Stood outside the CIA’s headquarters in Langley, Virginia, is a mystery that has eluded the agency’s brightest minds for 35 years.
A curving metal sculpture, known as Kryptos, was built by the artist Jim Sanborn in 1990.
Made of a large copper plate carved with 1,735 letters, the sculpture hides four secret messages encrypted with fiendishly difficult cyphers.
While the first three passages have now been cracked, the final passage, known as K4, remains unsolved – and only Mr Sanborn himself knows what it really says.
However, one person now has the opportunity to join this exclusive club – as the answer to the mysterious text goes on sale.
After 35 years as the secret’s sole custodian, Ms Sanborn is auctioning off the translated text along with all the coding charts used to create it.
Expected to sell for between $300,000 and $500,000 (£223,570–£372,600), the lucky winner will be free to reveal the secret to the world – or keep it private.
In a statement on the auction, Mr Sanborn says: ‘The burden of knowledge passes from artist to keeper.’
Stood outside the CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, the Kryptos statue consists of a large copper plate carved with 1,735 letters. However, this sculpture hides one of the world’s most enduring unsolved mysteries
Created by the artist Jim Sanborn (pictured) in 1990, Kryptos is made of four pieces of text, each encoded with a progressively difficult cypher. The final section, known as K4, has not been solved in 35 years
When Mr Sanborn was commissioned to create a sculpture for the CIA’s new headquarters, he wanted to include a code that would remain unsolved for five to 10 years.
Mr Sandborn didn’t create the codes himself, but rather enlisted the help of Edward Scheidt, the retiring chairman of the CIA’s Cryptographic centre known as the ‘Wizard of Codes’.
Together, the pair created four progressively difficult encryption techniques designed to hide a message on the theme of concealment and discovery.
According to the CIA, the first three sections were encrypted using a fairly common type of code known as a Vigeneries Tableaux.
This type of code shifts each letter of the alphabet by a certain amount, depending on the contents of an accompanying ‘chart’.
The first two messages using this code are considered to be relatively straightforward and can be solved by beginner cryptographers.
The first passage, which was cracked by a team from the National Security Agency, reads: ‘Between subtle shading and the absence of light lies the nuance of iqlusion [sic].’
The second passage says: ‘It was totally invisible.
The first two sections of code were solved quickly, but it took eight years for codebreakers to finally crack the third. So far, no one has come close to solving the fourth
‘Hows that possible? They used the Earths magnetic field X.
‘The information was gathered and transmitted undergruund [sic] to an unknown location X.
‘Does Langley know about this? They should Its buried out there somewhere X.
‘Who knows the exact location? Only WW This was his last message X.’
The message then concluded with the latitude and longitude coordinates of the CIA headquarters.
Its creators said that some words, such as illusion, had been misspelt on purpose to make the code harder to crack.
However, the third and fourth sections are significantly more challenging.
It took eight years for the third section of the code to be broken by a CIA analyst named David Stein and Jim Gillogly, a computer scientist.
Mr Sanford, pictured in August 2025, has now decided to auction off the solution to K4, passing on the ‘burden of knowledge’ onto someone else who will be free to reveal the secret to the world or keep it hidden
Mr Sanford has previously released three clues to help codebreakers solve the K4 code, but not even the world’s best cryptographers have been able to make progress
The passage is a paraphrased version of Egyptologist Howard Carter’s account of the opening of Tutankhamun’s tomb in 1925.
Despite the code being visible to the public for 35 years, no one has managed to crack the final section.
Over the years, Mr Sanborn has given out a few tantalising clues to help would–be codebreakers solve his puzzle, but to no avail.
In 2010, Mr Sanborn revealed the letters 64 to 69 spelt ‘Berlin’, then, in 2014, he revealed that the letters 69 to 74 spell ‘clock’.
The final clue, revealed in 2020, was that the word ‘northeast’ was hidden in the letters 26 to 34.
These pieces of information could act like a skeleton key to help unlock the encryption hiding the rest of the message.
So far, the combined efforts of thousands of amateur and professional codebreakers haven’t been enough – leaving Mr Sanborn as the only person who knows the entire solution.
However, that is set to change on November 20 when the original handwritten text of the K4 code, complete with a signed letter from cryptographer Edward Scheidt, will go on sale at the auction house RR Auction.
Mr Sanford has now confirmed that decoding the text is only the first part of the puzzle. The true secret, known as K5, will only begin to be revealed once everything has been solved
Mr Sanborn currently charges $50 to review possible solutions to Kryptos – a lucrative side business which has earned $40,000 over the years, according to an interview with the New York Times.
However, he has recently stated that he is ‘tired’ of dealing with these constant questions and is keen to pass on the legacy of Kryptos to someone new.
Bobby Livingston, a spokesperson for RR Auction, told Daily Mail that the auction house has seen an ‘incredible amount of interest’ from collectors and codebreakers around the world.
Mr Livingston adds: ‘For thirty–five years, Kryptos has baffled the best minds in cryptography. Now, for the first time, the complete plaintext of the unsolved K4 section will be revealed to the winning bidder.
‘They’ll learn directly from Jim Sanborn himself as he unlocks the mysteries that have confounded the CIA and codebreakers around the world.’
However, Mr Sanborn has suggested that decoding all four sections of Kryptos might be the first stage to solving the real puzzle.
In a recent statement, Mr Sanborn said: ‘Even when K4 has been solved, its riddle will persist as K5.’
So no matter who takes home the solution to K4, the puzzle of Kryptos is likely to live on for a few more years at least.
This article was originally published by a www.dailymail.co.uk . Read the Original article here. .