Leading up to the Aegis Nova anomaly on Saturday May 28 2016, followers on the Verum Inveniri Google+ page were invited to take part in the Aegis Nova Wargames. Aegis Nova Wargames is a series of cryptographic puzzles that reward the agents who can solve them the fastest with critical intel for various sites in the anomaly.

We’ll be taking a look at two puzzles from the series, Shield (money) and Family crest.

Before we begin, we’ll discuss what we’ll be looking for. We are looking to somehow convert the puzzle presented into a string of characters that fit a certain pattern. The pattern we are looking for today is xxxxxxxx#keyword# , meaning there are 8 letters followed by a number, followed by a keyword (typically related to the Ingress story somehow), and ending with a number. There are other patterns for other types of puzzles, this pattern is strictly for anomaly rewards.

The reward for solving the puzzle, as mentioned at the beginning of the article, is critical intel about various cluster/portals/shards. You also get XM, AP, and items:

The media item links to the following piece of intel.

Let’s begin!

Look at all that money! Verum Inveniri also left us a clue:

What does dinheiro mean?

We have 13 piles of money, let’s build a table separating out the bills and coins:

Bills Coins 6000 6 7000 5 8000 1 6000 7 8000 9 9000 0 8000 6 8000 1 5000 2 7000 5 7000 6 8000 5 6000 9 5000 5

The letters A to Z are represented by the numbers 65 to 90 in ASCII, the numbers 0 to 9 are stored as 48 to 57. With that knowledge, and knowledge of the pattern, we can see the amount of bills are representing the ten’s digit of the passcode: There are 8 values of 6 to 9 at the top of the chart, followed by a 5, followed by another set of 6 to 8, and ending with a 5.

We will divide the bills by 100, and add the value of the coins:

Bills Bills ÷ 100 Coins Bills ÷ 100 + Coins 6000 60 6 66 7000 70 5 75 8000 80 1 81 6000 60 7 67 8000 80 9 89 9000 90 0 90 8000 80 6 86 8000 80 1 81 5000 50 2 52 7000 70 5 75 7000 70 6 76 8000 80 5 85 6000 60 9 69 5000 50 5 55

Converting the final values to an ASCII character:

Bills ÷ 100 + Coins ASCII 66 B 75 K 81 Q 67 C 89 Y 90 Z 86 V 81 Q 52 4 75 K 76 L 85 U 69 E 55 7

BKQCYZVQ4KLUE7

The image isn’t showing much, let’s change the brightness levels and rotate it:

Extracting the numbers:

1971091519350602193 3080119190907195811

3019560722197109151 8990630194105161914

1224196505311985071 0189309131985071019

1909071957070818790 9271919090719141224

Looking at the data carefully, we notice a pattern:

19710915

19350602

19330801

19190907

19581130

19560722

19710915

18990630

19410516

19141224

19650531

19850710

18930913

19850710

19190907

19570708

18790927

19190907

19141224

These are all dates in YYYYMMDD format. The hint that Verum Inveniri provides should give us a clue on how to proceed:

When were these Shields made anyway?

Searching for a few days tells us these dates are the birthdates of famous people with the last name Shield or Shields. Let’s build a table:

The only important information we have now are the first names, the first letter seems interesting to look at:

Will W Carol C Teri T Neil N Steve S David D Will W Harry H Francis Alexander F Ian I Brooke B Arman A Larry L Arman A Neil N Carol C Ella E Neil N Ian I

WCTNSDWHFIBALANCENI

The passcode format requires numbers after the 8 beginning characters and at the end of the code. Numbers are sometimes shortened to two letters, FI and NI can be changed to 5 and 9:

WCTNSDWH5BALANCE9

There are 13 other puzzles from the Aegis Nova Wargames. If you are interested in seeing how they are decoded, please checkout the // ingress.codes blog post for a full write up.