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."

Comments

Elonka sucks, Ceren for ever!

[Anonymous Coward]

Ceren will never be beaten as the most desirable geek chick ever!

Re:Elonka sucks, Ceren for ever!

[WarForge]

Really? I was under the impression that Asia Carrera was the most desirable geek chick ever... incredibly hot porn star who builds her own computers, makes her own UT maps/mods/models, is a Linux geek and will wipe the floor with anyone here in a UT2004 deathmatch... personally, I do not need to know any more b/c I do not think that combination can be beat.

-Squirrelmaster out

How was this wrong?

[VorpalRodent]

Everyone had it wrong, because there was a mistake on the art piece? Tell me how that makes the people who decrypted it wrong.

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!

huh?

[sentientbrendan]

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?

Publius Enigma

[inKubus]

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".

Douglas Adams

[inKubus]

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.

Re:Is this legal...

[Harry Coin]

Except that in the US all creative works are copyrighted by default. I think that the hidden text in the Kryptos statue would qualify, as it's "protected" by the cryptography. I know that the DMCA wasn't written with this situation in mind, and I don't think it's right, but a twisted attorney could spin it that way. Bad laws are often like that.

Bad Title

[MaceyHW]

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.

Re:Alternate Plaintexts

[chihowa]

It's not that different, in concept, but it's definitely unusual and suggests that the algorithm is faulty./blockquote> Faulty? I'd consider that a feature. If all crypto could be decrypted to a number of 'valid' plaintexts you'd have perfect plausible deniability. That is: presuming (as was verified) that "ID BY ROWS" wasn't the correct plaintext.

This is actually interesting.

[222]

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

Reminds me of the time...

[UnknownSoldier]

.. 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. ;-)