Antoine Ferron

Who this is

A crypto developer living near the wall. CEO of BitLogiK at the time, says the bitcoin.fr intro. He solved La Liberté guidant le peuple 2019 with Marina. On Twitter she was marabrito31. The author's solution names them both.

How the week went

Monday evening, first visit. "Seed 12 words" in black on black. Then a street lamp's reflection showed writing next to Marianne's head. Phone torches brought out the rest. Base64 gave two words at once, and suddenly the list was French.

AES needed a key, so he emailed the artist. Caesar was annoying for a dumb reason: they kept reading ATO as ATQ. Wednesday evening, back with a blue LED torch for the colour strokes. Regex over the French list pinned four words. For the last two he wrote scanners. About 75 phrases a second per core, after some tuning. Then he cut the search to fifty words in ten orders.

Sunday, about 13:30 Paris time, a script called Seekplace found the phrase. He swept the coins with a fresh Electrum wallet. How do you wait an hour for a scan to finish? He doesn't say.

The write-up

He told the whole thing to bitcoin.fr the next day. In French, wrong turns included. The scanners and the AES one-liner are public in antonio-fr/pboywalltools. His closing line is the best part: Marina found a new passion, the command line.

The record

solver: party("Antoine Ferron", {
  key: "antoine-ferron",
  kind: PartyKind.Person,
  about: "Found the mural's twelve words with Marina, who goes by marabrito31, in a week of night visits, …",
  profiles: [profile("github", "https://github.com/antonio-fr")],
  facts: [
    fact("Named by the author as one of the two people who solved the mural, with marabrito31.", SOLUTION, { date: "2019-01-13" }),
    fact("Wrote the whole story for bitcoin.fr: the Base64 words first, the AES key from the author by email, …", NARRATIVE, { date: "2019-01-14" }),
    fact("Ran out the last two colour words with a scan script he called Seekplace, …", NARRATIVE, { date: "2019-01-14" }),
  ],
}),

The claim's output address isn't in the record. The author says the winners moved the coins to their address. Nothing ties it to one of the two.