Password recovery?

[MasterSwordUltima]

2.50w - I see the challenge question thing, although I'm not certain what I am to do with that?

My old Final Fantasy quest was password protected when I uploaded a demo, and good god did I forget it. Am I fucked?

[Glenn the Great]

Zelda Classic has been storing quest passwords as MD5 hashes (one-way encryption) for a long time before 2.50 was a thing. So you're definitely fucked as far as *recovering* your password.

I've heard the devs have a tool that can reset quest passwords, so there's still hope. Maybe one of them can help you out.

[Gleeok]

Dude you are sooooooooooo fucked right now. O:

The password system was created by an advanced AI. It is so strong it would take on average 42 million lunar cycles to break.

[SUCCESSOR]

Attempting to crack it will cause attack robots to be released to kill you.

[MasterSwordUltima]

Well.


Shit.

[Moosh]

What version was the file saved in? If it was pre RC3, you can send me the file and I'll hit it with a giant rock and it will open its secrets to me.

Otherwise, you'll need to get help from someone with a better giant rock AKA the devs.

[Gleeok]

I've spoken to Master Control Program and he says "If the innards quest you wish to see, then answer me these riddles three."

1.Here there is no north, west, or east, and environment fit for not man nor beast.

2. If 3 intersecting rectangles are drawn on a flat surface, what is the maximum number of areas, completely bounded and not further subdivided, that can be formed, considering only the sides of the rectangles as boundaries?

3. What comes next in this sequence?

            1 4 2       1  7  2 11 
  1 4       8 6 3      15  3 10  6
  2 3       7 9 5      12  4 13 16
                       14  8  5  9

He also says something about failure to accept wold mean being uploaded to the matrix and placed on the game grid... whatever that means.

:)

[CJC]

I will help you defeat the evil MCP!

I've spoken to Master Control Program and he says "If the innards quest you wish to see, then answer me these riddles three."

1.Here there is no north, west, or east, and environment fit for not man nor beast.

Spoiler: show

The North Pole. No matter which direction you look, it is always south. Also, it is quite cold in the arctic.

2. If 3 intersecting rectangles are drawn on a flat surface, what is the maximum number of areas, completely bounded and not further subdivided, that can be formed, considering only the sides of the rectangles as boundaries?

Spoiler: show

Wait, only the sides of the rectangles can be used as boundaries, not portions of the sides? Three.

3. What comes next in this sequence?

            1 4 2       1  7  2 11 
  1 4       8 6 3      15  3 10  6
  2 3       7 9 5      12  4 13 16
                       14  8  5  9

Wait wut? Okay... I can do this...

Spoiler: show

This has to be some kind of number theory.... or matrix theory.... [expletive deleted]!
It's not multiplication.
...What the hell is that?! A modulus, perhaps?
Well, good luck with that one!

But seriously, I thought quest passwords were not encrypted, to the point that anybody with a little time and know-how could unzip the ZQuest executable and extract all the data they wanted. Did this change in 2.5?

[Glenn the Great]

I think I have the first two. Not even gonna try the 3rd one.

1.Here there is no north, west, or east, and environment fit for not man nor beast.

Spoiler: show

Outer space. Cardinal directions mean nothing if you're not standing on anything. It's not the North Pole, because plenty of sea creatures live there.

2. If 3 intersecting rectangles are drawn on a flat surface, what is the maximum number of areas, completely bounded and not further subdivided, that can be formed, considering only the sides of the rectangles as boundaries?

Spoiler: show

The best I can do in MS-Paint is 13.

But seriously, I thought quest passwords were not encrypted, to the point that anybody with a little time and know-how could unzip the ZQuest executable and extract all the data they wanted. Did this change in 2.5?

Quest passwords were originally and formerly encrypted within the quest using a reversible algorithm.
A certain member of AGN (whose name I won't mention here, and don't ask) managed to reverse engineer that algorithm and used it to make a program that could extract the passwords from peoples' quests.
Many a forum account was compromised that day.

Once it became a high-profile issue, the system was changed sometime around or before version 2.11 (it may have been one of the 1.92 betas, someone help me here) to start encrypting passwords using a non-reversible algorithm.
The only way of figuring out someone's quest password now would be to brute-force it by trying every combination in sequence, which could take a long while if your password is long enough.

The quest password isn't an iron-clad protection from being able to get in and modify a quest, however. If it were as such, you'd have to enter the password every time you wanted to play the quest... the main ZC executable has to read that data somehow! With the right tool, you could bypass the password-check and set a new quest password. I believe that the devs have just such a tool.

[Gleeok]

I think 3 is definitely wrong for #2. O_o

Quest passwords were originally and formerly encrypted within the quest using a reversible algorithm.
A certain member of AGN (whose name I won't mention here, and don't ask) managed to reverse engineer that algorithm and used it to make a program that could extract the passwords from peoples' quests.
Many a forum account was compromised that day.

Once it became a high-profile issue, the system was changed sometime around or before version 2.11 (it may have been one of the 1.92 betas, someone help me here) to start encrypting passwords using a non-reversible algorithm.
The only way of figuring out someone's quest password now would be to brute-force it by trying every combination in sequence, which could take a long while if your password is long enough.

The quest password isn't an iron-clad protection from being able to get in and modify a quest, however. If it were as such, you'd have to enter the password every time you wanted to play the quest... the main ZC executable has to read that data somehow! With the right tool, you could bypass the password-check and set a new quest password. I believe that the devs have just such a tool.

That's pretty much spot on right there. It would be a pain to step through all that machine code though.

But seriously, I thought quest passwords were not encrypted, to the point that anybody with a little time and know-how could unzip the ZQuest executable and extract all the data they wanted. Did this change in 2.5?

Standard quest recovery protocol dictates that the riddles three must be answered before a recovery process can be initiated!