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The secret code behind the CIA's Kryptos puzzle is up for sale
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- drspoils 1y agoAnd the secret key is: puppy
- dhosek 1y agoNah, it’s password123
- edoceo 1y ago12345, same as my luggage
- unsnap_biceps 1y agohunter2
- nosmokewhereiam 1y agoAll I see is ****
- IlikeKitties 1y agoI feel old now
- massung 1y agoTake your upvote. ;-)
- at-fates-hands 1y agoGotta be 42.
- throwawayoldie 1y agoNah, it's always "swordfish".
- ars 1y agoI have discovered a truly marvelous solution to this code, which this text box is too small to contain.
- EGreg 1y agowhat text box
- bcraven 1y agohttps://www.laphamsquarterly.org/miscellany/fermats-last-margin-note https://www.laphamsquarterly.org/miscellany/fermats-last-mar...
- EGreg 1y agoI know. The difference is, his scribbling was FOUND in the margin — but the comment had no text box when it was read :)
- snypher 1y agoWhat _is_ a comment? A comment is born from a blank text box, does it lose all aspects of being a text box once it is submitted? Does a small amount of the text box remain deep within a submitted comment?
- edoceo 1y agoUp vote for reference to Fermat!
- snowwrestler 1y agoIt seems the solution will continue to iqlude us.
- rgovostes 1y agoI've spent a fair amount of time on K4, and my conclusion is that it's simply a poor puzzle. At this point 24 of 97 characters have been revealed, and yet there's seemingly still not enough information pointing to how the known plaintext corresponds to the ciphertext. Over the decades everything reasonable has been tried and eliminated, which means the solution is likely to be unreasonable.
- pjbk 1y agoProbably correct. Different from the other cyphers, the number of symbols is short, and correlating part of the plaintext that has been revealed gives poor measures for the full string length. It has been said that the other solutions are required to solve K4, so if the solution relies on something like character alignment, matrix coding or an even more convoluted permutation arrangement, this can look (or directly be) a one-time pad cypher which are arguably the most difficult to solve.
- cyberge99 1y agoDoes it’s S shape, or the shadow it casts or any other physical representation of it have to do with the message?
- pjbk 1y agoWell, outside of Sanborn and his collaborators, who knows. When the puzzles were first revealed and people started trying to crack them, some of them explored out of the box approaches like the design of the sculpture, odd-shaped letters, shadows of the symbols, it's geographic position, etc. However eventually all first 3 turned out to be classic cryptographic algorithms (Vigenere for K1 and K2, transposition for K3), with the information to solve them contained within the cyphertext of the sculpture. For K4, Sanborn has hinted that this may not be the case.
- willvarfar 1y agois it hinting at S-Box?
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- cantrevealname 1y ago> These cryptographic systems were not designed by the sculptor himself but by Edward Scheidt, who retired as chairman of the CIA’s Cryptographic Center in 1989. The article left me with a nagging question: Doesn’t the designer of the codes deserve a share of the proceeds of the auction? He’s still alive according to Wikipedia. It sounds like the unsolved code is what makes the art especially valuable. Was the cryptographer’s effort a “work for hire”, so he doesn’t get anything from the sale?
- elahieh 1y agoGood point, and it's also entirely possible the code designer just did a terrible job. e.g. around 57:00 of https://youtu.be/JOXPYkjvDaA https://youtu.be/JOXPYkjvDaA As Kryptos gots a huge amount of media attention in 1999, references to him changed from "chairman of A cryptographic center" to "chairman of [THE] CIA's cryptographic center" when it doesn't even seem that it has such a center. And the featured story (around 52:00 of the video) has him apparently claiming credit for helping solve a Caesar cipher! https://web.archive.org/web/19990501000000*/http://www.tecsec.com/Ed%20Scheidt.htm https://web.archive.org/web/19990501000000*/http://www.tecse...
- cyberge99 1y ago“lies” is grammatically incorrect here. Shouldn’t it read “lays”?
- rfl890 1y agoThink "therein lies the rub"
- rolph 1y agoa direct reference to the Berlin Clock. Sanborn further stated that in order to solve section 4, "You'd better delve into that particular clock".[2] However, Sanborn also said that, "There are several really interesting clocks in Berlin." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mengenlehreuhr https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mengenlehreuhr
- sivm 1y ago1. Stand at first light: face EAST, then NORTHEAST. Let the BERLIN CLOCK choose; read where the shad 2. Make a narrow breach of light; hold still; as the edge moves, letters awaken and the sealed doorw 3. Four passes: hours, hour, minutes, minute. Read on each sweep; the rising sun will order what see He is an artist, not a mathematician. It’s a physical reveal for this layer of the copper onion.
- sivm 1y ago4. At dawn I stood east then northeast, counting by the clock; the rim's shadow wrote the hidden lin 5. First light, east to northeast. Copper grid in shadow. Sample on the beats. Write only what the l 6. Trust the clean edge, not the flicker; the mind finds patterns, but the edge alone reveals the me Perhaps a 3D artist can model it and run some simulations with light.
- sivm 1y agoK5 is instructions something like: Head for the wall facing north; use the rim’s shadow as the clock. Berlin is the light. So head north of it and use the shadows rim and 4/4/11/4 reveals and the Berlin clock sequence. Maybe on NOVEMBER NINE AT DAWN if you simulate it.
- sivm 1y agoK6 is something like NOON HERE CENTER ON THE NORTH RIM; THEN READ THAT. I don’t know if it ends.
- sivm 1y agoSince nobody wants to play with me… if you have something beefier than my 386, you should have enough to finish. Remember it is always 5:55 somewhere- even in Berlin. Partial answer: FACE EAST THEN NORTHEAST. LET THE BERLIN CLOCK CHOOSE; READ EDGE TO EDGE TO FIND THE FINAL CODE. K4 可能由类 Vigenère 层加柏林钟的基5转置构成；我以已知 crib 为锚点，运行搜索，并利用 IC、χ² 与 n-gram 收敛到英文分布。
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]