Current status on the “hacker” situation.

Written by Jackson Irvine Monday, 16 May 2011 10:00

The issue regarding the hacking of Bohemia Interactive's website has grown to an enormous extent. The digital attacks continue in various forms. Fans of the military simulation game Arma 2 and its expansions gather at a community forum http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?t=118336 to find out what the attacks and the information left behind could mean.

They gradually started to believe that rather than an actual hacker attack the whole issue is perhaps some kind of ARG, some kind of a puzzle game. They believe the developer’s studio will soon announce something big and are using this “game” to allow its fans to find out details about the upcoming project in advance. No one really knows yet what will be announced and when. The fans so far only have guesses and speculations.

The first “hack” took place on Monday May 2, 2011. A total of eight “attacks” happened so far, each at precisely 42 hour intervals – exactly as the hackers claimed in the first attack. The last attack happened on Saturday, May 14, 2011. The development of this issue is closely monitored by fan sites http://www.armedassault.info http://www.armaholic.com http://www.ofpec.com , an exhaustive overview was created by the players of this detective game themselves as a dedicated wiki page at http://armaenigma.com Here you can find information on the date, time and form of all attacks as well as conclusions drawn from these, overviews of unresolved questions, speculations and links to files and sites (some of which are, as we found out, already unreachable – possibly due to high traffic generated by players of this game and their unpredictable actions).

We decided to ask the developers themselves to comment on the situation. At first, they didn’t want to comment at all, even in the future. It’s quite clear the fans are really impatient and most importantly do not see any tangible results, so we convinced the developers to at least hint when they will shed some light onto the matter. We received only some sort of weird questions after they agreed. We have no idea whether to send back the right answers or wait for some explanation.

The quiz is reprinted here exactly as we received it:

Are 'binary' one and zero interpreted as yes and no?

Merkava Mk IV is the main battle tank of:

• 0: Czech republic
• 1: Israel
• 2: Brazil
• 3: Croatia

Has Bohemia Interactive developed any adventure games?

What is the name of the U.S. soldier who became famous thanks to his blog written during the Sahrani conflict in 2006?

• 0: Jeremy Slater
• 1: Ronald Corto
• 2: Stephen Harper
• 3: William Porter
• 4: Frank Carter

What is the capital of South Sahrani?

• 0: Paraiso
• 1: Bagango
• 2: Corazol

Was the Mk14 EBR deployed in the Iraq War?

Who was the commander of Takistani Army Central District during Operation Arrowhead?

• 0: Gen. Zaher
• 1: Gen. Sharif
• 2: Gen. Darya
• 3: Col. Popal
• 4: Gen. Rasul
• 5: Col. Aziz

Did the USA intervene (officially or otherwise) in the Nogovo crisis of 1982?

Which one of these islands is NOT a part of the Malden islands?

• 0: Kolgujev
• 1: Nogova
• 2: Everon

Was the AN-94 Abakan assault rifle meant to replace the AK series in the Russian armed forces?

Bohemia Interactive has developed a battlefield simulation system VBS. What does VBS stand for?

• 0: Virtual Battlefield Simulation
• 1: Virtual Battlefield System
• 2: Virtual Battlespace

Did all members of Force Recon team Razor survive Operation Harvest Red?

The first phase of Operation Harvest Red was the elimination of the enemy communications center. Where was it located?

• 0: Pusta
• 1: Elektrozavodsk
• 2: Vybor
• 3: Stary Sobor
• 4: Mogilevka

Is Kolgujev a part of the Malden islands?

Which sea washes the shore of South Zagoria?

• 0: Green sea
• 1: Blue sea
• 2: Red sea
• 3: Pacific ocean

Are there different barrel lengths available for the CheyTac Intervention sniper rifle?

Did Razor team capture Radovan Spukayev during Operation Harvest Red?

Are Bohemia Interactive's Marek Spanel and Ondrej Spanel related?

Which countries fought in the Falklands War?

• 0: India, Netherlands
• 1: Finland, Iran
• 2: China, France
• 3: United Kingdom, Argentina

Railgun is a popular video game weapon. Is it being developed in the real world as well?

'Senary numeral system' means numbers from zero to:

• 0: 5
• 1: 15
• 2: 4
• 3: 17
• 4: 7
• 5: 11