Cyrillic Projector Code Finally Cracked

SimuAndy writes "An international group of cryptographers, the Kryptos Group, announced this week that the decade-old Cyrillic Projector Code has been cracked, and that it deciphers to some classified KGB instructions and correspondence. The Cyrillic Projector is an encrypted sculpture at the University of North Carolina in Charlotte, that was created by Washington DC artist James Sanborn in the early 1990s. It was inspired by the encrypted Kryptos sculpture that Sanborn created two years earlier for CIA Headquarters. The message on the Cyrillic Projector has turned out to be in two parts. The decrypted first part is a Russian text encouraging secret agents to psychologically control potential sources of information. The second part appears to be a partial quote from classified KGB correspondence about the Soviet dissident Sakharov, with concerns that his report to the Pugwash conference was being used by the Americans for an anti-Soviet agenda."

Comments

Would there not...

[Sir Haxalot]

have been ex-KGB agents that could have told them the code anyway?

the sad truth

[madcoder47]

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.

Re:the sad truth

[Tackhead]

> In other news, the KGB has filed a lawsuit against the Kryptos Group under the DMCA, claiming that their IP has now been stolen.

In Soviet Russia, KGB doesn't enforce the DMCA!

Kryptos

[grub]

It sounds like a crypto module in KDE.

I broke cyrillic text

[masouds]

and All I got was this lousy T-Shirt!

In other news

[Brahmastra]

Cyrillic code crackers have been arrested by the FBI under the DMCA.

Is it still legal?

[kutuz_off]

Did they manage not to violate any of the new laws in the process?

From the article

[Faust7]

the decade-old Cyrillic Projector Code has been cracked, and that it deciphers to some classified KGB instructions and correspondence.

Thank goodness for that decade-old KGB info. The Cold War will be ours!

Re:From the article

[anzha]

Actually, potentially this could be a boon to historians depending on how much information was encrypted as such. If the NSA had gobs of it or the KGB's successor organization did and released the encrypted messages, but possibly lost the keys...etc.

Just a thought...

Actual translation

[mental_telepathy]

The decrypted first part is a Russian text encouraging secret agents to psychologically control potential sources of information.

The actual translation is:
Keep information away from Moose and Squirrel.

All that time...

[Anonymous Coward]

But, if anybody really wanted to know what it was, all they had to do was put a gun to the artists head. Some people just like doing it the hardway I guess.

This just in, ROT-13 deciphered!

[stratjakt]

How difficult is this puzzle? "Not very," Sanborn says. Not nearly as difficult
as his first encoded sculpture -- a work called "Kryptos" that he created for CIA
headquarters in Langley, Va., in 1987. That code, created with the help of a
cryptographer, is so hard to break that the CIA "will never figure it out," he says.

So why is this news for anyone not on the UNC campus?

Re:This just in, ROT-13 deciphered!

[NearlyHeadless]

How difficult is this puzzle? "Not very," Sanborn says. Not nearly as difficult as his first encoded sculpture -- a work called "Kryptos" that he created for CIA headquarters in Langley, Va., in 1987. That code, created with the help of a cryptographer, is so hard to break that the CIA "will never figure it out," he says.

So why is this news for anyone not on the UNC campus?

The person who actually decrypted this (Frank Corr) doesn't really think it's that big of a deal. It did fall to fairly standard cryptanalysis. We tried to get my 80 year-old mother to help translate it. But, given her failing eyesight, the fact that all the words are run together, and that her Russian is a little rusty, we gave up on that.

He finally put up his untranslated solution on the web last week, but didn't announce it to anyone. Elonka noticed it in her referral logs and decided to make a big announcement of it.

Besides not thinking it's such a big deal, Frank is also worried that the FBI keeps a file on anybody interested in cryptography!

Re:This just in, ROT-13 deciphered!

[nucal]

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

Part 5 of the code is even harder

[Anonymous Coward]

I hvae a wnodreulfly tirvial slooiutn but trhee is not enugoh room in the mgrain of tihs book to dsecbire it.

At last!

[redNuht]

Now the Cold War will finally be over!

Ah, wait, you mean this Iraq operation is not an extension of the Cold War? Why is it going on, then? Why are they cracking the KGB code? :D

Congrats.

[airrage]

I have not heard of the sculpture or the problem before, however, the article talks of using pictures -- piecing them together -- is it unavailable to the viewing public (close up)?

Or was it a logistic problem of distance?

I also assume that the "meaning" of the text is that somehow, while breaking the code, you are the creator's source? There is the physical piece and then the art is the effort in breaking the problem. Does this mean the piece is less transfixing since we know what it says?

Hmmmmmmmmmmm.

Re:Congrats.

[DarkOx]

I went to school there for a semester you can walk right up and touch it. Actually they shine light through it at night which is the "Projector" effect and it casts the characters on the surrounding class room buildings.

Mirror to solution.

[chendo]

Here is the 'mirrored' solution.

modern art

[Doesn't_Comment_Code]

I've seen this cryptographic art all over in the modern art museums. There're paintings, statues, you name it. You can look at them for hours and still not know what the hell they are.

Cyrillic Projector Code...

[ScuzzyTerminator]

Isn't that what SCO uses for it's code presentations?

Misuninterpreted

[BandwidthHog]

I parsed the story title as announcing that the good guys had finally finished decrypting the font transformation used to obfuscate the source code that SCO projected on screen at that big press conference a few weeks ago. Silly me.

I for one welcome our encrypted overlords

[Anonymous Coward]

Rapelcgvba vf sha naq tbbq sbe n ynhtu.

Vg znxrf vg fb gung crbcyr pna'g ernq zl zvaq.

Zl Gva sbvy ung vf abg pbzcyrgryl sbby cebbs nsgre nyy.

Code Craker Likes Slashdot

[Amoeba Protozoa]

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

Re:Code Craker Likes Slashdot

[Mr.Mustard]

Yeah, mad props to Elonka. She gave a talk at phreaknic last year and has been in charge of the phreaknic code (a decryption challenge) for a few years now, if I recall correctly.

Anyway, she's very cool and she's scheduled to talk about encryption again this year.

Re:Code Craker Likes Slashdot

[bons]

I wish people would actually listen to other people when they explain, time and time again, why the hell they see no reason to uninstall an operating system that's working fine (and mine is) so they can replace it with another operating system and a collection of emulators.

So try to get this straight:
I am not a clone.
I see great benefits of open source, but I don't like the GPL.
I read slashdot.
I respond.
I even moderate.
And I'm very happy with Windows 98.
What's not broken doesn't need fixing.

Re:Code Craker Likes Slashdot

[shiva600]

That would explain why it took so long ;)

Re:Silicon

[focitrixilous P]

You forgot the number one rule of slashdot linking.
You don't link to geocities.
EVER
The link is dead upon posting. Always. Post a google cache if you must.

and the secret code reads......

[Anonymous Coward]

Dear Comradski, send more Vodka.
thank you,
Nikoli out....

Pictures

[MxReb0]

I just ran out and took some pictures if you wanted to see what it looks like in the day. It's much more interesting at night when the letters are projected all over.

Rubber Hose Cryptography

[Damiano]

Actually this is a real technique. It's called "Rubber Hose Cryptography". A few hours beating someone with a rubber hose can be considerably more effective at cracking keys than a supercomputer.

Damiano

uncc sculpture

[mccoyspace]

I used to teach in the art department at UNCC, (before this work was installed). The school has always made a good committment to public sculpture.
Most people on that campus probably don't pay much attention to the artworks around them, which is too bad. Still, it's nice to see a work from the collection there capture people's imagination and enthusiasm.

Is lies am telink you!

[HiggsBison]

The actual translation is:
Keep information away from Moose and Squirrel.

Vhy voot Rawshians... (excuse me...)
Why would Russians be interested in Moose and Squirrel? Boris and Natash were Pottsylvanian. Not Russian.

Re:Why I Hate Postmodernism

[Sivaram_Velauthapill]

It seems like the world doesn't fit into your view of the world so you claim art is dead. First of all, people are creative and things change. Second, new devices, techniques, technology, etc alters the landscape. New forms of art have emerged. For example, the emergence of photography shifted some elements of art into photography. Doing paintings of what exists (ie. nature, people, etc) lost popularity because you can do a "similar thing" with photography. How many people have large posters or photographic pictures of nature whereas they would have had paintings in the past?

In addition, how about movies (motion picture)? Clearly that is art--is it not?

When you say art is dead, what you are really referring to is "classical" art. If you include all forms of art, like motion picture, photography, etc, art is no different than before. It has simply diversified...

Sivaram Velauthapillai