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2009/08/03

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Cracking Kryptos

Posted: 02 Aug 2009 10:32 PM PDT

The following is an article from Uncle John's Triumphant 20th
Anniversary Bathroom Reader

It sits just steps away from some of the most brilliant cryptographers in the country, and yet after nearly 20 years of trying no one has been able to unlock its secrets.

OBJET D’ART
In the late 1980’s, the General Services Administration, the federal agency responsible for building and operating government buildings, started accepting proposals for artwork to decorate a courtyard outside the cafeteria of the CIA’s new headquarters building in Langley, Virginia. One artist who submitted was James Sanborn, a sculptor from the Washington, D.C. area. Sanborn was struck by how CIA agents spend their entire lives keeping secrets from even their closest loved ones. He decided to put himself in their shoes: His sculpture, if accepted, would contain an encoded message- the CIA’s stock-in-trade—and only he’s take the secret with him to the grave, just like a CIA agent. (Photo: Elonka)

OFF TO SEE THE WIZARD
Sanborn pitches his concept to the GSA and won the commission. But he’s an artist, not a code expert, so he asked the CIA for assistance in coming up with a code that would be difficult for even the agency’s own cryptographers to crack. They put him in touch with Ed Scheidt, chairman of the CIA’s Cryptographic Center, and known within the agency as the “Wizard of Codes.”

Scheidt coached Sanborn for four months—he was free to teach any technique that did not compromise the agency’s security—and then Sanborn spent two and a half years cutting 865 individual letters, plus some question marks in rows onto a giant sheet of copper that was to be the main part of the sculpture. He names it Kryptos, after the Greek word for “hidden.” The work was unveiled in November 1990; it consisted of a standing petrified log with a sheet of copper flowing out from it, almost like a sheet of paper rolling out of a computer printer. The work also featured several smaller elements: carved stones, smaller sheets of copper, and even a duck pond, located around the CIA campus.

GOING PUBLIC
Few people would have guessed that Kryptos would attract much public interest. The CIA headquarters is off-limits to anyone who doesn’t have business there, so the public never gets a chance to see the sculpture in person. Nevertheless, as CIA employees began to talk about it with outsiders—the sculpture is apparently one of the few things around the CIA that isn’t top secret—it wasn’t long before photographers, detailed descriptions, and transcriptions of the inscribed letters began circulating outside the agency. All over the country, aspiring code breakers set to work trying to unlock Kryptos’ secrets.

The first person outside the intelligence community to make significant progress was James Gillogly, a computer scientist from Los Angeles. In 1999 he announced that the information on the copper scroll was actually four different encrypted passages, not just one, and that he had succeeded in cracking three of them (768 of the 865 characters) using software he had written.

Gillogly’s announcement prompted the CIA to admit publicly what had already become well known within the intelligence community: A team of four National Security Agency employees had cracked the same three sections of the code in 1992 using NSA computers, and in 1998 a CIA analyst named David Stein—had been able to crack the last section of the code.

AS EASY AS ONE, TWO, THREE
As the code breakers discovered, Sanborn encrypted the first two sections, known as K1 and K2 to code buffs, using substitution, a classic technique in which each letter of the alphabet is switched with another. For example, if X substitutes for the letter D, R substitutes for O, and B substitutes for G, then the word DOG is encrypted as XRB.

K3, the third passage, was encrypted using another classic technique called transposition. Instead of substituting one letter for another, the existing letters are rearranged according to some systematic pattern. Using transcription, DOG could be encrypted as DGO, OGD, ODG, GOD and GDO. That may sound pretty simple to crack, but is DOG appeared in a larger body of text, the hundreds of thousands of letters, making the code very difficult to solve.

ADD’EM UP
How do cryptographers identify these codes? One interesting feature of many languages—including English—is that no matter what the text, letters always appear in roughly the same frequency, For example, the letter E is likely to appear about 12% of the time in any passage, more often than any other letter if the alphabet. The letter Q appears least often—only 0.2% of the time.

So if the letter X appears in a body of encrypted text about 12% of the time, there’s a good chance that the letter X is substituting for the letter E, and the encryption method used is substitution.

But if the letters in the encrypted text appear about as often a you’d expect them to in an unencrypted text—E still appears about 12% of the time—then the encryption method used is likely to be transposition.

ENCRYPTION REVEALED
The first passage of Kryptos, K1, was decoded to read as follows:

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

(Sanborn deliberately misspelled illusion to make it more difficult to crack; he did the same thing with the other words in K2 and K3.:

The second passage, K2, was decoded to read:

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 LAYER TWO

The graphic coordinates indicate a point on the CIA campus about 200 feet south of the sculpture. Why this point is mentioned in the text, or what the rest of the text is supposed to mean is anyone’s guess. Sanborn hasn’t given up many clues. He has revealed, however, that WW stands for William Webster, who was CIA director when Kryptos was dedicated. (According to CIA legend, Webster refused to pay for the sculpture unless Sanborn handed over a copy of the solution…which is how “WW” seem to know the “exact location” of whatever it is that is “buried out there somewhere”… if there really is something buried “out there.” The CIA’s copy of the solution—if it really does exist—is believed to remain in the CIA director’s safe to this day.)

The third passage, K3, decoded:

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 I INSERTED THE CANDLE AND PEERED IN THE HOT AIR ESCAPING 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 (?)

Sanborn created this passage by paraphrasing archaeologist Howard Carter’s description of his opening of King Tut’s tomb in his 1923 book, The Tomb of Tutankhamen. The passage deals with discovery, which fits in with the sculpture’s theme of decoding encrypted texts. Sanborn included the text because it was one of his favorite passages since childhood.

So how is K4, the fourth section of the sculpture , encrypted? No one but Sanborn knows. Here’s the encoded text as it appears on the sculpture. Let us know if you get anywhere with it:

OBKRUOXOGHULBSOLIFBBWFLRVQQPRNGKSSOTWTQSJQSSEKZZWATJK LUDIAWINFBNYPVTTMZFPKWGDKZXTJCDIGKUHUAEKCAR

CONCEALED IN PLAIN SIGHT
Why is the K4 passage so much more difficult to crack than the other three? It could be that it’s not written in English—Sanborn has used Russia-language codes in other works of art—which would make statistical analysis of the characters much more difficult. He could also have used any number of “concealment” techniques to mask the text. Removing all the vowels before encoding the message is one method of concealment; another is spelling words out phonetically: If a word like”people” is spelled “peephul,” for example, the correct solution may appear to be meaningless gibberish at first glance, causing the code breakers and computer software to discard to correct solution without realizing what it is.

The number of people attempting to crack the final Kryptos code grew dramatically after the references to the sculpture appeared on the dust jacket of the bestseller The Da Vinci Code. One website dedicated to solving Kryptos saw its traffic increase from a few hundred hits per month to more than 30,000…but no one has been able to crack the final code yet. There have been hints that Kryptos will be featured in the plot of the sequel to the Da Vinci Code; if so, the sculpture’s fame is just beginning.

QUESTIONS, QUESTIONS, QUESTIONS
There may be other clues that will aid in decoding the fourth passage. Some of the letters cut into the copper are slightly higher than others in the same row. Why? And because all 865 letters are cut all the way through the copper, sunlight slows through the sculpture to create interesting patterns of light and shadow on the ground. Do these patterns provide a clue to cracking the code? It’s a big possibility—remember, the first decoded passage reads, “Between subtle shading and the absence of light lies the nuance of Iqlusion.” If the light and shadows around the sculpture do provide a clue, that will make cracking the code very difficult, at least for outsiders, since none of them have been allowed into CIA headquarters to study the sculpture in person. Adding insult to mystery, Sanborn placed a number of large stones around the base of the sculpture. This, and the fact that the copper sheet curves around to form an S Shape, makes it virtually impossible to capture all the encoded text in a single photograph.

BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE
Remember, the copper scroll is only the main part of Sanborn’s work—there are several other mysterious objects scattered around the CIA campus, including stone-and-copper slabs with mysterious messages like “virtually invisible” and “t is your position” engraved into the copper in Morse code. There’s also a magnetic lodestone set on the grounds that appears to be pulling a compass needle carved into a nearby rock away from due North. What does it all mean…and what about the duck pond? Are there clues hidden there, or does Sanborn just like ducks?

Denied access to the genuine article, many aspiring cryptographers have visited the other code sculptures Sanborn created since Kryptos. Antipodes, one he created for the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington, D.C., contains a copy of the same encrypted text that appears on Kryptos, Other code crunchers use 3D modeling software to create elaborate models of Kryptos and the CIA grounds and study those for clues. A few pesky diehards have even stooped to calling Sanborn on the phone to beg for hints…but he refuses to play ball.

Which of the sculpture’s features provide clues to decoding the fourth passage…and which one hints at the solution to the final riddle within a riddle that Sanborn says can be solved only after all four passages have been decoded? Is there really something buried somewhere in the CIA campus, perhaps a prize of some kind, waiting to be discovered by the person who finally cracks the rest of the code?

Only Sanborn and (perhaps) the CIA director know for sure, and they aren’t talking.

The article above was reprinted with permission from Uncle John's Triumphant 20th Anniversary Bathroom Reader.

Proving that some things do get better with age, the latest Bathroom Reader is jam-packed with 600 pages of fascinating trivia, forgotten history, strange lawsuits and other neat articles.

Since 1988, the Bathroom Reader Institute had published a series of popular books containing irresistible bits of trivia and obscure yet fascinating facts.

If you like Neatorama, you'll love the Bathroom Reader Institute's books - go ahead and check 'em out!


Embroidery Tattoo

Posted: 02 Aug 2009 10:08 PM PDT

Flickr user Glitch Vixen got a tattoo of an embroidery her grandmother had made in high school. The result is undeniably beautiful and well-executed.

Link Via Trend Hunter

Send Ray Bradbury A Birthday Card

Posted: 02 Aug 2009 09:53 PM PDT

Legendary author Ray Bradbury is turning 89 this year on August 22nd. He will be celebrating the event at a bookstore in Glendale, California. For the those of you into Bradbury, but can’t make it to the party, just send him a card. The store has assured they will pass on any cards sent to:

Ray Bradbury C/O
Mystery and Imagination
237 North Brand Blvd.
Glendale, CA 91203

Link Via BoingBoing

Kooky Themed Weddings

Posted: 02 Aug 2009 09:42 PM PDT

Lemondrop has a collection of 20 weddings with a unique themes. The one above is one of the most unique, a scuba diving wedding. I wonder if all the bridesmaids or groomsmen already had scuba certification or if they had to get it just for the ceremony.

Link

Billboards that Don’t Belong Next to Each Other

Posted: 02 Aug 2009 12:19 PM PDT

Our web BFF BuzzFeed has a hilarious post about 15 billboards that really don’t belong next to each other. We’re kind of late of posting this one, but it’s too precious too miss: Link - Thanks Eric!

Crickets From Hell: Armor-Topped, Blood Squirting, Vomit Covered and Really Fat Crickets

Posted: 02 Aug 2009 11:46 AM PDT

The armoured ground cricket of southern Africa are fat and flightless, two things that make them prime targets in the food-scarce African landscape.

Predation should’ve killed off these crickets, but evolution has equipped them with an amazing arsenal of self defense mechanisms, including vomiting and squirting blood in every direction.

Entomologist Bill Bateman of the University of Pretoria said:



“If [the attack] is from above the blood wells out and coats your hand. If grabbed by forceps from the side, by a leg, they lean towards it and crouch down, then there is a slight cracking sound and the blood jets right along the line of attack.”

“The blood is pale green and rather acrid smelling. I couldn’t bring myself to actually taste it fresh but it leaves an acidy, tobacco-like taste on your fingers if you do not wash it off,” he says.

Link

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by coconutnut.

Time-Shifted Self-Portraits by Chino Otsuka

Posted: 02 Aug 2009 11:38 AM PDT


Imagine Finding Me, 1976 and 2005, Kamakura, Japan, double self portraits
by Chino Otsuka

The woman and child in this photo look like mother and daughter, but they are actually both artist Chino Otsuka at different ages.

In Imagine Finding Me, Otsuka’s series of "double self-portraits," the artist shows herself (with herself) over the span of decades, using what she calls "a time machine of digital tools."

Link - via monstersandrockets

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by gregs.

Top 5 Most Eligible World Leaders

Posted: 02 Aug 2009 11:33 AM PDT

Glimpse.org has researched and compiled the ultimate list of sugar daddies (and mamas)—the top five most eligible world leaders.  They’re single and they’re powerful, and you never know when your worldly travels could give you the opportunity to make a play for the Dragon King of Bhutan or the successor to the Monaco throne.

This link has all the information you’ll need.  Did you know Kim Jong-Il’s drink of choice is Hennessy Cognac?  Did you even know he’s a bachelor?

At a glance:
According to North Korean official records, Kim's birth was announced by a sparrow that descended directly from heaven. Married at least once, Kim is always interested in meeting new people and has had at least three semi-official mistresses with whom he has three or four children, depending on the source consulted. A self-proclaimed "Internet expert," Kim is also on record as the author of hundreds of books, half a dozen operas, a number of musicals, the design for the Juche Tower in Pyongyang, and the writer and/or producer of dozens of films.

Testimonials:
"He was not some crazy person. He was very polite. He had things he wanted to say. He didn't work from any notes or talking points. He had tremendous confidence." – Wendy Sherman, special advisor to Bill Clinton on North Korea

"Topped off with a rakish root-perm thatch, Jong Il resembles a guerrilla version of a Cabbage Patch Doll.” – Hannah Betts of The London Times on Kim Jong-Il's fashion sense

Says Kim:
“Small as a midget’s turd, aren’t I?” – to South Korean actress Choi Eun Hee whom he kidnapped and brought to North Korea

Link

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by ColinGlimpse.

Big Words Make You Seem Stupider

Posted: 02 Aug 2009 11:28 AM PDT

The consequence of erudite vernacular utilized irrespective of necessity is that you wind up sounding like a moron:

Everyone knows how college students will try to make themselves sound smarter by reaching for the thesaurus and using big, ponderous words they barely understand. But now a new study shows that readers can see through this. Daniel Oppenheimer, a psychologist at Princeton, took a handful of writing samples and used a thesaurus to replace the simple words with needlessly flowery ones.

… Oppenheimer gave all the writing samples — the original, simple ones and the modified, flowery ones — to 71 students to evaluate. The result? As the grandiosity and complexity of the language increased, the judges' estimation of the intelligence of the authors decreased. Oppenheimer wrote up his results in a paper with the gorgeously ironic title "Consequences of Erudite Vernacular Utilized Irrespective of Necessity: Problems with Using Long Words Needlessly."

Link

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by fletchsliver.

Totally Extreme and Historic Roller Coasters of Today and Yesteryear

Posted: 02 Aug 2009 11:07 AM PDT

Remember those old dinosaurs you use to ride many years ago at the local amusement parks? Well, some of these have gotten a facelift, and some remain some of the most famous, original thrill rides of our time.

The Diamondback is the new hyper-coaster at Kings Island in Mason, Ohio, my old stopping ground. The coaster measures 5280 feet long, stands 230 feet in the air, has a 215 foot drop, has 10 complete drops, 2 helix measuring 323 and 287 degrees, and reaches speeds of 80 mph. The Diamondback "is similar to the Behemoth at Canada's Wonderland in dimensions and statistics, and like Behemoth has staggered seating."

Link

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by lannaxe96.

Famous Death Threats Against Filmmakers

Posted: 02 Aug 2009 11:06 AM PDT

Borat and Brüno star, Sacha Baron Cohen recently found himself in a distinctly unfunny situation. He has just joined an exclusive but unenviable club - that of filmmakers whose lives have been threatened by people who have taken umbrage at their artistic endeavors:

It seems that Baron-Cohen is at least taking the threats seriously and has increased his security. Well, at least there is one thing he takes seriously. The al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade has said in a statement that it is very upset. In terrorist speak that means Run for your life, you gonna die!

Link

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by taliesyn30.

What’s Dovecote to Do With It

Posted: 02 Aug 2009 11:01 AM PDT

For centuries, architectural marvels known as dovecotes were built to house the birds of the nobles. As you can see, you’d have had to be powerful and wealthy to obtain the rights to build these kind of pigeon coops on your property!

Pigeons were an immense passion and hobby for Romans, and typically the most powerful of men had these buildings constructed with marble powder coated roofing. Varro, Columella and Pliny the Elder wrote works on pigeon farms and dovecote construction. In the time of the Republic, the internal design of "pigeonholes was adapted for the purpose of disposing of cremated ashes after death: these columbaria were generally constructed underground."

Link

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by lannaxe96.

Post-Apocalyptic Disney World

Posted: 02 Aug 2009 10:56 AM PDT

Disney comissioned artist former Deus Ex designer Warren Spector to come up with his interpretation of a very twisted Disney World as concept art for the Wii game Epic Mickey.

…images from both Gambino and Glover, covering rotted Epcots, foreboding Cinderella castles, terrifying scorpion-like mecha-Country Bears, and more — all of which come with the obvious caveat that they may or may not reflect anything of the current state of the project.

Link

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by xpresscm.

A Dizzying Display of Deep Fried Delicacies, Delivering a Difficult Dilemma; Do I Dare Devour Them?

Posted: 02 Aug 2009 10:54 AM PDT

I know they’re bad for you, but some of them are so tasty! I’m talking about deep fried foods of course, and Now That’s Nifty blog has pictures of many of the most fattening and delicious deep fried treats:

All countries deep fry food, it’s an easy way to cook, and it is tasty. Of course, deep frying food is also very bad for you. It is even worse for you, when the food was unhealthy for you to begin with. Is deep fried food terribly unhealthy? Yes. Would I try most of these anyway? Yes. Below is a deluge of diabolically delicious, deep fried dishes:

Deep fried pizza. Mmmm.

Link

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by ninigoat.

The Great Stalacpipe Organ

Posted: 02 Aug 2009 10:50 AM PDT

Found in the Luray Caves, Virginia, this has got to be amongst the most astonishing musical instruments in the World.

The organ was designed by Leland Sprinke in 1956 and replaces traditional organ pipes with the stalactites found naturally in the caverns. The Great Stalacpipe Organ literally ROCKS!

Link

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by cakehead loves evil.

Sand Dunes that Croak, Whistle, Boom and Sing

Posted: 02 Aug 2009 10:47 AM PDT

When early humans heard these strange sounds in the middle of the desert they attributed them to many supernatural origins. Marco Polo believed they were spirit voices, and likened the noises to "the sounds of all kinds of musical instruments," and also "of drums and the clash of arms."
Find out how the different noises are made, and even listen to them yourself.

Individual grains of loose surface sand bounce up and down over the compacted lower layers of the dune. The interaction between the upper- and lower-layer sand grains produces vibrations that make sound, much as a violin string does as a bow passes over it.

The sound has been compared to the low note of the didgeridoo or a low-flying plane.

Link - via atlasobscura

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by coconutnut.
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