The CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, is a spy and other headquarters of its own, but for the past 30 years it has additionally attracted the attention of all encryption and puzzle lovers.
At the entrance to the building there is a sculpture called "Kryptos", it was created by the American artist Jim Sanborn and the letters located all over the surface of the sculpture supposedly conceal some kind of hidden message. However, no one has yet been able to decipher it.
The sculpture was installed here in November 1990. It is a 3.6-meter copper block filled with 1800 English letters. The most ingenious cryptographers managed to unravel three quarters of this code in just 8 years.
The first part is deciphered as follows:
"Between the darkness and the absence of light lies the nuance of illusion."
The second is like this:
“He was completely invisible. How is this possible? The earth's magnetic field was used. The information was received and transferred underground [or through underground communications] to an unknown location. Does Langley know about this? He's buried there somewhere. Who knows the exact location? WW only. Here is his last message. Thirty-eight degrees fifty-seven minutes six point five seconds north, seventy-seven degrees eight minutes forty-four seconds west. ID at the rows."
Promotional video:
Intriguing, isn't it? However, the coordinates indicated in the encryption lead to a place several hundred steps from the sculpture, and there is nothing remarkable there.
The third part is the phrase: "Do you see anything there?"
But the secret of the fourth part is being fought to this day.
In 2012, 1,300 people on a Yahoo group tried to collectively push the deciphering work forward, going through all sorts of options, from complex mathematics to astrology. However, they also failed.
Cryptographers from all over the world have sifted through all the codes known to mankind, from Morse code to binary computer code. But the last 97 characters did not give in to anyone.
Sanborn himself was surprised that the first three parts were solved so quickly, and for the fourth part he even gave a couple of small tips, but in general he did not interfere with the process. However, he stated that the decryption of the entire message is hidden somewhere in the safe and will only be revealed when someone gets to the secret of part 4.
Also, according to Sanborn, the only person with whom he shared the text of the fourth part is the former CIA director - William Webster.
