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Kryptos

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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, petrified wood, 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.

The message on the sculpture contains 865 characters in total. 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, and that the solution has been held in confidence by Webster's successors.

The first person to solve the first three sections was CIA analyst David Stein, who solved them manually in 1998. In 1999, James Gillogly, a computer scientist from southern California, was able to decipher 768 of the characters. The remaining 97 characters are supposedly the same ones which have stumped the CIA's own cryptanalysts.

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

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

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