Friday, April 24, 2009
The "Kryptos" sculpture
A puzzle that the Central Intelligence Agency set out to solve more than 20 years ago still remains a mystery today. In 1988, the CIA commissioned James Sanborn, a DC artist, to create a sculpture of encrypted messages to be placed in the CIA headquarters’ courtyard in Langley, Virginia. In a partnership with Ed Schiedt, former head of Langley’s Cryptographic Center, Sanborn produced a sculpture named “Kryptos” that consists of a four-part series using matrices, mathematics, and other techniques in cryptography.
Seven years after Kryptos’ 1990 dedication, CIA employee David Stein cracked the code for the first three sections (K1, K2, and K3). Sixteen months later, Jim Gillogly, an LA-area cryptanalyst, also broke the code and the CIA was compelled to publicize Stein’s earlier breakthrough. The first three sections encrypt misspellings and other anomalies that likely hint at the solution to the fourth and final section. The last section is not in Standard English and requires two levels of cryptanalysis. The 97 characters of the fourth section have attracted a Kryptos community, amateurs and professionals alike, who remain steadfast in their efforts to decipher the code. Even once the code is cracked, there is still exists a hidden message.
-Jacquelyn Lickness
Mission Impossible: The Code Even the CIA Can’t Crack (by Steven Levy, Wired)
A Break for Code Breakers on a C.I.A. Mystery (by Kenneth Chang, New York Times)
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