New clue to the mystery of the Cryptos

The creator of the legendary sculpture riddles uncovered 5 more letters of the encrypted message

The main office of the Central Intelligence Agency is located in Langley, Virginia, 13 kilometers from the state capital. At the end of the 80s, when building a new building, an empty space was formed, into which they decided to install some installation. In 1988, the choice fell on James Sanborn.



Sanborn did not know much about data encryption, so he had to prepare well. Ed Sheydt , who had just left the post of head of the Langley cryptographic center, helped in this. It was necessary to leave a way of a solution, and also not to give out the current secrets of the CIA. Therefore, the artist did not teach modern cryptography, but the techniques of encrypting the period from the end of the 19th century to the Second World War, methods that require only pen and paper. In contrast, today's algorithms rely heavily on computers.



By November 1990, the sculpture was ready. For two years on her work there have been many attempts to find out secret messages. People literally climbed into the windows, trying to record conversations and photograph objects in the studio. One morning, Sanborn did not find a pile of stone that was in place last night. At one point, he even thought that some forces in the CIA wanted to prevent the project.





The text consists of four sections: K1, K2, K3 and K4. They are not marked, I also had to think about splitting into parts. At the moment, only the first three have been deciphered, the meaning of the fourth remains a mystery.

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The creator himself believed that the first three parts of his creation will decipher in a few weeks, maximum months. But it took years. Sheydtu also thought that the whole puzzle would take up to 7 years. He, too, was wrong.



The first three pieces of the puzzle were decided by CIA employee David Stein, who spent 400 hours of lunch breaks on it. The decision was ready only by 1998, and its details did not go beyond the closed meetings. Until 2013, the leadership was attributed to Stein outside the secret structures.



Only much later it became known that the first were actually not the crushmen themselves. Three employees of the National Security Agency of the United States set to work in 1992 and quickly realized that everything was encrypted manually, without the use of computer technology. It took just two days for K1. We spent the day on the fourth part, but immediately realized that it would take an inadmissibly long time to decipher the K4. By June 1993, the work on the first three sections was completed, and the CIA sent a memo to the CIA that the partial solution of the problem was first carried out by the NSA.



Sixteen months after Stein, California cryptanalyst James Gillogly guessed the cipher of parts K1, K2 and K3. The code was cracked on a home computer with a Pentium II processor. Only after this, the CIA received a report on the details of Hacking Stein.



A total of 869 characters on the sculpture: 865 letters and 4 question marks. They are embossed on a 1.3 cm thick copper sheet. This S-shaped scroll draws the most attention, although the installation has other elements. The cost of the Cryptos is 250 thousand dollars. The CIA loves sculpture. It is believed that she emphasizes the positive features of the organization: craving for solving mysteries and curiosity.



The first section is encrypted with the Viginer cipher , the second also uses the letters on the right. In K3, a different method is used - transposition.

First text.

BETWEEN SUBTLE SHADING AND THE ABSENCE

The spelling of the word ILLUSION made a mistake, which was probably intended.

Between a light blackout and the absence of light lies the nuance of illusion.

Second text.

IT WAS TOTALLY INVISIBLE HOWS THAT POSSIBLE? THEY USED THE EARTHS MAGNETIC FIELD X THE INFORMATION WAS THE GATHERED AND THE TRANSMITTED UNDERGRUUND TO AN UNKNOWN LOCATION X DOES LANGUAGE KNOW ABOUT THIS? THEY SHOULD ITS BURIED OUT THERE SOMEWHERE X KNOWS THE EXACT LOCATION? ONLY WW THIS WASHING HISTORY LIGHT MESSAGE X THIRTY DEGREES FIFTY SEVEN MINUTES SIX POINT FIVE SECONDS NORTH SEVENTY DEGREES FORT FOX SECONDS WEST X ID BY ROWS

Errors again, and the coordinates lead to a place a few hundred steps from the sculpture. There is nothing particularly interesting there. WW is the head of the CIA, William Webster, the artist confirmed this in 2005. On April 19, 2006, Sanborn announced that FOUR SECONDS WEST ID BY ROWS should be FOUR SECONDS WEST X LAYER TWO. The symbol X at the end of K2 was missing on the statue. The relatively meaningful text of the wrong ID BY ROWS is a coincidence. Approximate translation:

He was completely invisible. How is this possible? The earth's magnetic field was used. x Information was received and transmitted underground [or via underground communications] to an unknown place. x Do they know about it in Langley? Must: he is buried somewhere. x Who knows the exact location? WW only. Here is 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.

Third text

SLOWLY DESPARATELY SLOWLY THE REMAINS OF PASSAGE FROM THE CHAMBER OF THE FLOOR BOTTLINES OF THE ROOM WITHIN EMERGED FROM THE MIST X CAN YOU SEE ANYTHING Q?

This is a retelling of a recording from the diary of Howard Carter, who in 1922 opened Tutankhamun’s tomb. Approximate translation:

Slowly, desperately slowly, the remnants of debris, which was littered with the lower part of the passage, were removed. With shaking hands, I made a small hole in the upper left corner. And after that, having expanded it a little, I pushed the candle and looked inside. The hot air left the tomb and made the flame flicker, but the details of the room still arose from the darkness. x Can you see anything q?

97 characters of the fourth section have not yet succumbed to anyone. Sanborn specifically made it more complicated, it will require a second level of cryptanalysis. According to the author, the final decision will require a presence in Langley - some kind of mystery is an encrypted text. Just deciphering it will not end. Help in finding a solution can be odd in writing words from other parts.



Finally, the creator himself sometimes gives hints. Until recently, there was only one: four years ago, the elderly James Sanborn stated that the word “BERLIN” was in the original phrase, and the final result was the set of letters NYPVTT. The sculpture was created just during the reunification of Germany and the fall of the Berlin Wall, and Sanborn wanted to somehow mention this event in his creation.



The new clue was the word CLOCK (clock as a device for determining time). Wired mentions that it is “the next word in the sequence,” but it’s unclear where it’s located in the text. It remains to find the meaning of the remaining 86 letters K4.



Another edition of Wired artist spoke about his love for the Berlin clock, especially like the theory of sets . The device was created in the 70s of the last century by the German designer Dieter Binninger. Instead of numbers , illuminated areas are used on the dial . To find out the current time, you need to make some calculations. Lamps in each of the rows show the time in the five-fold number system. The price of division from top to bottom: 5 hours, 1 hour, 5 minutes, 1 minute.



Who knows if this conversation has any hidden meaning. Perhaps clock is a reference to the sync signal in cryptography. But the version with the clock is much more likely: the clue was given in time for the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.



In K2, coordinates are mentioned, which with a small error indicate a monument in the territory of the CIA, which is a gift from the German government - three plates from the same Berlin Wall. The error is exactly 4 seconds in latitude and 4 seconds in longitude. On the other hand, the inaccuracy may be caused by the fact that the monument was opened later, in 1992. Its location could change relative to the original plans. Or maybe Sanborn just missed a little - mistakes in sculpture can be not only clues, but simply mistakes.



In addition, the second text mentions the instillation of something. The third describes the process of accessing the disposal.



To put the statue could be without fear of obscenity in encrypted messages, the artist issued a sealed envelope with the text of William Webster, the head of the CIA. The text is also known to Ed Sheydtu, who helped choose encryption methods. At least, the tsrushniki themselves thought so: as the artist stated in 2005, he inflated them and showed the wrong decision.



Sanborn hopes to cause a new wave of interest in his installation and a gradual clue to the last secret.