Derriese terminal server officially laid to rest by Blundell

[oxin8]

In a recent interview between @MrDalekJD and Jason Blundell, the derriese server has been confirmed as never included in the final release, contrary to the prior lightning round interview with @MrRoflWaffles. Here's a mostly accurate transcript:

Spoiler

MrDalekJD: I'm not sure if this is right but I heard before Black Ops 3 came out, it might have been you said the entirety of the Black Ops 1 terminal would exist in Black Ops 3's terminal so the question is: does the 'derriese' server files exist on the Black Ops 3 terminal?

Blundell: So let me clarify my previous statement. So in the previous one, it was Milo, it was MrRoflWaffles who asked me the question and it was the lightning round which was just lots of kinda quick fire questions. And so I just answered immediately, going back how many years it was 6 years or 7 years since we did it, which was like "Yeah, we hooked that up". Which we did. The bit that I failed though at the moment was, umm and to that, to the viewers, I am truly sorry. That was a genuine mistake but uhhmm we actually removed that. So when the question was asked: "Did we put a password in? Did those files exist?" Yes they did. They did exist and was there a password for that? Yes there was. Ummm but it was never released in the game. And to double check it when I came back to the studio, so I was in London when I did that recording, I came back to the studio and went to one of our technical directors and I said "Was I.. I was wrong about that wasn't I?" and he was like "Yeah, we took it out at the last minute." and I was like *finger snap* "Yes we did." Interestingly enough, he actually then showed me on his computer the actual files which we pulled out cause he still had them. But ummm, yes, we took them out for the narrative reason.

MrDalekJD: Will we ever see those again?

Blundell: I can't say the line I've said before because it uhh has been used but never say never.

I'm glad it was finally confirmed to not be in the released game and by Blundell himself so we can finally lay this mystery to rest.

 

While this is essentially old news to many people who had looked through the game files prior, it was a pretty significant tidbit for me. I trusted the lightning round answer and was convinced there were still passwords to be found. I started really looking into it shortly after DLC3 was released  which happened to be after the interview was recorded. In that quest, I learned a lot about FastFiles, read a lot of terminal emails, sifted through posted terminal dumps and ancient references to the derriese server across the internet. I also attempted to brute force the passwords but trying thousands of words against all the user accounts and eventually trying all 3 character alphanumeric combinations to help filter down the number of words I'd need to try in the future. My computer was busy all week with that last part and I was debating on trying 4 character passwords but some math said that it'd take 19.5 days per user account. I even considered running a couple of virtual machines to speed up the process but decided to look into the data more. So for the last couple of days I've been staring at sections of the raw data and hoping to find a pattern so i could read those passwords. Then last night I saw this. I really didn't take the news well. I thought about working on another cipher or going back to ADFGX but my drive was gone. Since I hadn't played BO3 for about a month, I figured that maybe ZnS with some randoms would take my mind off the terminal. I was expecting a lackluster game but I pulled the KT-4 out of the box around round 10 and had a pretty good time up until we lost on round 27(pretty high for me). I got to go to bed happy and today, the news doesn't feel as bad. I guess it's time to get back to ADFGX....

[oxin8]

12 minutes ago, MrRoflWaffles said:

Worth noting that what J said wasn't really contrary to what he had said previously.

My question in the lightning round was whether they existed or not, and his answer was yes. We all assumed that meant they existed in the public domain, whereas in actual fact they only ever existed within the walls of Treyarch HQ :P

 

So, moral of the story here is: DAMNIT JASON! Haha

True true. Next lightning round, just replace "exists" with "exists in the released game in a form accessible to the public unlike that one time there was confusion about the BO1 derriese terminal server". That'll clear things up for sure.

 

I'd say "DAMNIT JASON!" too but he really did everyone a favor by clearing it up and apologizing.