Slashdot Mirror
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."
have been ex-KGB agents that could have told them the code anyway?
I have over 70 freaks, do you?
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.
Cyrillic code crackers have been arrested by the FBI under the DMCA.
Did they manage not to violate any of the new laws in the process?
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!
The coolest voice ever.
The actual translation is:
Keep information away from Moose and Squirrel.
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.
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?
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
I hvae a wnodreulfly tirvial slooiutn but trhee is not enugoh room in the mgrain of tihs book to dsecbire it.
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.
"This isn't a study in computer science, its a study in human behavior"
Here is the 'mirrored' solution.
Founder of Mirror Moon - Tsukihime Game Trans
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.
Slashdot Syndrome: the sudden, extreme urge to correct someone in order to validate one's self.
Isn't that what SCO uses for it's code presentations?
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
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.
MAKE YOUR TIME
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