

Solution Proposed to the CIA's Kryptos k4 - pain_perdu
https://github.com/speakeasy/Kryptos

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tptacek
For what it's worth, because this definitely has confused some people
(particularly on Wikipedia): Kryptos is a puzzle sculpture, created by an
artist commissioned by the CIA (which so far as I know had no direct input
into the sculpture, but paid handsomely for it).

It's not, so far as I know, a "real" cryptosystem. (CIA isn't the center of
crypto research for the USG; that's NSA).

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minopret
Fun. But, rule of thumb, if your method is apropos of nothing and similar
methods could produce pretty much any text at all, you have not produced a
cryptanalysis.

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StavrosK
What, you mean that performing arbitrary permutations and transpositions on a
ciphertext until it produces garbage that vaguely resembles actual words in
various disjoint places _isn't_ actually cracking the code?!

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PavlovsCat
Who needs the cleartext when you can have " _I VOW TO BERLIN FUCk THe POlice
ALWAYS_ "?

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ctchocula
You can check if your solution is correct at this website whois confirms to be
owned by the puzzle creator, Jim Sanborn:
<http://kryptosclue.com/clue/clue.html>

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quinndupont
Looks like it could be correct. I've just emailed Jim Sanborn (the creator) to
ask if he can confirm or deny it. I'll report back once he gets back to me.

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tfm
That's beautiful! Just needs a couple more references to Invisible Russians
and there's a Sveriges Riksbank prize with speakeasy's name on it.

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askimto
Not sure if serious.

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ivan_ah
context: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kryptos>

From what I see, the solution looks correct. Cool!

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46Bit
> From what I see, the solution looks correct. Cool!

On what basis do you reach that conclusion?

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ivan_ah
Nothing formal --- just the fact that decrypting a message __wrongly __is very
unlikely to produce intelligible text.

Though the decrypting steps seemed quite ad hoc...

