Decrypting Kryptos

angkor writes "Kryptos is a sculpture located on the grounds of CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia. Installed in 1990, its thousands of characters contain encrypted messages, of which three have been solved (so far). There is still a fourth section at the bottom consisting of 97 or 98 characters which remains uncracked."

Comments

Is there a solution?

[mistersooreams]

Forgive me for being cynical, but how can we be sure that this final piece is actually crackable? I mean, it would be a cruel joke by Jim Sanborn (the structure's creator) to just include a load of junk, but who's to say he didn't? The fact that the other parts have been deciphered suggests that this last part will give way eventually, but maybe that's just to make the final joke even crueler?

I hope I'm wrong because that would make this story a lot less interesting, but I just thought it should be mentioned.

Re:Is there a solution?

[iabervon]

It's certainly possible that the area people call "part 4" is actually random junk stuck in to fill up that section of the sculpture (the width of that portion is determined by the first two parts, and the height by the table on the right), and that the final solution to the sculpture uses entirely different elements.

If the end of the text is part 4, there's probably at least a part 5, because there's a bunch of other stuff in the installation not yet used in any solutions (including, for example, a compass that points the wrong way).

I wouldn't be surprised, from the known decryptions, if you had to stand with a candle at a certain point and notices the letters cut in the shadow cast by the sculpture at particular points. It seems to me like the bottom rows would be most likely as the letters for this, so it may be that some of the letters are important, but that there's no way to solve it by just looking at a transcript.

Re:I have always been curious

[The Only Druid]

As a wonderful sci-fi connection, I suggest reading Cryptonomicron, by Neal Stephenson. Besides providing an excellent story (like all his books), it provides an extensive discussion of how code-breaking works, and how historically it evolved.

metaphorically solved section 4

[BierGuzzl]

Weird. This guy apparently metaphorically solved section 4. But he got an email from Jim saying "Dear John, this is not the way" Did he cheat? :)

http://members.aol.com/scirealm/KryptosPart4.htm l

Re:I have always been curious

[0racle]

My girlfriend took one look at it and saw an image embedded in the way the characters are laid out. She figures that a real message would be too obvious and since its art, the real purpose could simply be to see what is not plainly there.

Maybe the boys at Langley are being too literal at trying to solve it.

NOT Fair Use

[new500]

. . .

In the UK at least, an author has stautory provision against false attribution. Fair use itself does not usually take consideration of the effect or intent. No new work was created in which a fair use rule can be applied. The effect is redistribution in a database, for which there is a ton of case law saying the incident is actionable.

Although to go into the grey area here would take too long, the person who "writes" is attributing material to themselves.

Ah, but it's Slashdot who writes "writes". Seriously, if that were my article, even if it is 5 years old, I'd be pretty pissed off at the mere lack of simple tact. A big publisher might see a need to defend their rights even apparently tenuous ones. There is a need for such commercial defences, even if it has all gone mad with the RIAA etc.

So I wonder when we'll see CoyboyNeal writes: "Today we got sued by Reuters, for the full story, please see our forthcoming 404 error

It's stupid to tread on toes. Even more stupid to encourage people to help you to tread on big companies toes.

Oh well, not that anything i said matters or anything . . .

Been working on this awhile :)

[222]

I got into the project about a year ago, and I can tell you that we (Yahoo Kryptos group) have some brilliant people trying just about everything imaginable.
I cant tell you how much time i've spent in the middle of the night arranging the letters in x,y grids... and even more bizzare.
I reconstructed the statue in 3D Studio Max so that i could tinker with the idea of folding the statue on itself, etc. One of the vigenere keywords in an earlier section hints at the reuse of the message, so its just an angle i've been tinkering with.
http://www.storm-seeker.com/kryptos.jpg
If anyone would like a copy of the max files to tinker with, shoot me an email at storPIZZAmseeker@gmail.com minus food :)