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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!
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?
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.
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.
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...
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...
Yes U did! I mailed it to a scrambled combination of your user name and UID.
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.
>undergruund ... was removed
>desparatly
>the remains
Still some work to do.
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.
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.
Good one.
Charles Wyble System Engineer
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
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...
So since it arrived in my mailbox, is it really my PhD now?
How many fulltime jobs can one man have?
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).
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
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
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.
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"?