joe Dorsen
CC: Jason Bernz ; IT Guys
Subject: Re: Fwd: Re: Karen is missing!

Hey Joe,

That sequence underneath the image: Do you think it means anything?

I tried changing some of them to letters, but didn't come up with anything. Did you get anything from your numbers idea?

‐ Ada

---

From: Jason Bernz
Sent: Thursday, April 7, 2016 6:25 PM
To: Joe Dorsen
CC: IT Guys
Subject: Re: Fwd: Re: Karen is missing!

Joe

Okay, good; that helps. I'll get on trying to find Karen, and those kids, from my end, while you guys continue to work on that side.

Keep me updated!

‐ Jason

---

From: Joe Dorsen
Sent: Thursday, April 7, 2016 6:21 PM
To: Jason Bernz
CC: IT Guys
Subject: Re: Fwd: Re: Karen is missing!

Jason,

You asked me to email you the information that we talked about, earlier, so that we had a record of it.

Some updates. There was a hidden message in the letter that stated: "Helps us figure out the clue key is understand". You're definitely going to want to work under the assumption that this is a kidnapping matter, at this point. We'll work, further, to see if that key means anything useful, or not.

We also noticed that strange discrepancy, that I mentioned earlier, with the name of the image that his wife sent him. The email stated that it had a specific name, but when we dug down into the server, it really had a different one. I don't know that it matters, but I went ahead and modified the text, down in this email thread, so that we can reference it, later.

Also (which you know, since you came to see me), we spent several hours trying to figure out if the image that he sent means anything and, quite honestly, we came up blank. I'm not sure if it will really provide us any insight, but we will, of course, keep looking, just in case I am wrong.

‐ Joe
FIB Technical Team

---

From: Jason Bernz

Sent: Thursday, April 7, 2016 1:12 PM
To: IT Guys
Subject: Fwd: Re: Karen is missing!

Hey, guys.

We've got a situation here. My partner is missing, and her husband received this really odd email, earlier today.

Please check into it, ASAP, and let me know if you guys find anything suspicious going on here. The rest of my team is not around; I've forwarded the entire thread to you, so that you can understand why I'm concerned.

Please let me know if you can figure out what's really going on, and if there's someone that I need to be looking for or if she legitimately left him.

Thanks,
‐ Jason

---

From: Sam Stone
Sent: Thursday, April 7, 2016 1:10 PM
To: Jason Bernz
Subject: Re: Karen is missing!

OMG. This is a picture we looked at, a few months ago, when we were searching for where we wanted to take our vacation.

Here's the image from my computer, in case it helps you any. Please let me know what you find out!

---

From: Sam Stone
Sent: Thursday, April 7, 2016 1:06 PM

To: Jason Bernz
Subject: Re: Karen is missing!

Sure. Here it is:

From: kstone@geemail.com
Sent: Thursday, April 7, 2016 12:46 PM
To: Sam Stone
Subject: I can't deal with this anymore

Dear Sam,

I just wanted to write this letter, in the hopes that it he𝚕ps you to know why me and the kids are gone. It's not about you. It's about uѕ. We really just need to find a way to fiɡure out how to work things o𝚞t. Sometimes, I just think that t𝗁e problem must be that you really haven't a clu𝖾, but maybe it's me. Maybe I'm the problem.

Please remember that I do love you, and that's really the 𝗄ey to any relationship. I hope this i𐑈 only temporary, and that we can come back soon, but I feel that it is entirely up to you. Remember where we wanted to go? I sent an image to remind you. Please try to unⅾerstand and I will contact you in a week. We'll take things bit by bit, but try to, at least, understand how significant this is for me.

With love, Karen

---Inline Image---
106t154iq20rig62yyuj91atnfl173vecbof29gfjyqcn98.png
2p:4a;4d;43

This picture looks really familiar. Why does this look so familiar? I have to think on it.

Could you look into this, please? I'll try to figure out where I've seen that, before, and I'll let you know when I do.

---

From: Jason Bernz

Sent: Thursday, April 7, 2016 1:04 PM
To: Sam Stone
Subject: Re: Karen is missing!

Sam,

Please reply to this and copy the email you got from her into it. It sounds really strange for Karen to do this to you, and I want to see if there's anything unusual in the email, okay?

Send it, ASAP.

‐ Jason

---

From: Sam Stone
Sent: Thursday, April 7, 2016 1:01 PM

To: Jason Bernz
Subject: Re: Karen is missing!

Jason,

I just got an email from her. I...can't believe this. She left!! What the hell am I going to do, man? She even sent me some random picture with it, for some reason. I'm dying here! We haven't had any issues. Everything's been going great!

Oh man...

---

From: Jason Bernz
Sent: Thursday, April 7, 2016 12:07 PM
To: Sam Stone
Subject: Re: Karen is missing!

Whoa. Slow down, Sam. There's a reason that the police hold off on these kind of things. No, I haven't seen Karen. She didn't come in to work, this morning, either, but neither did Kyle, Jim, or the rest of my team, so he may have them off doing something that I wasn't told about, yet. Try to calm down, and let me know if you hear from her, soon. I'll keep an eye on my email, in case you hear anything.

Don't worry about the personal matters issue. I'll deal with that. She is my partner, remember.

Good luck, ‐ Jason

---

From: Sam Stone
Sent: Thursday, April 7, 2016 10:23 AM
To: Jason Bernz
Subject: Karen is missing!

Buddy. I need some help. I know that you aren't supposed to your use privileged position for personal matters, but I don't know where else to turn!

When I got home from work, yesterday, Karen and the kids were gone. I waited around for a few hours, and I called her cell phone, but I couldn't get an answer. Finally, I got tired, while waiting, and passed out.

This morning, I woke up on the couch and checked the whole house again. They're still gone!! I called the police, but she hasn't been gone long enough for them to look into it. I'm going nuts here, man! Please, you've got to help me. Please let me know if her, and the kids, are up there at you guys' work.

‐ Sam

Answer

Ok, an excellent puzzle like this deserves a complete answer, so I'm going to bring everything together and fill in the missing blanks...

---

First, we have to determine if there's actually a reason to look for Karen and the kids, so:

WorldSEnder noticed that in the text there are multiple unicode characters used as substitute for normal letters. If you take each of the words that contains a unicode character you can find:

"Helps us figure out the clue key is understand"

The next thing to note is that the text below the photo, 2p:4a;4d;43, points us to:

the 2nd paragraph of text, and within it words 74, 77 and 67, giving us: "least significant bit"

From here, we can follow 2012campion's lead and take the photo and:

extract the least significant bits from the RGB components of each pixel. Then we convert each 8 bits into ascii characters (taking the least significant bit first), to produce the text:

Mnp, M uawn'g oynyi pgn. Wr'yy ohie cbdadjchh! Jgfebqy jdw nsbtvqa nw lfex wuhh gki baws nqx V jsk laeeh uag hiszgrg of ryk. Lael juih qv s vozsoghv kg prvwy lry rf xmnlf, fr cfm pohoxa'w pfgd fbu gr, eyk yht qlmguetlxd ob nuh ozvl fbu u zrqvfm. I'z oynymey roh wbvv qvklath mb bsl utn yhn Wdwff dnbz quhvv lh fvqx hv. Xywr'rr nyrsmey ns nw 3746 Fnqhff Lt - gky boh rttnqrhrg lflxl ahue pezf ltehyg. Zi'iw bn frgr nmev hf hqxrukignnq eoanii, tnt gkyeh'w ffey gklrh sw laez. Wbrb eiw trzhx, fr qrcx shuy gkek zx cbpyf uirvr. I yrix isiotrq wi fhizfz ybx utdme. Dhvr bih, Neiwg P.F. L bvg xyw gazh is wlv hxrfrh jks bawnnsjrg yj ag tuh ielkzftl zhmfdkv, ag cnvy gkmj yxtf iihqh. Jltrg zcgk 'M' rfw itqieh 1 xyjhutk 7

Note, that the "original" image is not needed in the solution except that diffing the two images (as many of the other posts here do) guides us to the number of bytes we need to examine for the text above.

Now, as WorldSEnder notes, the original email has:

Several unicode characters replacing their standard ascii representations, extracting these spells out: "Helps us figure out the clue key is understand"

This gives us the key for the Vigenère ciphered text above, producing:

Sam, I didn't leave you. We've been kidnapped! Someone was waiting at home when the kids and I got there and dragged us out. They gave me a computer to write you an email, so you wouldn't look for me, but got distracted by the kids for a moment. I'm leaving you this message so you can let Jason know where to find us. They're keeping us at 3746 Landon St - the old abandoned hotel near main street. We're in some kind of underground bunker, but there's only three of them. They are armed, so make sure that he comes ready. I look forward to seeing you again. Love you, Karen P.S. I hid the name of the person who kidnapped us in the original message, in case this gets found. Start with 'I' and ignore 1 through 7

Taking this message, and the "filename" mentioned in the email (106t154iq20rig62yyuj91atnfl173vecbof29gfjyqcn98), we can work out who has taken Karen.

If we look at the original email, and start from "I" (i.e the first paragraph, ignoring "Dear Sam"), ignore the first seven strings included in the filename and just take characters: 106, 154, 20, 62, 91, 173, 29 and 98, we spell out: Itiskyle. So the kidnapper is Kyle!

Wait... I recognise that name...

Looking back at the original email trail, we see Jason mention that "[Karen] didn't come in to work, this morning, either, but neither did Kyle, Jim, or the rest of my team". Looks like Jason's team has gone rogue and, led by Kyle, has taken Karen hostage.

#BringKarenHome