A CNN article about Kryptos

Kommentare (8)

1. #1 TWO

   29. Juli 2020

   No idea about this.

   But it should be publicly available.

   There will be some sort of ceremony later this year on the CIA campus.

   No info is released about this event.

   But the list of invitees contain some very interesting names.

2. #2 Richard Bean

   Brisbane

   29. Juli 2020

   What Leon got is unfortunately all you get. You go first to http://www.copyright.gov, then click the link which says “Search Copyright Records”, which currently takes you to a Library of Congress site – https://cocatalog.loc.gov/cgi-bin/Pwebrecon.cgi?DB=local&PAGE=First – then you type “Sanborn Herbert James” (no commas or quotes) in the box, select “Search by Name” in the box below, then “Begin Search”. This link https://cocatalog.loc.gov/cgi-bin/Pwebrecon.cgi?SC=Author&SA=Sanborn%2C%20Herbert%20James%2C%20Jr%2E%2C%201945%2D seems to take you directly to his page (at the moment!).

   Anyway. Sanborn was discussing it in the context of lawyers:

   “I had to compose several paragraphs, which they are called K1, K2, K3, and K4. That text written in English by me and also Howard Carter are the elements that are—K1, 2, 3 have already been deciphered. K4 has not been deciphered. It’s the plain text that I have copyright on. And the encoding system isn’t copyrightable. But it doesn’t matter because frankly, you know—anyway, since I have copyright on the plain text, then there is some proprietary owning of the text, which thank God, some part of it I can own and am able to control [01:20:00], so other interpreters don’t try to imply that my artwork means something that it does not. And that is a challenge.”

   And I have no idea how you copyright plain text when you’ve only made the encrypted version public, or what that means. I know in some legal systems you can be an anonymous plaintiff, like in the Techno Viking case in Germany, but to explain what copyrighting an unknown plain text means or what effect it might have … we’d need a US copyright lawyer!

   On the subject, Sanborn had a trademark from 2011 to 2018 that you can find in the TESS database. Probably more relevant than this are the TecSec patents on multi-layered encryption, key escrow etc.

   Sculpture and artwork made of metal which contain encoded text relating to secrets and secrecy; sculpture and artwork made primarily of the metal in combination with granite, slate, quartz, petrified wood, and/or lodestone, which contains encoded text relating to secrets and secrecy.
   FIRST USE: 19911101.
   FIRST USE IN COMMERCE: 19911101
   Serial Number 85076841
   Filing Date July 2, 2010
   Published for Opposition April 12, 2011
   Registration Number 4077742
   Registration Date December 27, 2011
   Cancellation Date August 3, 2018

3. #3 Ralf Buelow

   29. Juli 2020

   Interesting. November 3rd is the tenth anniversary of the dedication of the sculpture.

4. #4 TWO

   29. Juli 2020

   No way he can copyright the passage based on the diary of Howard Carter,

5. #5 Seth

   30. Juli 2020

   He almost certainly tried to copyright his cipher text, the use of tables, the carving of letters into copper or any other materials, etc. He was pissed that Dan Brown was “stealing” from him by making a passing reference to Kryptos in one of his books.

   Anyway, that CNN article has a lot of factual errors:

   Unveiled on November 3, 1990, it’s called Kryptos, and it contains a cryptographic challenge. Surely, someone would crack the code in just a couple of weeks, Sanborn thought.

   In previous interviews he said he though the last section would take far longer.

   “I cut with jigsaws, by hand, almost 2,000 letters,” Sanborn says.

   IIRC he went through something like 4 assistants who did most/all of the cutting. But claiming he did it all by himself seems to fit with his personality, like his claims that he invented crypto puzzles and made crypto cool. I guess he invented those cryptograms my grandma used to solve in the paper, too?

   “Iqlusion” isn’t a typo. Sanborn intentionally misspelled the word “illusion.” It was his way of throwing people off.

   His own worksheets clearly show it was a typo when he misspelled the keyword. Yet he keeps implying it was on purpose until questioned directly when he gets vague.

6. #6 Richard Bean

   Brisbane

   31. Juli 2020

   Good summary, Seth!

   There’s five different stories on how long it was supposed to last, two different stories on whether or not Scheidt knew the plain text, and three different stories on how many people did the metal cutting. It’s like Rashomon! I guess this way people keep talking about it for longer.

   (1) Sanborn: I thought it would be solved immediately

   Surely, someone would crack the code in just a couple of weeks. — Sanborn 2020
   I assumed that people would figure it out in a matter of weeks — Sanborn 2009
   I really expected [Kryptos] to get decoded in the first few months — Sanborn 2005

   (2) Scheidt: It was intended to last 5, 7, or 10 years

   Its intent was to last roughly five years; it was modeled along those lines — Scheidt 2000
   the last part, perhaps ten — Scheidt 1999
   Scheidt figured the whole puzzle would be solved in less than seven years — Scheidt 2009
   (five, seven & ten years again) — Scheidt 2006/07

   (3) Sanborn: It was intended to last 100 years (at this point you start to worry about his thought process – if one way or another he’s “accidentally” made it impossible)

   So anyway that will go on hopefully for a century, long after my death. — Sanborn 2009
   I wanted this piece to last into or through the 21st century. — Sanborn 2009

   (4) Sanborn: It will/might never be solved

   [Kryptos] is so hard to break that the CIA “will never figure it out” — Sanborn 1997
   Parts can be deciphered in a matter of weeks or months, but other parts might never be deciphered without the knowledge that Webster has. — Sanborn 1991
   Part of it was designed to be deciphered within a couple of weeks. Part of it was designed to be deciphered within a couple of months. And part of it within years, or never. — Sanborn 1991

   (5) Sanborn: I’ll decide how long it will take

   Like Kryptos, the other public works are designed to exude their information slowly. … For the past 30 years, my task as an artist has been to release this hidden information at a rate commensurate with its importance, and at the time of my choosing so as to prolong the experience of discovery. As we all know, artwork that gives up its form or content quickly is soon forgotten. — Sanborn 2012

   —————

   (1) Scheidt: I don’t know what the plaintext is

   Jim is really the only person that knows what [the sculpture] says. I don’t. And all I
   talked about, or we discussed, was the codes themselves, and the limitations as well as
   how it could it be adapted into his design. — Scheidt 1991

   (2) Scheidt: I checked the first three parts, but not the last part

   Q: So the text that’s on the sculpture at some point you went in and you looked at the ciphers
   and you worked backwards to the plaintext?
   A: Yeah, except for K4 I didn’t. I did all the others. — Scheidt 2015

   ——————

   (1) Sanborn: I did all the metal cutting myself (ok, he probably didn’t mean it literally, but usually people talk the other way around – they use the royal “we” when they mean just themselves)

   I cut with jigsaws, by hand, almost 2,000 letters — Sanborn 2020.

   (2) An assistant: all the metal cutting was the work of two people

   I helped Jim Sanborn build and install a sculpture called Kryptos. Actually another person and I did all the work, but what can ya say? — Oct 2001

   I worked at the CIA for about a year… actually, I worked for an artist who had a commission to install a sculpture called “kryptos” at the CIA. I cut all those letters out by hand with a bosch saber saw..well, me and one other person. — May 2001

   (3) Sanborn: There were about 20 assistants

   Nine hundred jigsaw blades, nine jigsaws, and about 20 assistants because they could not take it; they could only—each assistant lasted, most of the assistants lasted only a week or two. — Sanborn 2009

7. #7 TWO

   31. Juli 2020

   If You want a good laugh abiyt Kryptos

   And don’t take it too serious 🙂

   Cia old headquarters building
   Northeast cornerstone bo
   x its walls inside Berlin clock
   Easter ears bunny baud we go

   Reminds me of Klaus and his Lego.

   Be safe

8. #8 Greg

   KRYPTOS - the keyword for K4

   18. August 2020

   Calculations for K1, K2, K3:

   Average distances in Kryptos between decrypted and encrypted texts are:
   Part 1: around 6,7
   Part 2: around 8,9
   Part 3: around 6,7
   Seem to be close to 6,5

   if we split letters of decrypted messages to two sets:

   * IS_KR={KRYPTOS}

   * IS_NOT_KR={ABCDEFGHIJLMNQUVWXZ}

   and calculate distances separately, then the distances are:
   Part 1 for (IS_NOT_KR vs IS_KR) = (7,1 vs 5,5) – similar (7,1/5,5 = 1,29)
   Part 2 for (IS_NOT_KR vs IS_KR) = (8,3 vs 9,8) – similar (8,3/9,8 = 0,84)
   Part 3 for (IS_NOT_KR vs IS_KR) = (6,4 vs 7,4) – similar (6,4/7,4 = 0,86)
   everything behaves as it should behave in a correct cipher.

   Calculations for clues:

   Now lets take a look into clues BERLIN, CLOCK and NORTHEAST

   BERLIN clue for (IS_NOT_KR vs IS_KR) = (9 vs 2) – incident (9/2 = 4,5)
   CLOCK clue for (IS_NOT_KR vs IS_KR) = (11,6 vs 4,5) – coincidence (11,6/4,5 = 2,6)
   NORTHEAST clue for (IS_NOT_KR vs IS_KR) = (5,25 vs 1,4) – pattern (5,25/1,4 = 3,75)
   These are much larger values than they should be for a random word as a keyword.

   This pattern shows that KRYPTOS is the keyword used for Part 4.