Re: A Kryptos Warning

Douglas Eagleson wrote:
> Here is a real nice web site containing the Kryptos
> sculpture located at the CIA headquarters in
> the Langley VA location.
> http://www.elonka.com/kryptos/

Yes, that is a good Web site, at least as of last time I
looked at it some time ago.

> Given the truthfulness of the website, kryptos is a very uncommon
> algorithm. An old style is apparent by the table accompanying the
> cipher. And the question then becomes the method of decrpyting.

I think you're referring to the Vigenere tableau. If you read
up on design goals of Kryptos, you will find that it was
intended that the ciphertext could be cracked by manual
methods, similar to those taught in the MilCryp textbooks.

> A two's complement pattern is immediatly apparent. Making the rela
> hard cipher. A pattern that is replacable with the two.
> A set of zero.
> And the last two hints denote the level of difficulty in cracking. It
> has not even been approached.

There can be no "two's complement" when the symbol set has
more than two members. All the Kryptos ciphertext has been
legitimately deciphered, except for the small final
fragment. What make it difficult is primarily that it is
such a short message.

Some people think there may be additional messages or
clues contained in some letter-position irregularities, etc.
but I'm skeptical about that.

> A professional made the table system and the artist just inscribed,
> obviously.

The ciphertext was prepared by a retired CIA cryptographer.
It should *say* that somewhere on Elonka's Web site.

> And to crack, the computer is almost necessary.

No. Indeed, at least one of the people who cracked the bulk
of it so far made no essential use of the computer, but used
manual methods, and of course you don't need a computer to
cryptanalyze at the level of MilCryp.

The rest of your posting was nearly unintelligible.
If you have actually dicovered something new, you need
to spell out enough detail so that others can verify it.
There have been a lot of people (and at least one other
Kryptos Web site) that have wandered into fantasyland.
Received on Thu Sep 29 21:52:06 2005