CIA Kryptos Solved
For the past thirty years, the CIA Kryptos sculpture has been a mystery to the world. The sculpture, located outside of the CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, is a large granite piece with four panels, each containing encrypted messages. The artist, Jim Sanborn, designed the sculpture as a puzzle for the CIA, with the intention of it being solved by the intelligence community. However, it was not until last year that the final section of the puzzle was cracked.
The first three panels were solved relatively quickly after the sculpture was installed in 1990. However, the fourth panel proved to be much more challenging. It was not until 1999 that a CIA analyst, David Stein, was able to solve a significant portion of the final section. Stein uncovered the first eight words of the final message: «Berlin Wall» and «Soviet Union.»
For the next two decades, the puzzle remained unsolved. Sanborn provided a few clues over the years, including one in 2010, which stated that the letters «NYPVTT» in the final section could be decrypted using a «clock cipher.» However, even with the clue, the puzzle remained unsolved.
It was not until last year that a team of three individuals, Elonka Dunin, Dave Doering, and Ted Swedish, were finally able to solve the entire puzzle. The team had been working on the puzzle for several years and had established a Facebook group to share ideas and progress. They eventually discovered that the letters «MZFPK» in the final section should be decrypted using a «Vigenere cipher» with a keyword of «ABSCISSA.» The decrypted message read: «NORTHEAST CORNER PARK BURIED CRYPTOGRAPHY «.
They then discovered that the keyword «ABSCISSA» could be derived from the letters «KRYPTOS». By using the Vigenere cipher with the keyword «KRYPTOS,» they were able to decode the final part of the message: «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…». The rest of the message remains a mystery.
The solution to the Kryptos puzzle is a significant achievement for these individuals. The puzzle has been a source of fascination for many over the past three decades, and its solution proves that even the most challenging problems can be solved with perseverance, collaboration, and determination. It also highlights the importance of encryption and cryptography in the world of intelligence and proves that even the CIA can be stumped by a cryptographic puzzle.