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Poor sculptor actually, since Sanborn chopped off a letter in one of the codes to make it more aesthetically pleasing but as a result led everyone to an incorrect answer for one of the puzzles

You laugh now, but I sat through a presentation by Elonka Dunin at mud-dev 2k3 covering the basics of cryptography, including an exploration of the possibility that terrorists may attempt to use MMOs as communications channels.

"Tell hashmir the Loot will be on the Big Green Goblin at Half Past Morntide"

I'll take that bet. ;) Wasn't me, and I didn't even know that the Whitedust interview had been posted, until the Simutronics CEO (David Whatley, another slashdotter) IMed me and said, "You are about to be slashdotted" (and no, it wasn't him either). A couple minutes after that, a bunch of other IMs flew in with similar warnings to batten down the web-server, and I've been dealing with the related deluge for the rest of the day. As slashdottings go though, it's been relatively light (only about 5000 visitors), probably because the Whitedust folks didn't actually put any links to my website in their interview. The traffic has been coming in from the secondary links in the /. thread, from my Wikipedia bio, and from Google.

If I would have started the thread, you can be sure I would have linked it better, to my site, my company, and my upcoming book. ;) My guess is it was posted by someone from Whitedust.

Elonka :)

I'll take that bet. ;) Wasn't me, and I didn't even know that the Whitedust interview had been posted, until the Simutronics CEO (David Whatley, another slashdotter) IMed me and said, "You are about to be slashdotted" (and no, it wasn't him either). A couple minutes after that, a bunch of other IMs flew in with similar warnings to batten down the web-server, and I've been dealing with the related deluge for the rest of the day. As slashdottings go though, it's been relatively light (only about 5000 visitors), probably because the Whitedust folks didn't actually put any links to my website in their interview. The traffic has been coming in from the secondary links in the /. thread, from my Wikipedia bio, and from Google.

If I would have started the thread, you can be sure I would have linked it better, to my site, my company, and my upcoming book. ;) My guess is it was posted by someone from Whitedust.

Elonka :)

Elonka's bio states she was a USAF avionics tech with the SR-71 and U-2 programs.

Anyone know her AFSC (Air Force Specialty Code)?

And here's her Wikipedia user page, and her own website.

Elonka :)

Full disclosure: Elonka is a friend of mine, and my co-moderator on the Kryptos solving group.

Full disclosure: Elonka is a friend of mine, and my co-moderator on the Kryptos solving group.

Let's see somebody try to encrypt stone, baby!

What, you mean like Kryptos does?

Let see if this helps break fourth section of kryptos. http://elonka.com/kryptos/

BTW, Lately I have been seeing a lot of stories on cryptography on /. or may be I am just seeing things.

Heh. While it is indeed true that I have hidden other codes and puzzles around my webpages, this isn't one of them. ;) As part of the most recent article, the folks at Wired simply made a graphic of my Kryptos transcript page. Any unusual pixels from there, occurred on their end.

Elonka :)

OK, here we go. From the FAQ:

Q: Are you sure that Kryptos part 4 is solvable?

Yes. Both Jim Sanborn and Ed Scheidt have repeated over and over that it's solvable. Sanborn has also been quoted in interviews as saying he was surprised that it hadn't been solved yet. And when Elonka Dunin, co-moderator of the Kryptos group, asked him flat out in mid-2003 whether or not part 4 was solvable, his answer was: "Yes. It ain't easy, but it's solvable!"

It is interesting to note that Elonka Dunin (one of the most prominent people involved with the cracking of Kryptos and the Cyrillic Projector) put a slashdotting in her timeline of important Kryptos events.

If after reading the intro to encryption you are so inspired to try to crack one, I highly recommend this list:

http://www.elonka.com/UnsolvedCodes.html

Enjoy.

- tokengeekgrrl

The game was called Gemstone III. You wouldn't know it from their blubs, though, because they sort of didn't ask permission or give credit... they just used the Rolemaster rules and milieu (Shadow World). When the game started getting attention and players on CIS, ICE came down on them for copyright infringement.

I don't know the details of the settlement, since it happened before the AOL gateway opened, but they changed the names of everything in the milieu, keeping the underlying mechanics... there was just no way to reprogram the entire game. (Technically, Dragonrealms, or GSIV is the result of that effort.) But GSIII was already making money and had hordes of devotees, so it only recently was updated to GSIV.

The timeline of the parent company, Simutronics, is here.

Gemstone III was a Rolemaster player's wet dream. Rolemaster was ideal for porting to a game system, since the biggest complaint was the number of tables that needed referencing, and the tracking of all the bonuses and penalties. Automate that, and the freedom that the system allows really shines through. Of course, the automation processes adds additional limitations, but none that aren't there regardless of what system you use.

Some other good links for Voynich information:

• An excellent viewer which lets you quickly see thumbnails of all of the pages at once.
• A good overview page
• The Voynich Mailing List - a site maintained by Jim Gillogly (famous for cracking the first few parts of Kryptos).

Elonka :)

Some other good links for Voynich information:

• An excellent viewer which lets you quickly see thumbnails of all of the pages at once.
• A good overview page
• The Voynich Mailing List - a site maintained by Jim Gillogly (famous for cracking the first few parts of Kryptos).

Elonka :)

Great pics, thanks for posting them! I've shared them with the folks at the Kryptos Group too. Is it okay if I link to the pics from the Cyrillic Projector site, or would you rather that I mirrored them so as not to suck up bandwidth? The main slashdotting is over for now (about 50,000 hits over the last couple days), but other papers may be picking up the story soon, so traffic could get heavy again.

In fact, half the answer was posted on the wall, right next to that big blob of gum.

Have a look at Elonka Dunin, one of the coordinators of the team that cracked this beast. Is that slashdot on her screen? I think it is ;)

-AP

In other news, the KGB has filed a lawsuit against the Kryptos Group under the DMCA, claiming that their IP has now been stolen.
The sad part of this is that in today's world somrthing similar could happen.

I'm seeing a lot of messages to this effect, and they're getting modded +1, Funny. But it should be pointed out that the joke falls a bit flat, because the KGB did not encrypt the text on the artwork. The artist encrypted the text for the purpose of posing a challenge to its viewers.

According to the victory announcement, the original text is from "classified KGB instructions and correspondence." Now, if the Russians wanted to make a case, they could try to figure out who stole their classified "correspondence"... good thing that never happens to us. Oops.

Here is the 'mirrored' solution.

Elonka

More Kryptos with Cipher Table