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Cyrillic Projector Code Finally Cracked 165

Posted by simoniker
from the ending-world-wars-next dept.
SimuAndy writes "An international group of cryptographers, the Kryptos Group, announced this week that the decade-old Cyrillic Projector Code has been cracked, and that it deciphers to some classified KGB instructions and correspondence. The Cyrillic Projector is an encrypted sculpture at the University of North Carolina in Charlotte, that was created by Washington DC artist James Sanborn in the early 1990s. It was inspired by the encrypted Kryptos sculpture that Sanborn created two years earlier for CIA Headquarters. The message on the Cyrillic Projector has turned out to be in two parts. The decrypted first part is a Russian text encouraging secret agents to psychologically control potential sources of information. The second part appears to be a partial quote from classified KGB correspondence about the Soviet dissident Sakharov, with concerns that his report to the Pugwash conference was being used by the Americans for an anti-Soviet agenda."
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Cyrillic Projector Code Finally Cracked More

Cyrillic Projector Code Finally Cracked

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  • Would there not... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Sir Haxalot (693401) on Monday September 22 2003, @03:38PM (#7027876)
    have been ex-KGB agents that could have told them the code anyway?
  • A cryptographic statue? Whatever next! Cryptographic silicon?

  • the sad truth (Score:5, Funny)

    by madcoder47 (541409) * <development@@@madcoder...net> on Monday September 22 2003, @03:40PM (#7027894) Homepage Journal
    In other news, the KGB has filed a lawsuit against the Kryptos Group under the DMCA, claiming that their IP has now been stolen.

    The sad part of this is that in today's world somrthing similar could happen.

    • Re:the sad truth (Score:1, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      In other news, the Isreali Mossad has filed suit against the CIA for alleged copyright infrigement....
    • too funny. maybe this group can help me understand what's being said over the speakers at the local wal-mart

    • Re:the sad truth (Score:5, Funny)

      by Tackhead (54550) on Monday September 22 2003, @03:46PM (#7027967)
      > In other news, the KGB has filed a lawsuit against the Kryptos Group under the DMCA, claiming that their IP has now been stolen.

      In Soviet Russia, KGB doesn't enforce the DMCA!

    • In other news, the KGB has filed a lawsuit against the Kryptos Group under the DMCA, claiming that their IP has now been stolen.
      The sad part of this is that in today's world somrthing similar could happen.

      I'm seeing a lot of messages to this effect, and they're getting modded +1, Funny. But it should be pointed out that the joke falls a bit flat, because the KGB did not encrypt the text on the artwork. The artist encrypted the text for the purpose of posing a challenge to its viewers.

      According to the v [elonka.com]

  • Kryptos (Score:3, Funny)

    by grub (11606) * <slashdot@grub.net> on Monday September 22 2003, @03:40PM (#7027900) Homepage Journal

    It sounds like a crypto module in KDE.
  • and All I got was this lousy T-Shirt!

  • In other news (Score:4, Funny)

    by Brahmastra (685988) on Monday September 22 2003, @03:41PM (#7027914)
    Cyrillic code crackers have been arrested by the FBI under the DMCA.

  • Is it still legal? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by kutuz_off (159540) on Monday September 22 2003, @03:42PM (#7027926)
    Did they manage not to violate any of the new laws in the process?

  • From the article (Score:5, Funny)

    by Faust7 (314817) on Monday September 22 2003, @03:42PM (#7027931) Homepage
    the decade-old Cyrillic Projector Code has been cracked, and that it deciphers to some classified KGB instructions and correspondence.

    Thank goodness for that decade-old KGB info. The Cold War will be ours!

    • Re:From the article (Score:3, Interesting)

      by anzha (138288)

      Actually, potentially this could be a boon to historians depending on how much information was encrypted as such. If the NSA had gobs of it or the KGB's successor organization did and released the encrypted messages, but possibly lost the keys...etc.

      Just a thought...

  • Actual translation (Score:5, Funny)

    by mental_telepathy (564156) on Monday September 22 2003, @03:43PM (#7027932)
    The decrypted first part is a Russian text encouraging secret agents to psychologically control potential sources of information.

    The actual translation is:
    Keep information away from Moose and Squirrel.

    • The actual translation is:
      Keep information away from Moose and Squirrel.

      Vhy voot Rawshians... (excuse me...)
      Why would Russians be interested in Moose and Squirrel? Boris and Natash were Pottsylvanian. Not Russian.

  • All that time... (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 22 2003, @03:43PM (#7027937)
    But, if anybody really wanted to know what it was, all they had to do was put a gun to the artists head. Some people just like doing it the hardway I guess.

  • This just in, ROT-13 deciphered! (Score:4, Insightful)

    by stratjakt (596332) on Monday September 22 2003, @03:45PM (#7027954) Journal
    How difficult is this puzzle? "Not very," Sanborn says. Not nearly as difficult
    as his first encoded sculpture -- a work called "Kryptos" that he created for CIA
    headquarters in Langley, Va., in 1987. That code, created with the help of a
    cryptographer, is so hard to break that the CIA "will never figure it out," he says.

    So why is this news for anyone not on the UNC campus?
    • It might perhaps be related to the sculpture at the CIA location. Perhaps others must be solved in order to solve the CIA puzzle.

    • Re:This just in, ROT-13 deciphered! (Score:5, Interesting)

      by NearlyHeadless (110901) on Monday September 22 2003, @05:04PM (#7028613)
      How difficult is this puzzle? "Not very," Sanborn says. Not nearly as difficult as his first encoded sculpture -- a work called "Kryptos" that he created for CIA headquarters in Langley, Va., in 1987. That code, created with the help of a cryptographer, is so hard to break that the CIA "will never figure it out," he says.
      So why is this news for anyone not on the UNC campus?
      The person who actually decrypted this (Frank Corr) doesn't really think it's that big of a deal. It did fall to fairly standard cryptanalysis. We tried to get my 80 year-old mother to help translate it. But, given her failing eyesight, the fact that all the words are run together, and that her Russian is a little rusty, we gave up on that.

      He finally put up his untranslated solution on the web last week, but didn't announce it to anyone. Elonka noticed it in her referral logs and decided to make a big announcement of it.

      Besides not thinking it's such a big deal, Frank is also worried that the FBI keeps a file on anybody interested in cryptography!

    • Re:This just in, ROT-13 deciphered! (Score:5, Interesting)

      by nucal (561664) on Monday September 22 2003, @05:16PM (#7028700)
      In fact, half the answer was posted on the wall [elonka.com], right next to that big blob of gum.
      • Incidentally, there is a book "Etudes for programmers" (C) 1978 Charles Wetherell that contains a chapter on decrypting Vigenere encryption, including a cryptotext as an exercise.

        It was published in Russia in 1983 or 1984 and provided amusement and inspiration to many a young programmer. The translators had to decrypt the original English text (discovering that the algorithm proposed by Wetherell was faulty), and to re-encrypt its Russian translation.

        Many moons ago I wrote a program to decrypt that text,
    • You wonder if someone has done this, but just made up an impossible crytpography code.

      So the first part of it is crackable eventually, but just to through people off the rest is random...

  • Part 5 of the code is even harder (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 22 2003, @03:45PM (#7027957)
    I hvae a wnodreulfly tirvial slooiutn but trhee is not enugoh room in the mgrain of tihs book to dsecbire it.

  • At last! (Score:2, Funny)

    by redNuht (213553)
    Now the Cold War will finally be over!

    Ah, wait, you mean this Iraq operation is not an extension of the Cold War? Why is it going on, then? Why are they cracking the KGB code? :D
  • Congrats to Elonka and crew on decoding it. We all hope you figure out that last section of Kryptos!

  • Congrats. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by airrage (514164) on Monday September 22 2003, @03:48PM (#7027986) Homepage Journal
    I have not heard of the sculpture or the problem before, however, the article talks of using pictures -- piecing them together -- is it unavailable to the viewing public (close up)?

    Or was it a logistic problem of distance?

    I also assume that the "meaning" of the text is that somehow, while breaking the code, you are the creator's source? There is the physical piece and then the art is the effort in breaking the problem. Does this mean the piece is less transfixing since we know what it says?

    Hmmmmmmmmmmm.

    • Re:Congrats. (Score:2, Informative)

      by DarkOx (621550)
      I went to school there for a semester you can walk right up and touch it. Actually they shine light through it at night which is the "Projector" effect and it casts the characters on the surrounding class room buildings.
      • Oh for the sake of those who might be at UNCC and not know what this is about it right outside of the Fretwell building.

  • Mirror to solution. (Score:4, Informative)

    by chendo (678767) on Monday September 22 2003, @03:49PM (#7028002)
    Here [elonka.com] is the 'mirrored' solution.

  • modern art (Score:5, Funny)

    by Doesn't_Comment_Code (692510) on Monday September 22 2003, @03:50PM (#7028016)
    I've seen this cryptographic art all over in the modern art museums. There're paintings, statues, you name it. You can look at them for hours and still not know what the hell they are.

    • The problem with modern art is that the uniqueness of artistic talent is dead. The great works of the past that we all recognize are valued because the talent required to make them was rare back in the day. Now, however, you can find a plethora people in the world with talent exceeding Van Gogh, Michaelangelo, and Da Vinci. Our liberal arts schools crank out people with this level or talent by the hundreds each year, and most of them are "doomed" to spend their lives creating office art and advertising s
      • How long have you been saving that one?
      • RE: The great works of the past that we all recognize are valued because the talent required to make them was rare back in the day.

        Total, complete, and utter bullsh*t.

        Painters belonged to GUILDS and were APPRENTICED. They weren't allowed to touch paint until they mastered chiaroscuro, they weren't allowed to shade until they got perspective right, and right from the beginning they were expected to draw, and draw VERY VERY WELL.

        Once the master (who was a guild member, and had talent, education and experie
      • It seems like the world doesn't fit into your view of the world so you claim art is dead. First of all, people are creative and things change. Second, new devices, techniques, technology, etc alters the landscape. New forms of art have emerged. For example, the emergence of photography shifted some elements of art into photography. Doing paintings of what exists (ie. nature, people, etc) lost popularity because you can do a "similar thing" with photography. How many people have large posters or photographic

  • Cyrillic Projector Code... (Score:5, Funny)

    by ScuzzyTerminator (683387) on Monday September 22 2003, @03:55PM (#7028058)
    Isn't that what SCO uses for it's code presentations?

  • Misuninterpreted (Score:3, Funny)

    by BandwidthHog (257320) * <inactive.slashdo ... icallyenough.com> on Monday September 22 2003, @03:56PM (#7028078) Homepage Journal
    I parsed the story title as announcing that the good guys had finally finished decrypting the font transformation used to obfuscate the source code that SCO projected on screen at that big press conference a few weeks ago. Silly me.
  • It's about time! This kept me awake at night not knowing what it said.

  • I for one welcome our encrypted overlords (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Rapelcgvba vf sha naq tbbq sbe n ynhtu.

    Vg znxrf vg fb gung crbcyr pna'g ernq zl zvaq.

    Zl Gva sbvy ung vf abg pbzcyrgryl sbby cebbs nsgre nyy.
  • ...that Bruce Perens cracked this weeks ago [slashdot.org].
  • I go to school at UNCC, I never really spent much time looking at that thing. Now i'm going to have a look at it. I always thought it was kinda cool, but just some artsy crap.
    • You can think of the work as an excellent example of steganography [wikipedia.org], as applied to a piece of modern art. You've just shown that no one looks at the crap, so why not use it to hide secret messages?

      So, what was Alexander Calder really saying with his colorful mobiles? Hint: it wasn't any garbage about "Expressing the social dynamic of Man's inhumanity to Man using organically reclaimed steel" -- it was "secret nuclear missle base is located at 34.4N 75.7W"

      Chip H.
  • It wsa neevr rlaely eeyrcntpd. It was mdae by smoonee woh hda a rllaey bda csae of dxlsiyea. Tihs is nto a cniocdicconee scnie tihs wsa reltncey plbuhseid on Shsalodt.
  • Exactly.

    Open standard mean's that there is inter-operability. not ... "lookie! this is how you decode HBO and Skinemax!"

    The only thing that has somewhat stemmed the cable TV piracy problems is that it's illegal for you to own a Digital Cable box. if you bought one off ebay then you bought stolen goods.

    Otherwise the DCT 3000 and 5000 , the most standard of the cable digital boxes in america would have been cracked wide open for everyone. Just like the crappy Jerrold and older cable boxes that were analog

  • Code Craker Likes Slashdot (Score:5, Funny)

    by Amoeba Protozoa (15911) <jordan.husneyNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Monday September 22 2003, @04:19PM (#7028265) Homepage

    Have a look at Elonka Dunin, one of the coordinators of the team that cracked this beast. Is that slashdot on her screen? [elonka.com] I think it is ;)

    -AP

    • And is that Windows on her desktop? I think it is :(

      It's all well and good that she reads slashdot, but I wish more readers would back their words up with action, and make the switch to open source programs.
      • You know, I was just setting up a *nix box in the command line and thought how unfortunate the kids of today are stuck in their GUI. They will never know the joys of the command line, or line printers or punch cards.

        And then it hit me. We should have just stayed with hand switches. Life was so simple. We just flip switches to code, find the moth when the code fails, and then sit back and play chess until we have enough energy to decode the answer.

        No, not really on topic. But just to say I think the

      • I wish people would actually listen to other people when they explain, time and time again, why the hell they see no reason to uninstall an operating system that's working fine (and mine is) so they can replace it with another operating system and a collection of emulators.

        So try to get this straight:
        I am not a clone.
        I see great benefits of open source, but I don't like the GPL.
        I read slashdot.
        I respond.
        I even moderate.
        And I'm very happy with Windows 98.
        What's not broken doesn't need fixing.
    • Yeah, mad props to Elonka. She gave a talk at phreaknic [phreaknic.info] last year and has been in charge of the phreaknic code (a decryption challenge) for a few years now, if I recall correctly.

      Anyway, she's very cool and she's scheduled to talk about encryption again this year.
    • That would explain why it took so long ;)

    • Maybe cryptographers are using Slashdot to practice decyphering - look at all those cryptic posts and/or signatures. :)

    • She is probably curious to see which site's visitors keep viciously pounding her webservers.
      Hence the smile. It's a "i'll get the bastards" kind of smile.
  • Wow, my school [uncc.edu] has recieved the honor of being mentioned in a Slashdot story. The Cyrillic Projector is next to the Fretwell [uncc.edu] building, across from the Friday [uncc.edu] building (home the capitalistic College of Buisness). It looks kind of boring during the day when it is not lit up, so most might not notice it.
  • It would be kinda cheesy like a copy of "The Scream" on a throw pillow I have. However, it would be so cool to have a conversation piece like this on my desk. Thinkgeek people... call Sanborn and get cracking, I want one for Christmas... Who else does?

  • and the secret code reads...... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 22 2003, @04:28PM (#7028334)
    Dear Comradski, send more Vodka.
    thank you,
    Nikoli out....

  • Hmmm.. (Score:1, Redundant)

    by Nonillion (266505)
    Dosen't this violate the DMCA?????

  • Pictures (Score:5, Interesting)

    by MxReb0 (443442) on Monday September 22 2003, @04:37PM (#7028406)
    I just ran out and took some pictures [uncc.edu] if you wanted to see what it looks like in the day. It's much more interesting at night when the letters are projected all over.

    • Re:Pictures (Score:1, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Really man, how in the hell did the Russians fit that big ass thing in a decoder ring. The Japanese I can see doing that but the Russkies never.
    • Cool pictures. I agree that it does look nicer in the dark, too bad it is raining now.

      Someone had told me that it was related to the fraternities and sororities on campus.

      (Shamless plug: You web page mentioned that you didn't do anything physical, you should join the fencing club. Wednesday,Thursday @ 8PM in the SAC.)
      -Nathan Conrad
      • Oh, I was just kidding, I lift weights, run, swim, and I've recently been informed that I'm on a club soccer team now.
        (offtopic, sorry)

    • cool pictures, cheers. Do you know how they light it to get the projection effect?

    • Great pics, thanks for posting them! I've shared them with the folks at the Kryptos Group too. Is it okay if I link to the pics from the Cyrillic Projector [elonka.com] site, or would you rather that I mirrored them so as not to suck up bandwidth? The main slashdotting is over for now (about 50,000 hits over the last couple days), but other papers may be picking up the story soon, so traffic could get heavy again.
  • I'm a student at UNC-C...I walked by that projector twice a week for a few months, noticed it was cyrillic alphabet on the sculpture...to my knowlege no one in day to day life has any clue what the thing is, or that its even a code

  • uncc sculpture (Score:3, Insightful)

    by mccoyspace (590866) on Monday September 22 2003, @06:07PM (#7029132) Homepage
    I used to teach in the art department at UNCC, (before this work was installed). The school has always made a good committment to public sculpture.
    Most people on that campus probably don't pay much attention to the artworks around them, which is too bad. Still, it's nice to see a work from the collection there capture people's imagination and enthusiasm.
  • I used to walk by that thing every day on the way to class and I never knew it was a code! I thought it was just art for art's sake. Silly me.
  • How do you represent some other Russian words but instead of using Cyrillic letters using similar Roman letters?...

    For example... PECTOPAH
    XOPOWO
    xopowo
  • Has anyone checked out the CIA teddybear [cia.gov]? The CIA are showing kids the important work they do.
  • JUST in time! Thank god!
  • and I still dont understand a word!

"Everyone's head is a cheap movie show." -- Jeff G. Bone