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."

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.

Re:I have always been curious

[belmolis]

There's a classic book on the history of codes and codebreaking called The Codebreakers, by David Kahn [david-kahn.com]. A revised edition came out recently. There is even a Wikipedia article [wikipedia.org] about him.

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.

Re:I think I got it..

[tukkayoot]

Well, FTA:

The encrypted sections include spelling errors, which Sanborn said were intentional, possibly to throw off sleuths, and misaligned characters set higher on a line of text than characters around them.

So who knows. :)

Re:Is this news? or a wikipedia entry?

[servoled]

Technically, I think its "News for nerds, Stuff that was posted on Fark.com yesterday", but others may disagree.

Kryptos

[Anonymous Coward]

EMUFPHZLRFAXYUSDJKZLDKRNSHGNFIVJ
BETWEENSUBTLESHADINGANDTHEABSENC
YQTQUXQBQVYUVLLTREVJYQTMKYRDMFD
EOFLIGHTLIESTHENUANCEOFIQLUSION
VFPJUDEEHZWETZYVGWHKKQETGFQJNCE
ITWASTOTALLYINVISIBLEHOWSTHATPO
GGWHKK?DQMCPFQZDQMMIAGPFXHQRLG
SSIBLE?THEYUSEDTHEEARTHSMAGNET
TIMVMZJANQLVKQEDAGDVFRPJUNGEUNA
ICFIELDTHEINFORMATIONWASGATHER
QZGZLECGYUXUEENJTBJLBQCRTBJDFHRR
EDANDTRANSMITTEDUNDERGRUUNDTOANU
YIZETKZEMVDUFKSJHKFWHKUWQLSZFTI
NKNOWNLOCATIONDOESLANGLEYKNOWA
HHDDDUVH?DWKBFUFPWNTDFIYCUQZERE
BOUTTHIS?THEYSHOULDITSBURIEDOUT
EVLDKFEZMOQQJLTTUGSYQPFEUNLAVIDX
THERESOMEWHERWHOKNOWSTHEEXACTL
FLGGTEZ?FKZBSFDQVGOGIPUFXHHDRKF
OCATION?ONLYWWTHISWASHISLASTMES
FHQNTGPUAECNUVPDJMQCLQUMUNEDFQ
SAGETHIRTYEIGHTDEGREESFIFTYSE
ELZZVRRGKFFVOEEXBDMVPNFQXEZLGRE
VENMINUTESSIXPOINTFIVESECONDSNO
DNQFMPNZGLFLPMRJQYALMGNUVPDXVKP
RTHSEVENTYSEVENDEGREESEIGHTMINU
DQUMEBEDMHDAFMJGZNUPLGEWJLLAETG
TESFORTYFOURSECONDSWESTIDBYROWS

"Between subtle shading and the absence of light lies the nuance of iqlusion.
It was totally invisible Hows that possible? They used the Earths magnetic field
The information was gathered and transmitted undergruund to an unknown location
Does Langley know about this? They should Its buried out there somewhere
Who knows the exact location? Only WW This was his last message
Thirty eight degrees fifty seven minutes six point five seconds north
Seventy seven degrees eight minutes forty four seconds west ID by rows"

BTW Trying to bypass the Lameness filter was harder than cracking this puzzle. *hint* *hint* Slashdot fix your goddamn code!!

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Re:Is there a solution?

[Anonymous Coward]

Parent should be +5 Obscure Cryptonomicon Reference

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:Here be treasure...

[Stiletto]

You must not have put in the correct coordinates. In decimal degrees:

-77.1455555555555555 lon
38.95180555555555555 lat

which is a courtyard right smack in the middle of CIA headquarters.

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.

Re:Plagiarism

[frakir]

Not to mention "its thousands of characters" are actually just below 900...

Re:Is there a solution?

[Anonymous Coward]

You said "by a Riemann zeta function?" No sir, there is only ONE Riemann zeta function and it is THE Riemann Zeta Function.

However, the Riemann Zeta Function is part of a family of functions called Dirichlet L-series.

Re:Is there a solution?

[Calroth]

OK, here we go. From the FAQ [elonka.com]:

Q: Are you sure that Kryptos part 4 is solvable?

Yes. Both Jim Sanborn and Ed Scheidt have repeated over and over that it's solvable. Sanborn has also been quoted in interviews as saying he was surprised that it hadn't been solved yet. And when Elonka Dunin, co-moderator of the Kryptos group, asked him flat out in mid-2003 whether or not part 4 was solvable, his answer was: "Yes. It ain't easy, but it's solvable!"

Re:Curious Images...

[Elonka]

Heh. While it is indeed true that I have hidden other codes and puzzles around my webpages, this isn't one of them. ;) As part of the most recent article, the folks at Wired simply made a graphic of my Kryptos transcript page [elonka.com]. Any unusual pixels from there, occurred on their end.

Elonka :)