Kryptos: Not even the CIA can solve its own commissioned sculpture
So more than 20 years ago, the CIA commissioned a sculpture to be erected in the courtyard to increase the beauty of the place as well as pay homage to the smart cookies that worked within. American artist James Sanborn was hired for the project, and he created the work Kryptos, a rather large bronze work with encoded letters cut into it. Sanborn worked with a top CIA cryptologist in order to learn how to create codes.
So what makes this work so special? Even after almost 20 years, no one has been able to fully decode Kryptos, even the CIA’s top code breakers. The first three sections, K1 K2 and K3 have been successfully solved, but K4 is yet to be broken. Not only are CIA agents working on it constantly, but there is also a Yahoo! Group with over 1000 members dedicated to the solving of K4.
Here is a rather in depth article about the structure that was in WIRED this month.
