{"id":288415,"date":"2025-11-13T04:07:07","date_gmt":"2025-11-13T04:07:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/288415\/"},"modified":"2025-11-13T04:07:07","modified_gmt":"2025-11-13T04:07:07","slug":"solution-to-kryptos-sculpture-at-cias-mclean-hq-up-for-auction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/288415\/","title":{"rendered":"Solution to \u2018Kryptos\u2019 sculpture at CIA\u2019s McLean HQ up for auction"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\"\"<\/a>RR Auction Executive Vice President of Public Relations Bobby Livingston discusses the sale of a deception key for the \u201cKryptos\u201d sculpture at the CIA\u2019s headquarters (screenshot via AP Video by Rodrique Ngowi)<\/p>\n

By MICHAEL CASEY Associated Press<\/p>\n

BOSTON (AP) \u2014 When Jim Sanborn was commissioned to create a sculpture at CIA headquarters, he wanted to do something that spoke to its world of spies and secret codes.<\/p>\n

The result was a 10-foot-tall, S-shaped copper screen called \u201cKryptos\u201d that resembles a piece of paper coming out of a fax machine. One side features a series of staggered alphabets that are key to decoding the four encrypted messages on the other side.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt the time, codes and encoding was an esoteric subject,\u201d Sanborn said. \u201cI wanted it to be less so, and I wanted it to be fun. \u2026 Any artist\u2019s goal when they make an artwork is to have the viewer\u2019s attention for as long as possible.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sanborn figured the first three messages on the sculpture, dedicated in 1990 and known as K1, K2 and K3, would be cracked relatively quickly, and they were.<\/p>\n

But 35 years later, the fourth, K4, remains a mystery and a source of obsessive fascination among thousands of \u201cKryptos\u201d fans. One person has contacted Sanborn every week for the past 20 years, trying to solve K4, and the artist received so many inquiries that he began charging $50 per submission to make it more manageable.<\/p>\n

Now, Sanborn, who at age 79 has had a series of health scares in recent years, is auctioning off the solution to K4, anointing a new \u201cKryptos\u201d keeper whom he hopes will keep its secrets and continue interacting with followers.<\/p>\n

Finding the next keeper<\/p>\n

Boston-based RR Auction launched the auction last month. It runs through Nov. 20, with the top bid currently at $201,841 for the \u201cKryptos\u201d archive.<\/p>\n

\u201cSince its installation in 1990, \u2018Kryptos\u2019 has become a worldwide phenomenon,\u201d said Bobby Livingston, executive vice president at RR Auction. \u201cK4 has stumped professional cryptologists and code breakers as well as amateurs who have tried to solve it and read the message. The winner of this archive is now going to possess the secrets of \u2018Kryptos.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

The archive includes everything needed to solve K4, along with an alternate paragraph that the artist is calling K5. The original coding charts for K1, K2 and K3 will also be up for bid, along with the original scrambled texts, which Sanborn said he showed to the CIA\u2019s Department of Historical Intelligence to ensure the agency understood there was nothing \u201cuntoward\u201d on the sculpture.<\/p>\n

Sanborn has created about 50 public sculptures, including a memorial for a 2019 mass shooting in Odessa, Texas, but he is best known for \u201cKryptos.\u201d Over the years, snippets from the cryptic sculpture appeared on the dust jacket of the Dan Brown bestseller \u201cThe Da Vinci Code\u201d and were mentioned in a chapter of Brown\u2019s book \u201cThe Lost Symbol.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Auction almost derailed<\/p>\n

In September, Sanborn got a phone call from two \u201cKryptos\u201d sleuths. Tipped off by the auction listing, writer and researcher Jarett Kobek asked playwright and journalist Richard Byrne to take photos of Sanborn\u2019s papers at the Smithsonian\u2019s Archives of American Art. Among the papers were Sanborn\u2019s original scrambled texts.<\/p>\n

Kobek said he had hoped to discover \u201ca document that had some vague hint of about how K4 was encoded,\u201d but was astonished to realize they had stumbled upon the text itself instead.<\/p>\n

Sanborn was initially \u201cshocked\u201d by the call, and he and his wife, Jae Ko, \u201cjust sort of put our heads in our hands.\u201d He was mostly upset at himself for putting the texts into the archive \u2014 he has since sealed his papers so they can\u2019t be accessed for the next 50 years. RR Auction also deleted any mention of the Smithsonian in connection with the auction.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was miserable, and it\u2019s still miserable,\u201d Sanborn said. \u201cIt\u2019s very difficult. There\u2019s a lot of regret and anguish.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sanborn initially figured that the discovery meant the auction could not proceed. But he decided to proceed anyway, while changing it from just offering the secrets to K4 to offering the entire archive. RR Auction also acknowledged the pair\u2019s discovery on the auction description, though Kobek said that came weeks afterward.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe important distinction is that they discovered it. They did not decipher it,\u201d Sanborn said. \u201cThey do not have the key. They don\u2019t have the method with which it\u2019s deciphered. To the entire cryptographic community, that method is the real deal, and nobody has the method but me.\u201d<\/p>\n

Keeping K4 a secret<\/p>\n

Elonka Dunin, co-moderator of the largest group of \u201cKryptos\u201d enthusiasts, said most people she has talked with want K4 kept secret. \u201cThere is a very strong desire that we would like to know whether K4 is even solvable,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Sanborn came up with the texts, and a retired CIA cryptographer showed him several systems for encoding them. The paragraphs, he said, were \u201cdesigned to unravel like a ball of string\u201d or \u201cnesting Russian dolls\u201d and get increasingly difficult.<\/p>\n

Still, Sanborn and RR Auction aren\u2019t taking any chances. Sanborn unsuccessfully asked Kobek and Byrne to sign a nondisclosure agreement that included giving them a portion of the auction proceeds. RR Auction also sent the pair scores of emails threatening legal action for everything from trade secret violations to defamation.<\/p>\n

Kobek, a self-described fan of \u201cKryptos\u201d and the artist, has no plans to release the text publicly, though he read it over the phone to a New York Times journalist who was the first to report their discovery. Still, he wants the auction house and others to respect their discovery, noting that allies during World War II used weather reports to help solve encrypted messages.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m the first person to say that it was not a mathematically cryptographic solve. One hundred percent. There\u2019s no way that it was,\u201d Kobek said. \u201cBut to pretend that this has no connection to the history of cryptography is little more than advertising for an auction.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"RR Auction Executive Vice President of Public Relations Bobby Livingston discusses the sale of a deception key for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":288416,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[228,226,227,229,88],"class_list":{"0":"post-288415","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-and-design","8":"tag-arts","9":"tag-arts-and-design","10":"tag-artsanddesign","11":"tag-design","12":"tag-entertainment"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/288415","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=288415"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/288415\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/288416"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=288415"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=288415"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=288415"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}