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Jim Gillogly, a computer scientist from California and former President of the American Cryptogram Association, also solved the first 768 characters, leaving the remaining 97 characters undeciphered. "I don't really have a good idea of what it might be," he responded. James Sanborn said that same week that the sculpture contains a riddle within a riddle; one that will be solvable only after the four encrypted passages are known. To date, the only people who know the answer are Sanborn and William H. Webster, former director of the CIA, who was handed the complete solution in a sealed envelope.
In an effort to reconstruct the methods for solving the first passage (commonly referred to as K1), I have provided a step-by-step walk-through a cryptographer might encounter. My goal is to show how easily a solution can be achieved. I am not suggesting that the means by which pertinent methods are acquired is an easy task.
Fortunately, clues to the decryption of the cipher text in Kryptos are readily available. The first significant hint is the Vigenère Tableau on the copperplate. It is engraved with the keyword KRYPTOS already arranged in the alphabet by the following method:
Beginning with the alphabet ordered from A to Z, remove each letter of the keyword and place it at the beginning of the alphabet to form a new order.
Various encryption methods incorporate a two-dimensional table to determine cipher text from given plaintext or vice versa (see Toolbox: Autokey Cipher). K1 uses a variation of the Vigenère Tableau called Quagmire III. The table is set up by repeating the cipher-alphabet for each character in a second keyword, which is used to determine the starting character of each line. This example uses the second keyword palimpsest paired with the keyword kryptos as demonstrated above:
Numbering the rows for reference, locate the first character of the cipher text in the first row. The plaintext is the corresponding character in the table header. Continue with the second character of cipher text and second row of the table, repeating the process and starting back at the first row after the last row was referenced until the complete plaintext is deciphered.
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The keywords used in K1 could be partially determined by frequency analysis or other clues in the sculpture. One example of frequency analysis in this case is the repeating occurance of VJYQT in the ciphertext which corresponds to NCEOF in the plain text (ABSENCE OF/NUANCE OF). Trial and error exposes the M in PALIMPSEST, narrowing the range of possible keywords. The easier way to obtain the key PALIMPSEST is to describe the anomalies in the Morse Code: eevirtuallye|eeeeeeinvisible, which is virtually invisible with underlying text (eeee...) still visible. This is the definition of palimpsest. There is a predetermined method of obtaining clues, but as with all ciphers, the keys are concealed so that only those to whom the message is intended are able to identify them.
The following shows the cipher text on the left and the resulting plain text on the right using the keywords kryptos and palimpsest in Quagmire III:
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The first two rows of the plain text are readable. The remaining text is indecipherable with the keys we used, so perhaps a different set of keys is needed. Perhaps the remaining cipher text is encrypted by an entirely different method.
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The definition of palimpsest indicates that IQLUSION might be ILLUSION with the Q being underlying text left intact. An interactive Quagmire III simulator can be found at http://members.aol.com/SciRealm/KryptosSim.html.
Gillogly Cracks CIA Art
http://www.ussrback.com/crypto/nsa/kryptos/cia-art-jg.htm
Kryptos: The Sanborn Sculpture at CIA Headquarters - John's Kryptos Simulator
http://members.aol.com/SciRealm/KryptosSim.html