Misplaced Pages

Kryptos: Difference between revisions

Article snapshot taken from Wikipedia with creative commons attribution-sharealike license. Give it a read and then ask your questions in the chat. We can research this topic together.
Browse history interactively← Previous editNext edit →Content deleted Content addedVisualWikitext
Revision as of 20:37, 20 December 2005 editTbjablin (talk | contribs)1,068 edits Reverted 69.81.82.81's massive boner (unencylopedic)← Previous edit Revision as of 06:45, 25 December 2005 edit undoElonka (talk | contribs)Autopatrolled, Administrators70,958 editsm Minor typo fixesNext edit →
Line 9: Line 9:
At the same time as the sculpture was installed, sculptor Sanborn also placed several other pieces around CIA grounds, such as several large granite slabs with sandwiched copper messages outside the entrance to the New Headquarters Building. There is also an engraved compass rose, a duck pond, and several other seemingly unmarked slabs. At the same time as the sculpture was installed, sculptor Sanborn also placed several other pieces around CIA grounds, such as several large granite slabs with sandwiched copper messages outside the entrance to the New Headquarters Building. There is also an engraved compass rose, a duck pond, and several other seemingly unmarked slabs.


The ciphertext on the main sculpture contains 865 characters in total. Sanborn worked with a retiring CIA employee named Ed Scheidt to come up with the cryptographic systems used on the sculpture. Sanborn has since revealed that the sculpture contains a riddle within a riddle which will be solvable only after the four encrypted passages have been decrypted. He said that he gave the complete solution at the time of the sculpture's dedication to CIA director ]. However, in an interview for wired.com in January 2005, Sanborn said that he had not given the entire solution. The ciphertext on the main sculpture contains 865 characters in total. Sanborn worked with a retiring CIA employee named ] to come up with the cryptographic systems used on the sculpture. Sanborn has since revealed that the sculpture contains a riddle within a riddle which will be solvable only after the four encrypted passages have been decrypted. He said that he gave the complete solution at the time of the sculpture's dedication to CIA director ]. However, in an interview for wired.com in January ], Sanborn said that he had not given the entire solution.


The first person to publicly solve the first three sections, in ], was ], a ] from southern ], who deciphered 768 of the characters. The remaining 97 or 98 characters are supposedly the same ones which have stumped the government's own cryptanalysts. After Gillogly's announcement, the CIA revealed that their analyst David Stein had also solved the same sections using pencil and paper techniques in ], but the information was only disseminated within the intelligence community, and no public announcement was made. The NSA also claimed that a team led by Ken Miller, along with Dennis McDaniels and two other unnamed individuals, had solved parts 1-3 using a computer in late ], but that they too had been stumped by the fourth section. The first person to publicly solve the first three sections, in ], was ], a ] from southern ], who deciphered 768 of the characters. The remaining 97 or 98 characters are supposedly the same ones which have stumped the government's own cryptanalysts. After Gillogly's announcement, the CIA revealed that their analyst ] had also solved the same sections using pencil and paper techniques in ], but the information was only disseminated within the intelligence community, and no public announcement was made. The NSA also claimed that a team led by Ken Miller, along with Dennis McDaniels and two other unnamed individuals, had solved parts 1-3 using a computer in late ], but that they too had been stumped by the fourth section.


Kryptos is the first cryptographic sculpture made by Sanborn. After Kryptos, however, he went on to make several other code sculptures, including one called Antipodes which is at the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington DC, an "Untitled Kryptos Piece" which was sold to a private collector, and a ] with encrypted Russian text, which included an extract from a classified KGB document. The cipher on the Russian side of the Cyrillic Projector and Antipodes was cracked in 2003 by an international team led by ]. Kryptos is the first cryptographic sculpture made by Sanborn. After Kryptos, however, he went on to make several other code sculptures, including one called ] which is at the ] Museum in Washington DC, an "Untitled Kryptos Piece" which was sold to a private collector, and a ] with encrypted Russian text, which included an extract from a classified KGB document. The cipher on the Russian side of the Cyrillic Projector and Antipodes was cracked in ] by an international team led by ].


The dust jacket of ]'s novel ] contains a disguised reference to the coordinates mentioned in the plaintext of part 2 (see below), except one digit is off by one. The dust jacket of ]'s novel ] contains a disguised reference to the coordinates mentioned in the plaintext of part 2 (see below), except one digit is off by one.

Revision as of 06:45, 25 December 2005

File:Pd cia krypt-lg.jpg
The sculpture Kryptos on the grounds of the Central Intelligence Agency in Langley, Virginia (U.S. Government image)

Kryptos is the name of a sculpture by American artist James Sanborn located on the grounds of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in Langley, Virginia, in the United States. Since its dedication on November 3, 1990, there has been much speculation about the meaning of the encrypted messages it bears.

Description

The sculpture is made of red granite, red and green slate, white quartz, petrified wood, lodestone and copper, and is located in the northwest corner of the New Headquarters Building courtyard. The name comes from the Greek word for "hidden", and the theme of the sculpture is "intelligence gathering." The most prominent feature of the sculpture is a large vertical S-shaped copper screen resembling a scroll, or piece of paper emerging from a computer printer, covered with characters. The characters consist of the 26 letters of the standard alphabet and question marks cut out of the copper. This "inscription" contains four separate enigmatic messages, each apparently encrypted with a different cipher. The sculpture continues to provide a diversion for employees of the CIA and other cryptanalysts attempting to decrypt the messages.

At the same time as the sculpture was installed, sculptor Sanborn also placed several other pieces around CIA grounds, such as several large granite slabs with sandwiched copper messages outside the entrance to the New Headquarters Building. There is also an engraved compass rose, a duck pond, and several other seemingly unmarked slabs.

The ciphertext on the main sculpture contains 865 characters in total. Sanborn worked with a retiring CIA employee named Ed Scheidt to come up with the cryptographic systems used on the sculpture. Sanborn has since revealed that the sculpture contains a riddle within a riddle which will be solvable only after the four encrypted passages have been decrypted. He said that he gave the complete solution at the time of the sculpture's dedication to CIA director William H. Webster. However, in an interview for wired.com in January 2005, Sanborn said that he had not given the entire solution.

The first person to publicly solve the first three sections, in 1999, was James Gillogly, a computer scientist from southern California, who deciphered 768 of the characters. The remaining 97 or 98 characters are supposedly the same ones which have stumped the government's own cryptanalysts. After Gillogly's announcement, the CIA revealed that their analyst David Stein had also solved the same sections using pencil and paper techniques in 1998, but the information was only disseminated within the intelligence community, and no public announcement was made. The NSA also claimed that a team led by Ken Miller, along with Dennis McDaniels and two other unnamed individuals, had solved parts 1-3 using a computer in late 1992, but that they too had been stumped by the fourth section.

Kryptos is the first cryptographic sculpture made by Sanborn. After Kryptos, however, he went on to make several other code sculptures, including one called Antipodes which is at the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington DC, an "Untitled Kryptos Piece" which was sold to a private collector, and a Cyrillic Projector with encrypted Russian text, which included an extract from a classified KGB document. The cipher on the Russian side of the Cyrillic Projector and Antipodes was cracked in 2003 by an international team led by Elonka Dunin.

The dust jacket of Dan Brown's novel The Da Vinci Code contains a disguised reference to the coordinates mentioned in the plaintext of part 2 (see below), except one digit is off by one.

Solutions

The following solutions are taken from John Wilson's Kryptos page. (Misspellings present in the code are included as-is, and capital letters are intentional as well.)

Solution 1

Keywords: Kryptos, Palimpsest

BETWEEN SUBTLE SHADING AND THE ABSENCE OF LIGHT LIES THE NUANCE OF IQLUSION

Solution 2

Keywords: Kryptos, Abscissa

IT WAS TOTALLY INVISIBLE HOWS THAT POSSIBLE ? THEY USED THE EARTHS MAGNETIC FIELD X THE INFORMATION WAS GATHERED AND TRANSMITTED UNDERGRUUND TO AN UNKNOWN LOCATION X DOES LANGLEY KNOW ABOUT THIS ? THEY SHOULD ITS BURIED OUT THERE SOMEWHERE X WHO KNOWS THE EXACT LOCATION ? ONLY WW THIS WAS HIS LAST MESSAGE X THIRTY EIGHT DEGREES FIFTY SEVEN MINUTES SIX POINT FIVE SECONDS NORTH SEVENTY SEVEN DEGREES EIGHT MINUTES FORTY FOUR SECONDS WEST ID BY ROW S

Solution 3

SLOWLY DESPARATLY SLOWLY THE REMAINS OF PASSAGE DEBRIS THAT ENCUMBERED THE LOWER PART OF THE DOORWAY WAS REMOVED WITH TREMBLING HANDS I MADE A TINY BREACH IN THE UPPER LEFT HAND CORNER AND THEN WIDENING THE HOLE A LITTLE I INSERTED THE CANDLE AND PEERED IN THE HOT AIR ESCAPING FROM THE CHAMBER CAUSED THE FLAME TO FLICKER BUT PRESENTLY DETAILS OF THE ROOM WITHIN EMERGED FROM THE MIST X CAN YOU SEE ANYTHING Q (?)

Solution 4

Part 4 remains unsolved.

External links

Categories: