For more than three decades, not even the CIA’s best cryptographers have been able to decipher a code in front of their own headquarters. It is not hidden in a file or on a secret network, but engraved on a copper sheet in the middle of the main garden of Langley, in Virginia, USA.
It is called Kryptos, a sculpture that since 1990 has kept a message that has obsessed spies, mathematicians and enigma fans. Three of its four codes have already been solved, but the last one, K4, remains a mystery that only its creator knows.
It was created by Jim Sanborn, who thought the puzzle would last a few years before being solved, but he was wrong. Thirty-five years later, Neither the CIA analysts nor the experts who have dedicated their lives to the code have managed to unravel it..
Now, the artist has decided to do something that no one expected: auction the final answerthe deciphered text of the famous K4, along with the graphs and notes he used to construct it. The sale, scheduled for November 20, could reach between 280,000 and 470,000 euros.
The buyer will be able to choose whether to reveal the message to the world or keep it secret.. For Sanborn, it is a kind of symbolic transfer, because after more than three decades keeping the enigma, he will pass it into the hands of another person.
The origin of Kryptos and why it has baffled the CIA so much
Kryptos is not just any sculpture, since in 1988, the Central Intelligence Agency commissioned Sanborn to create a work that represented the link between art, knowledge and secret communication.
To do this, the artist enlisted the help of Edward Scheidt, a veteran CIA cryptographer who then directed the agency’s cryptology center. The result was a large curved copper sheet with 1,735 engraved characters, divided into four independent sections.
Each one hides a message encrypted using classic substitution and transposition techniques, but with an increasing level of complexity. Sanborn intended to create an intellectual challenge that would challenge intelligence analysts. In fact, he confessed years later that he thought the CIA would solve it in less than a decade.
Thirty-five years later, the challenge remains unfinished, indicating that what began as an artistic game has become one of the most famous puzzles in the world, with entire communities dedicated to trying to solve it.
The impossible code
The first three Kryptos messages were deciphered years ago. The first talks about the illusion between light and shadow; the second mentions a message buried somewhere in Langley; and the third recreates the excitement of archaeologist Howard Carter upon discovering Tutankhamun’s tomb.
However, the fourth, the famous K4, has resisted all attempts at decipherment. Neither the CIA cryptographers nor the NSA experts have been able to defeat him. Neither do the thousands of amateurs who have been testing combinations of keys, frequencies and encryption methods for decades.
Sanborn, aware of the frustration he has generated, has left loose clues over the years: six letters that form «Berlin», then the word «clock», later «northeast», but none have served to solve the text.
The reason is simple, and it is that K4 has no known key, and it is suspected that the artist combined several encryption methods in a single sequenceso it’s a puzzle within a puzzle. This is the message: OBKRUOXOGHULBSOLIFBBWFLRVQQPRNGKSSOTWTQSJQSSEKZZWATJKLUDIAWINFBNYPVTTMZFPKWGDKZXTJCDIGKUHUAUEKCAR.
Jim Sanborn created the work as a metaphor for hidden information, for the balance between the visible and the invisible, between what is known and what will never be known. In a way, the sculpture is also a mirror of the CIA itself: a building that keeps secrets, located in front of a work that symbolizes absolute mystery.
Interest in Kryptos has been constant, where thousands of people around the world have dedicated years to studying its structure, its symbology and its deliberate spelling errors.
Some believe that each section is a clue to understand the next, others think that the real message is not in the letters.but in its physical arrangement or in the geometry of the sculpture.
It is estimated that the artist has earned more than $40,000 reviewing supposed solutions sent by curious people and amateur cryptographers. Even so, he has never revealed a single letter of the final message outside of the clues that he himself decided to publish.
Although the text comes to light after the auction, its interpretation will remain open. Perhaps Kryptos K4 reveals a simple phrase or a complex metaphorbut the enigma will not disappear. Sanborn has achieved what few artists achieve, that his work lives on in the minds of those who try to understand it.
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