New Cryptos Mystery Key

The creator of the legendary riddle sculpture revealed another 5 letters of the encrypted message

The headquarters of the US Central Intelligence Agency is located in Langley, Virginia, 13 kilometers from the state capital. In the late 80s, during the construction of a new building, an empty place was formed, in which they decided to put some kind of installation. In 1988, the choice fell on James Sanborn.

Sunborn knew little about data encryption, so he had to prepare well. Ed Shadet helped in this., who just stepped down as head of the Langley cryptographic center. It was necessary to leave a way to unravel, and also not to reveal the current secrets of the CIA. Therefore, Sheidt taught the artist not modern cryptography, but the encryption techniques of the period from the end of the 19th century until the Second World War, methods that require only a 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 through 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 yesterday evening. At some point, he even thought that some forces in the CIA wanted to hinder the project.

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

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

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

Only much later became knownthat the first were actually not the crusaders themselves. Three employees of the US National Security Agency set to work in 1992 and quickly realized that everything was encrypted manually, without the use of computer technology. K1 took only two days. They spent a day on the fourth part, but then they realized that decoding K4 would take an unacceptably long time. By June 1993, work on the first three sections was completed, and the CIA not without pride sent a memo saying that the NSA was the first to carry out a partial solution to the problem.

16 months after Stein, California cryptanalyst James Gillogley unraveled the cipher of parts K1, K2, and K3. The code was hacked on a Pentium II processor-based home computer. Only after that, the CIA received a report on the details of the Stein hack.

There are 869 characters in the sculpture: 865 letters and 4 question marks. They are extruded onto a 1.3 cm thick copper sheet. This S-shaped scroll attracts the most attention, although the installation has other elements. The cost of Cryptos is 250 thousand dollars. The CIA loves sculpture. It is believed that it emphasizes the positive features of the organization: craving for solving puzzles and curiosity.

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

The first text.

BETWEEN SUBTLE SHADING AND THE ABSENCE OF LIGHT LIES THE NUANCE OF IQLUSION

A mistake was made in the spelling of the word ILLUSION, which was probably what was intended.

Between a slight dimming and the absence of light lies the nuance of illusion.

The second text.

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 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 - this is the head of the CIA William Webster, the artist confirmed this in 2005. On April 19, 2006, Sanborn announced that there should be FOUR SECONDS WEST X LAYER TWO instead of FOUR SECONDS WEST ID BY ROWS. The symbol X was omitted on the statue at the end of K2. The relatively meaningful text of the wrong ID BY ROWS variant is a match. Approximate translation:

He was completely invisible. How is this possible? The magnetic field of the earth was used. x Information was received and transmitted underground [or through underground utilities] to an unknown location. x Do Langley know about this? A 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 tenths of a north latitude, seventy seven degrees eight minutes forty four seconds west longitude. x Layer two.

Third text

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 EEN IN AND PEACE 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?

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

Slowly, desperately slowly, the remains of the debris that covered the bottom of the aisle were removed. With trembling hands, I made a small hole in the upper left corner. And after that, expanding it a little, I put a candle in and looked inside. The hot air left the tomb and made the flames flicker, but the details of the room still arose from the darkness. x Can you see something q?

97 characters of the fourth section have not yet succumbed to anyone. Sanborn specifically made it more difficult, it will require a second level of cryptanalysis. According to the author, the final decision will require the presence of Langley - the cryptic text is some kind of mystery. Simply decryption does not end there. Strange things in writing words from other parts can help in finding a solution.

Finally, the creator himself sometimes gives hints. Until recently, there was only one: four years ago, middle-aged James Sanborn said that the word BERLIN is in the original phrase, and the NYPVTT letter set is responsible for it. 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.

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

The artist also talked about the love of Berlin watches to the Wired publication ; he especially likes Set Theory . The device was created in the 70s of the last century by the German designer Dieter Binninger. Instead of numbers , illuminated areas on the dial are used . To find out the current time, you need to make some calculations. The lamps in each row show the time in a five-digit number system. The price of the 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 clock in cryptography. But the version with the clock is much more likely: a hint was given just in time for the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.

In K2, coordinates are mentioned that, with a slight error, indicate a monument on 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 can 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 just mistakes.

In addition, the second text mentions instillation of something. The third describes the process of gaining access to burial.

To put up the statue without fear of obscenity in encrypted messages, the artist issued a sealed envelope with text to William Webster, head of the CIA. The text is also known to Ed Sheidt, who helped to choose encryption methods. At least that is what the crusaders themselves believed: as the artist stated in 2005, he puffed them and showed the wrong decision.

Sunborn hopes to provoke a new wave of interest in its installation and a gradual unraveling of the last secret.