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Typo Found in Kryptos CIA Sculpture
SimuAndy writes "Elonka Dunin, game developer at
Simutronics and author/editor of the
new book, 'The Mammoth Book of Secret Codes and Cryptograms', reports that what everyone had thought was the answer to part 2 of the CIA's encrypted
Kryptos sculpture, wasn't. Sculptor Sanborn announced this week that everyone had gotten it wrong, because of a mistake on the art piece.
For more info, check out the
Wired story, or the
Kryptos Group announcement."
Sevfg cfbg
I'll probably be modded down for this...
Ceren will never be beaten as the most desirable geek chick ever!
I doubt it, the CIA is *NEVER* wrong. ...wait...
"Crime fighters fight crime. Fire fighters fight fire. What do freedom fighters fight?" -George Carlin
No wonder I couldn't figure it out! Gimme a second... Okay...
Be sure to drink your Ovaltine
Aw man!
n/t
Shpxgneg
The moral of the story is that if you want to encrypt something, just change all the letters randomly. Then no one will ever decrypt it!!! I think I just earned myself a PhD.
I mean, it's happened before.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
Wouldn't a crypto book be in violation of the DMCA?
HELLO WORLD
89955 89955
HELLO WORLD
33375 33375 87616 87616 71039 71039 87613 87613 58293 58293
60608 60608 70019 70019 11160 11160 49373 49373 21015 21015
20116 20116 18699 18699 74667 74667 92078 92078 56023 56023
15817 15817 36226 36226 23788 23788 10805 10805 72806 72806
79943 79943 02268 02268 53674 53674 29504 29504 65339 65339
24468 24468 14080 14080 22135 22135 36710 36710 09629 09629
90354 90354 78446 78446 09466 09466 37279 37279 91776 91776
82726 82726 83740 83740 96219 96219 27578 27578 40586 40586
54090 54090 17657 17657 31762 31762 97287 97287 30099 30099
70840 70840 64527 64527 87812 87812 71932 71932 95482 95482
78674 78674 35304 35304 95260 95260 53247 53247 69254 69254
51006 51006 38682 38682 52475 52475 15438 15438 84854 84854
06689 06689 79967 79967 16264 16264 42754 42754 91466 91466
66692 66692 57185 57185 89792 89792 35755 35755 50873 50873
25932 25932 34431 34431 90508 90508 12993 12993 40562 40562
17827 17827 67866 67866 00214 00214 27625 27625 54839 54839
21599 21599 17481 17481 62847 62847 38857 38857 39178 39178
33989 33989 38973 38973 43842 43842 97419 97419 23485 23485
59084 59084 97194 97194 21592 21592 72937 72937 23988 23988
04619 04619 53817 53817 71402 71402 16342 16342 67230 67230
18006 18006 69810 69810 89799 89799 83082 83082 25291 25291
62312 62312 76315 76315 37122 37122
K-BYE
Look at the shape of the sculpture. The fourth code is "Windows Vista will be released in late 2006."
Now on to the accuracy of the statement...
Oh wait, I'm dumb or just hungry right now. The text was rot13'd and then he mixed up the middle characters of each word.
this sentence is actually an encoded nuclear launch sequenceing code. If you can figure it out, you can prevent armaggeddon. That or it is a series of cleverly disguised curse words.
I would think that if they decoded it properly, the answer they got was correct, regardless of what the intended message was.
If I make a typo and Rot13 it, you can Rot13 it and get my typo back, and it doesn't make you wrong. It means I can't spell.
I haven't RTFA, but the summary makes it look like I can correct others for my own mistakes. Cool!
Take it to the limit, everybody to the limit, come on, everybody fhqwhgads.
No, this Wired thread was brought to you by Mountain Dew and Easter Jellie Bellies.
Isn't that like throwing out a few key pieces of a puzzle then adding a few from another puzzle?
The problematic part is at the end of part 2: "... forty-four seconds west. ID by rows." On April 19th, sculptor Sanborn contacted one of the Kryptos Group moderators to say, "No, that last part is wrong." He also indicated that there was a missing character on the sculpture, probably something that would have resulted in a plaintext "X" before that section. He said that he had thought that with the missing character, the section in question would have come out to be an unintelligible scramble. Instead, he was astounded to see that by sheer chance, the resulting random text had turned out to be apparently intelligible English, "ID BY ROWS", although that was not what was intended.
what are the odds of that?
Above is ROT-13 (rotate 13 places) for the text Frist psot.
Saying Java is nice because it works on all OS's is like saying that anal sex is nice because it works on all genders.
one hell of a typewriter...
I knew I was celebrating something, but I forgot what. Is today my birthday?
Saying Java is nice because it works on all OS's is like saying that anal sex is nice because it works on all genders.
The DMCA was designed to protect weak algorithms. If an algorithm is secure you don't need a law to stop people cracking it.
I'll probably be modded down for this...
>undergruund ... was removed
>desparatly
>the remains
Still some work to do.
"On April 19th, 2006, perhaps because Sanborn saw the plaintext of Kryptos presented in a new book by Kryptos Group co-moderator Elonka Dunin, he realized that the public perception was that the "ID BY ROWS" phrase was the actual answer, so he alerted the Kryptos Group that they still had work to do yet. Group members quickly discussed the problem, and applied different techniques to change the final section, thereby discovering that inserting a null character (in final analysis, a ciphertext "s") in the 9th position before the end of K2, generated a different English plaintext for the final nine letters. Instead of "IDBYROWS", it became "XLAYERTWO". This occurred because inserting the null character, shifted all the ciphertext letters after it back into correct position, so that they were back "in phase" with the ABSCISSA key. Sanborn has confirmed that the new answer is the correct one."
Then again, maybe someone will have the solution two days from now and I'll look like an idiot.
I used to carry a bottle of whiskey for snake bite. And two snakes. -Nefarious Wheel
Hey, it's my birthday too ! I turned 19 today.
Julien C.
This reminds me of another interesting public puzzle, the "Publius Enigma", which was/is a puzzle connected with Pink Floyd's 1994 album The Division Bell and some anonymous postings made to the newsgroup alt.music.pink-floyd coinciding with their 1994 tour of the same name.
Numerous, interesting sites are out there, and people have been trying to solve the thing for over 12 years.
Quite interesting, especially if you like the music and want to add a "new dimension".
Cool! Amazing Toys.
I've seen these posts earlier, but what algorithm do they encrypt with?
Also, it is rumored that Douglas Adams had something to do with the puzzle, since he was friends with the band and actually came up with the name for the album.
Cool! Amazing Toys.
There are forms of cryptography which rely on the same message decrypting to potentially equally valid plaintexts, but this is the first time I've heard of an incomplete encrypted message decrypting to an equally valid plaintext. It's not that different, in concept, but it's definitely unusual and suggests that the algorithm is faulty. I suggest having the crypto lounge report this as a known attack.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
It's not a "typo". According the wired article, Sanborn decided to leave out a single charater (an "x" serving as a "period") for asthetic reasons and this led to a faulty decryption of one phrase of the message.
They use one-time pad... wiki link
~/.sig: No such file or directory
Or a lot of species ....
Infuriate left and right
In an unrelated story Sculptor Sanborn went missing last night...
"But this one goes to 11!"
It says: 'All Your Base Are Belong To Us'
From the article: "The entire passage was previously decrypted to read: This was his last message: x Thirty-eight degrees fifty-seven minutes six point five seconds North, seventy-seven degrees eight minutes forty-four seconds West. ID by rows."
This seems very clearly a set of geographical longitude/lattitude coordinates. Presumably whatever's actually at that location would be necessary context for the "layer two" to make sense. So what location does that set of coordinates refer to? One of these cryptography buffs must know... but the article doesn't mention the answer.
on the same page it says:
Karma whores are individuals, or messages themselves, that attempt to receive feedback in the form of karma points. Often these will be needless information (such as a link to a Wikipedia article relevant to the subject being discussed...
Well, I hope you corrected the article.
Seriously, what reason is there to believe it's a one-time pad? Might as well be random noise. What would be the point?
Bonsai Kitten: TNG
http://kryptos.arcticus.com/
Please, don't everybody click on it at once, it's only a P100 webserver on DSL. Use a cache if it dies:
http://kryptos.arcticus.com.nyud.net:8090/
-- There is no truth. There is only Perception. To Percieve is to Exist.
The Kryptos sculpture is intentionally riddled with omissions/misspellings as clues. It just so happened that one intentional omission wasnt as evident as the sculptor intended since the the garbage text the omission created somehow came out readable. I think he gave away too much in saying a letter was omitted.
The CIA has followed up the public announcement that there is a typo in the encrypted message by asking people to stop sending them their old hi-fi speakers for recycling since the decrypted message does *NOT* read "all your bose are belong to us".
AT&ROFLMAO
AllYourBaseAreBelongToUs.
YouAreOnTheWayToDestruction.
YouHaveNoChanceToSurviveMakeYourTime.
HAHAHAHA
Heh, it just goes to show how obsessed some geeks get. I loved this last part:
"I've been drinking Mountain Dew and eating Easter Jelly Bellies to sharpen my mind," he says.
He says the new information was the equivalent of throwing a steak into shark-infested water. "There's going to be a frenzy of action around this for months because it's the first real bit of data we've been able to get. We don't know what it means. But it's very exciting."
Yeah, sharpening his mind with Jelly Bellies and going into a frenzy because someone added an 'x' to a cyphertext... nope, no dorkyness here...
And for some reason, every cipher determined by this method comes out "GIGGITY GIGGITY"
-- Mojo Tooth : exploring our world as only an idiot can.
If you RTFA then you'll notice that the END of the 3rd part (3 of 4) had a missing null character. Making the last 8 characters spell out idbyrows (ID by Rows) instead of what they should have been: layertwo (Layer Two).
This isn't such a big 'everything was broken' as you may seem to think that it is. The original key still works. So the original people who cracked the 3rd part are still considered the first.
This is an important revilation because it is believed that part 4 (which has not been cracked) is solved via clues in parts 1-3.
"All your base are bleong...
All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.
The reason they went wandering around was to try and make sense of this piece of section two:If the text was actually supposed to say "... forty-four seconds west. x Layer Two". then that should change their interpretation of whatever they saw on the CIA grounds.
Someone much nerdier than I analyzed the coordinates, but all this was done under the previous understanding of what Section 2 said.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Assuming you watched last night's ALIAS episode, didn't Marshall decode this successfully? [grin]
P.S. I assume this is the same code that was shown.
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
It's Hitler's birthday, too
Although my involvement with the Kryptos project has lessened due to time constraints (Its not World of Warcraft if thats what you were thinking!), this is actually right up my alley.
I created a 3d replica of the statue in 3d studio max (It should still be available in the yahoo group file section) and this talk of layer 2 talk may imply the folding of the statue. Elonka mentioned this to me a few days ago, but I didn't realize it was this important of an update.
Installing 3d studio max now, there goes my sleep for the next month O.O
I'm suprised the typo wasn't found sooner. Cryptos. -Z
It's also Muhammad's birthday.
Slashdot reporting on a typo? Oh the delicious irony! :)
Part two indicates coordinates that would be in the symmetrically opposite place in the courtyard- interesting to say the least. But what does "layer two" refer to? We're missing something in the decryption here... :-)
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
For 100 points:
;)
Under what circumstances would you receive the RIGHT answer when the only possible solution must be WRONG given the "typo" in the public information you seeded
Check out Episode 78 on Crytography at binrev. There a lot of other stuff on that as well (it's an hour or so of just standard radio show stuff, then some juicy bits on Elonka's exploits, and also a "dummy's guide to crypto and terminology" type intro near the end (well, I think they come in that order).
That's ridiculous!
"Ilqusion?" "IDBYROWS?" That's some real qwality work.
I far one welcome our craptic overlards.
Table-ized A.I.
.. when I was taking Operating Systems II, and our first homework questions was to decrypt the encrypted assignment once we wrote a public-private de/encryption program, using the public & private keys we were given. Shortly after I got my program written & debugged, I figured out that the teacher had used/given out a wrong number (!), meaning the assignment couldn't be decoded, so I told my buddy who was also in the same class with me before the weekend so he didn't have to waste his time as well.
;-)
The following week in class the teacher announces the correct public & private keys, and most of the class flipped out since they had spent the time trying to figure out why their program wasn't decoding the encrypted assignment. (I guess those students never used a test case to verify that their program _actually_ was working correctly!?)
I guess it pays to pay attention to the expected data.
Hey! I put those co-ordinates into Google Earth, and it crashed! Damn CIA spooks will do anything to protect their secrets...
You must think in Russian.
Cryptographers of the world, untie!
Weeks of coding saves hours of planning.
i just read over it for 5 minutes and there should be a second layer obviously. that layer might relate to shading differences, another spectrum e.g infrared, viewing the statue from the given coordinates, examining mispellings. obviously there is something hidden there. my best guess is that you view the statue from a different angle, or that you analyze the shading. what this thing needs is a prize. there was a $3000 prize for the Poe crypto puzzle, for instance. i would wager someone from the CIA or NSA has solved part IV, if parts I to III were solved in 1992. it's my guess that you have to physically be at the location to solve part IV. this means the solver will almost certainly be an agency employee, which makes sense that they don't want a distributed internet effort to solve it. also there are some lunch tables near the coordinates i believe, i.e. the conversation with WW happened there.
During an interview, the sculptor specifically stated that you do NOT have to visit the site to solve the puzzle. He said that you only need the letters of the encrypted text, and that is widely available online.
Evil Overlord Rule #86. I will make sure that my doomsday device is up to code and properly grounded.
Sculptor Sanborn announced this week that everyone had gotten it wrong, because of a mistake on the art piece.
Did everyone really get it wrong? Seems they may have all have solved the problem they were presented with, even if this wasn't the problem which was intended. So they may not have solved what was intended, but Sanborn's mistake doesn't automatically make everyone else a failure... If I take a math test that asks me what 4 * 7 is and I answer 28, but they say "oops, we really meant to ask what was 12 / 3", is my answer to the question "wrong"?