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

Crack?

[theluckyleper]

Dynamite oughtta crack it...

Re:Crack?

[slAckEr Of dOOm]

Typical gamer - "if you don't understand it, blow it up"

Re:Crack?

[theluckyleper]

But a slacker of doom, on the other hand, would spend years working out a way to decipher it? :P

Re:Crack?

[david.given]

Typical gamer - "if you don't understand it, blow it up"

Now, now. The full saying to the shmup motto is, IIRC:

"If it moves, kill it. If it doesn't move, shoot it until it does. Then kill it."

Unfortunately I can't find a source --- anyone?

I'll bet it says...

[mr_burns]

"Stop goofing off. Get back to work"

Kryptos?

[MikeXpop]

Superman must be shaking in his boots right about now.

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?

[ncurses]

of course not, it's just some random chars generated by the Arethusa cipher, seeded with the string COMSTOCK.

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:Is there a solution?

[EvilSporkMan]

Actually, the characters you're referring to were NOT generated by Arethusa, they were generated by a Riemann zeta function; this was the whole point of that part of Cryptonomicon. Parent should be right where he is, +3 for Effort.

97 or 98?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you can't tell how many characters it has, no wonder it's so hard to crack.

Re:97 or 98?

[Zocalo]

From the FAQ:

All of the characters on the ciphertext side of Kryptos have been solved, except for 97 characters at the very bottom. There is also a question mark between parts 3 and 4. Some say the question mark is part of part 3 (since it ends with the question, "Can you see anything q"). However, it's possible that the question mark is part of part 4.

So, there you go. Having a question mark at the beginning is a little odd, unless it's a hint that you are meant to read it backwards like some of the other Kryptos puzzles.

I think I got it..

[The Journalist]

There's a "W", then an "e", a space, "a", "r", "e"...

"We are"..."

There's more! "s", "o", "r", "r", "y"

"We are sorry"...We knew this!

"f", "p", "r" - "We are sorry for" - "t", "h", "e", - "We are sorry for the what!?!

"i", "n", "c", "o", "n", "v", "e", - almost got it - "n", "i", "e", "n", "c" "e".

"We are sorry for the inconvenience"? You bastard!!

*Apologies to DNA, who orignially used this idea as God's final message to the univers.

Re:I think I got it..

[MikeXpop]

Hmm, that's funny. I got...

Be sure to drink your ovaltine

Re:I have always been curious

[Anonymous Coward]

It depends on the code. Often it involves looking for patterns, knowledge of letter frequencies, a bit of luck, and a while lot of skill. It helps if you know the type of cryptography being used. For example, if there is a known algorithm being used, such as RSA, one can do a brute force attack and test every possible decryption key (a very computationally intensive task, but feasable for small, older keys). Since many codes are based upon "hard math problems" such as RSA whose security is derived from the fact that it is easy to multiply prime numbers, but hard to factor composite numbers into primes, some codes are broken by find fast solutions to hard math problems. This is kind of the idea behind Shor's Quantum Computer algorithm which allows one to quickly factor large integers and thus could, if implemented, completely screw over RSA.

I got it !!

[Dolphinzilla]

Be Sure to drink your Ovaltine.

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.

I have seen a pattern in the information...

[Linker3000]

There seems to be a pattern emerging in Slashdot posts - it can be outlined by the following pseudo-code:

Program GoSlash;
CDate = Today - 1;
..For I = 1 to NumArticles(Fark(CDate));
....If SubjectScore((FarkArticle[I,CDate]) >= MildlyTechnical then
....begin
......NewArticle = Rehash(FarkArticle[I,CDate]);
......SubmitToSlash (NewArticle);
....end;
..next I;
end.

>

It's a trap!

[Weaselmancer]

The people who solved the first 3 are currently in jail for DCMA violations. ;^)

Another option...

[krypt0s]

Someone could've just asked me. I'm not THAT complicated.

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:metaphorically solved section 4

[gad_zuki!]

Christ, is there a "nutters" web template out there? Every site dealing with bible codes, aliens, newagey psuedo-science, etc have the same starry (or psychedelic) background, fonts that are way too big and colorful for proper reading, etc. I guess its all the best. Its like a big sign screaming "This guy is nuts!"

I swear, I was half expecting a "See you at Time Cube Con '05" at the bottom the page.

Oooh, I just figured it out using my calculator

[3770]

A priest, a doctor, and an engineer are playing a round of golf. They get behind a pair that is playing amazingly slow. After some time they realize that these two men are blind. "What a sad way to spend one's life," said the priest. "I will say a prayer for them." "I have a good friend that is an eye surgeon," said the doctor, "maybe I could get them some help." The engineer thought for a second, "Why don't these guys play at night?"

I don't get it though.

Plagiarism

[Osty]

From the Slashdot summary:

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."

And from the actual page:

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.

So, unless angkor is the author of the page over at elonka.com, he's plagiarised the article for his summary. Now, I understand that this can be a difficult call to make, since the article is clearly cited. However, the language of the summary ("angkor writes ...") and lack of explicit citation ("the article says ...") leads one to believe that angkor is writing an original summary of the submitted article, which is clearly not the case.

Sadly, this is not the first time this has ever happened on Slashdot (in fact, it happens in nearly every posted article). Come on, people. If you're going to submit a story, either summarize the article in your own words or attribute your summary text to the article. And editors, pull your thumbs out of your asses and actually edit your site once in a while. In a case like this, it's pretty damned obvious that the article summary is just part of the first paragraph of TFA, and so rather than attributing the summary to the article submitter ("angkor writes ..."), use other language that makes clear the quoting ("angkor quotes from the article ...").

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.

Dupe

[morningstar8]

This story is a dupe... The original was posted 5 1/2 years ago. (!) Here's the original story.