Mystery of Kryptos

Kryptos, an encrypted sculpture created by Jim Sanborn which is located in a courtyard of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) headquarters in Langley, Virginia has baffled code crackers around the world with its secret message since 1990, even Dan Brown has referred to it in his novels. Mystery continues to surround this puzzling work of art since no one has ever fully deciphered Kryptos’ coded message. In 1999, three of the puzzles, 768 characters long, were solved, revealing passages — one lyrical, one obscure and one taken from history. But the fourth message has resisted the best efforts of brains and computers.

The name Kryptos comes from the Greek word for "hidden", and the theme of the sculpture is "intelligence gathering." Jim Sanborn, the creator decided to interpret the subject in terms of how information is accrued throughout the ages after reading extensively on the subject of intelligence and cryptography. To produce the code for “Kryptos,” he worked for four months with a retired CIA cryptographer to devise the codes used in the sculpture. He wrote the text to be coded in collaboration with a prominent fiction writer.

The sculpture comprises four large copper plates with other elements made of red and green granite, white quartz, and petrified wood. The most prominent feature is a large vertical S-shaped copper screen resembling a scroll, or piece of paper emerging from a computer printer, covered with characters constituting encrypted text. The characters consist of the 26 letters of the standard Latin alphabet and question marks cut out of the copper.

Kryptos

• The petrified tree symbolizes the trees that once stood on the site of the sculpture and that were the source of materials on which written language has been recorded.

• The bubbling pool symbolizes information being disseminated with the destination being unknown.

• The copperplate screen has exactly 1,735 alphabetic letters cut into it.

The sculpture has been a source of mystery and challenge for Agency employees, other government employees, and interested people outside of government. In early 1998, a CIA physicist announced to the Agency that he had cracked the code for three of the four sections. This was followed a year later by a public announcement from a California computer scientist that he had done the same.

The following are the solutions of parts 1–3 of the sculpture:

Solution for Part 1
BETWEEN SUBTLE SHADING AND THE ABSENCE OF LIGHT LIES THE NUANCE OF IQLUSION
(Keywords: Kryptos, Palimpsest)

Solution for Part 2
IT WAS TOTALLY INVISIBLE HOWS THAT POSSIBLE ? THEY USED THE EARTHS MAGNETIC FIELD X THE INFORMATION WAS GATHERED AND TRANSMITTED UNDERGRUUND TO AN UNKNOWN LOCATION X DOES LANGLEY KNOW ABOUT THIS ? THEY SHOULD ITS BURIED OUT THERE SOMEWHERE X WHO KNOWS THE EXACT LOCATION ? ONLY WW 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 X LAYER TWO
(Keywords: Kryptos, Abscissa)

Solution for Part 3
SLOWLY DESPARATLY SLOWLY THE REMAINS OF PASSAGE DEBRIS THAT ENCUMBERED THE LOWER PART OF THE DOORWAY WAS REMOVED WITH TREMBLING HANDS I MADE A TINY BREACH IN THE UPPER LEFT HAND CORNER AND THEN WIDENING THE HOLE A LITTLE I INSERTED THE CANDLE AND PEERED IN THE HOT AIR ESCAPING FROM THE CHAMBER CAUSED THE FLAME TO FLICKER BUT PRESENTLY DETAILS OF THE ROOM WITHIN EMERGED FROM THE MIST X CAN YOU SEE ANYTHING Q ?

Part 4 remains unsolved. In 2010, Jim Sanborn is nudging the process along. He has provided The New York Times with the answers to six letters in the sculpture’s final passage. The characters that are the 64th through 69th in the final series on the sculpture read NYPVTT. When deciphered, they read BERLIN. However there are many steps to cracking the code, and the other 91 characters and their proper order are yet to be determined.

Sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kryptos;
https://www.cia.gov/about-cia/headquarters-tour/kryptos/flash-movie-text.html;
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/21/us/21code.html?pagewanted=all&_r=1&

Pic Source:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Kryptos_sculptor.jpg