RE: LeoThread 2025-08-16 20:43

You can buy one of the CIA’s greatest mysteries at an auction house

35 years ago, Jim Sanborn presented the cryptographic sculpture «Kryptos» to the #CIA in Langley, Virginia. The piece, a meditation on secrets in a house of secrets, has since then fascinated and bedeviled #cryptologists. Made from copper, granite, quartz, water and petrified wood, it has 4 sections, each of which holds a message in #code. Over the years, 3 of the sections have been solved — by CIA code breakers, a California computer scientist, and the NSA.

Now, 79 y.o. #Sanborn says he's going to auction off the solution to the final message, K4, that has stubbornly resisted all attempts to crack it. The sculptor has said there is another, overarching riddle that can be worked out once the four passages are known. The company arranging the sale for Nov. 20 is estimating a winning bid between $300k and $500k.