Cryptos (sculpture)

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Cryptos on the premises of the Central Intelligence Agency in Langley, Virginia

Kryptos is a sculpture by the American sculptor James Sanborn on the premises of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in Langley , Virginia , USA . Since its inauguration on November 3, 1990, there has been much speculation about the encrypted messages affixed to it . CIA employees and other cryptanalysts have made many attempts to decipher it .

description

The main sculpture was made from polished red granite , red and green slate , white quartz , petrified wood , magnetic iron ore, and copper, and stands in the northwest corner of the courtyard of the New Headquarters Building outside the agency's cafeteria .

The name Kryptos is derived from the ancient Greek word for invisible / hidden / concealed / hidden. The theme of the sculpture is "intelligence gathering", the gathering of intelligence information. The standout feature is a large S-shaped copper wall that resembles a roll of paper or a sheet of paper - covered with letters that make up encrypted text - coming out of a computer printer.

The characters are made up of the 26 letters of the Latin alphabet and the question mark , all of which were cut out of the copper. This "inscription" contains four separate enigmatic messages, each of which is apparently encrypted with a different cipher .

At the same time the main sculpture was being erected, the sculptor Sanborn was placing other pieces on the CIA grounds, including various large slabs of granite with inserted copper plates outside the entrance to the New Headquarters Building . Various Morse code messages are engraved in the copper; one of the plates has an engraved compass rose . Other elements of the Sanborn installation include landscaped grounds, a duck pond, and various other apparently unmarked slabs.

Encrypted messages

The code on one half of the sculpture contains a total of 865 characters. The other half of the sculpture includes a Vigenère encryption . Sanborn worked with a retired CIA employee named Ed Scheidt , chairman / president of the CIA Cryptographic Center, to devise the cryptographic system on the sculpture. Since then, Sanborn has revealed that the sculpture contains a riddle within a riddle that can only be solved when the four "revreencrypted" paragraphs have been deciphered. He said that during the inauguration of the sculpture he gave the complete solution to CIA Director William Hedgcock Webster . However, in an interview for wired.com in January 2005, Sanborn said that he had not given Webster the full solution. However, he confirmed that where it is written in Part 2 “Who knows the exact location? Only WW "(in German:" Who knows the exact place? Nur WW ") is referred to William Webster.

Solver the riddle

In 1999, James Gillogly became the first person to publicly announce that he had solved the first three sections. Gillogly, a Southern California computer scientist , deciphered a total of 768 characters. The 97 and 98 characters, respectively, that Gillogly could not solve were the same part that gave government cryptologists a headache. After Gillogly's announcement, it was revealed that CIA analyst David Stein had already solved the same sections with pencil and paper techniques in 1998. However, this information only circulated within the agency and was not made public. At the same time, the NSA announced that it also had solvers in its ranks, but would not disclose the names and dates until 2005. It was later learned that Ken Miller's team, along with Dennis McDaniels and two other unknown people, had solved parts 1 to 3 at the end of 1992 using a computer. However, they had no more advice on the fourth section either.

Clarification from 2006

On April 19, 2006, Sanborn contacted the Kryptos Group (an internet group dedicated to the Kryptos puzzle) to inform them that the assumed solution for Part 2 was wrong. He had removed a single letter from the code for aesthetic reasons. The result was a change in the plain text from "XLAYERTWO" (correct) to "IDBYROWS" (incorrect).

Similar sculptures

Kryptos is Sanborn's first cryptographic sculpture. After Kryptos , he began creating other sculptures with codes and other characters, including the Antipodes , which is in the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington , an "untitled piece of cryptography" that was sold to a private collector, and the Cyrillic Projector , with an encrypted Russian text containing an extract from a secret KGB document. The ciphertext on one side of Antipodes repeats the text of Kryptos . The ciphertext on the Russian side can also be found on the Cyrillic Projector . The Russian part of the ciphertext on the Cyrillic Projector and Antipodes was resolved in 2003 through international efforts organized by Elonka Dunin . The cryptographic components were independently solved by Frank Corr and Mike Bales.

Cultural influences

The dust jacket of the US version of Dan Brown's novel Da Vinci Code contains two references to cryptos : One on the back of the cover (coordinates printed in light red on dark red, vertically near the blurb) refers to the coordinates in the plain text of Part 2 should be mentioned. However, the positions of the degrees are different by one. ("Except the degrees digit is off by one".) When Brown and his publisher were asked about this that same year, they both gave the same answer: "The discrepancy is intentional." The other clue is in Brown's illustration "tear" - the Words turned upside down "Only WW knows." (in German: "Nur WW knows."). This is another reference to the second part of Kryptos .

In Dan Brown's novel The Lost Symbol , the attempt to decipher the work of art by CIA employees is discussed. The previously known Kryptos plain text should therefore resemble fragments of old Freemason traditions, which play a central role in the book.

In an episode of Alias ​​- The Agent , " SOS ", the protagonist Marshall Flinkman claims to have cracked the code only while looking at the sculpture. The result he describes is very similar to that of the first two parts that have already been deciphered.

solutions

Solutions from parts 1 to 3 of the sculpture follow. Misspellings in the texts are reproduced as they were deciphered. Kryptos K1 and K2 ciphers are polyalphabetic substitutions that use a Vigenère tableau as shown in the other half of the sculpture. K3 is a transposition cipher . K4 is still unsolved.

Solution 1

Keywords: cryptos, palimpsest

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

German:

BETWEEN SUBTLE SHADING AND THE ABSENCE OF LIGHT, THERE IS THE GRADUATION OF IQLUSION

Solution 2

Keywords: cryptos, 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 X LAYER TWO

German:

IT WAS COMPLETELY INVISIBLE, HOW IS IT POSSIBLE? YOU USED THE EARTH MAGNETIC FIELD X THE INFORMATION HAS BEEN COLLECTED AND TRANSFERRED UNDERGROUND TO AN UNKNOWN LOCATION X DOES LANGLEY KNOW ABOUT IT? IT HAS TO BE BURIED OUT SOMEWHERE X WHO KNOWS THE EXACT POSITION? ONLY WW THIS WAS HIS LAST MESSAGE X THIRTY-EIGHT DEGREES Fifty-seven MINUTES SIX COMMA FIVE SECONDS NORTH SEVENTY-SEVEN DEGREES EIGHT MINUTES Forty-Four SECONDS WEST X LEVEL TWO

In April 2006, Sanborn said that he had made a mistake with the sculpture by leaving out an “X” to indicate a break for aesthetic reasons, so the translated text read: “... FOUR SECONDS WEST ID BY ROW S "Should actually read like this:" ... FOUR SECONDS WEST X LAYER TWO ".

Note: This point is approximately 60 meters south of the sculpture.

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. HOT AND PEERED 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 (?)

German:

SLOWLY TO DESPERATE THE REMAINS OF THE RUBBLE BLOCKING THE LOWER PART OF THE ENTRANCE WAS REMOVED WITH SHAKING HANDS I MADE A SMALL GAP IN THE UPPER LEFT CORNER AND THEN WIDEN THE HOLE INTO THE LITTLE GAP THE CHAMBER ESCAPED AND THE FLAME BROUGHT TO FLAKE BUT ALSO SHOWED DETAILS OF THE ROOM WHICH LEAVED OUT OF THE HAZE X CAN YOU SEE SOMETHING Q (?)

This is a circumscribed and misspelled quote from Howard Carter in connection with the opening of the tomb of Tutankhamun from his book The Tomb of Tutankhamun, written in 1923 . The question it ends with is Lord Carnarvon's , to which Carter (in the book) replies, "Wonderful things." In the actual November 26, 1922 notes, his answer was, "Yes, it is wonderful."

Solution 4

This part is still unknown to the public, although there is an active Yahoo! group (founded in 2003, ported from 2019 and continued to groups.io) that coordinates the work of more than 2,000 members to find a solution. Jim Sanborn revealed in November 2010 that the string NYPVTT (64-69) stands for the word BERLIN . In addition, it went public four years later, in November 2014, and gave another clue to solve the mystery. Accordingly, the word BERLIN is immediately followed by a CLOCK (positions 70 to 74). In fact, the so-called exists in Berlin Berlin clock (Berlin Clock). Sanborn left it open as to whether the latest information was about this particular clock, but when asked, added: "You'd better delve into that particular clock" (It is better to look at this particular clock). On January 29, 2020, Sanborn again announced in the New York Times that positions 26–34 stand for NORTHEAST . Furthermore, the solution should be auctioned at the latest after his death, if nobody solves it beforehand. This is the final clue.

literature

items

Web links

Aerial photos

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ cia.gov
  2. ↑ Woman sets sights on code on CIA sculpture
  3. ↑ Cyrillic Riddle Solved
  4. ↑ FAQ about cryptos
  5. ^ Cryptos: The Sanborn Sculpture at CIA Headquarters
  6. ↑ The Kryptos Group announces a corrected answer to Kryptos Part 2
  7. ^ Tutankhamun: Anatomy of an Excavation ( Memento from July 16, 1997 in the Internet Archive )
  8. ↑ Kryptos-Gruppe on groups.io
  9. ↑ Artist releases clue to Kryptos
  10. ↑ Sculptor Offers Another Clue in 24-Year-Old Mystery at CIA (by John Schwartz | The New York Times)
  11. ^ New York Times: This Sculpture Holds a Decade's-Old CIA Mystery. And now, another clue

Coordinates: 38 ° 57 '8.1 "  N , 77 ° 8' 44.8"  W.