Whoo! I just got word that I've been accepted as one of the official speakers for this year's Def Con. :)

(for those who don't know what Def Con is, it's a huge hacker/technology convention in Las Vegas that draws thousands of attendees from around the world)

When I show up on the schedule, I'll meme it. As a sneak peek for the Memestreams community though, here's the abstract of the talk, which will be an updated version of what I presented at PhreakNIC. (thanks go to those that helped me with the wording!):

Kryptos and the Cracking of the Cyrillic Projector Cipher
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In a courtyard at CIA Headquarters stands an encrypted sculpture called Kryptos. Its thousands of characters contain encoded messages, three of which have been solved. The fourth part, 97 or 98 characters at the very bottom, have withstood cryptanalysis for over a decade. The artist who created Kryptos, James Sanborn, has also created other encrypted sculptures such as the decade-old Cyrillic Projector, which was cracked last September by an international team led by Elonka Dunin. This talk is intended for a general audience with beginning to intermediate cryptographic experience. Elonka will go over how the code was cracked, and the current state of knowledge about the Kryptos sculpture, its own encrypted messages, and its mysterious CIA surroundings.

Elonka at Def Con

] "The Da Vinci Code" has more than 6 million copies in print
] since being published a year ago and has created a mini-industry
] of best sellers, even as some Catholic retailers decline to stock
] it. Brown's novel speculates that Jesus and Mary Magdalene were
] married, for which no documentary evidence exists, and depicts
] the Catholic clergy as a pack of sinister liars.
 . . .
] Brown's "Angels and Demons," a religious thriller published in
] 2000, now has 4 million copies in print and is currently selling
] 100,000 copies a week.

And my Kryptos site is continuing to get about 500 unique visitors per day, from folks researching its relationship to the Da Vinci Code.

Da Vinci Code Sales Figures

So I tend to like crazy authors that do strange things in their books, like insert crypto. The problem comes down to is it really crypto?

Example: In Preston and Child's ThunderHead (one of their best), they include a block cypher text, supposed a substitution cypher. After a fter hours of frequency analysis, I'm nowhere fast Based on how close the frequencies were, it could be random junk. I email the authors if there is anything in there to look for. They replied back originally they were going to have a contest hidden in the cypher text but didn't have time. Its just junk. Oh Well

But know, cut to Dan Brown's Digital Fortress.I really didn't like this book. While the story involving David tracking down the ring was interesting, the rest was too over the top or simply incorrect. The 8 story tall code cracker. The plush prvate offices. 64 bit keys means 64 characters. How the "Tracking" bug worked through an anonymous remailer. Character motivations, etc.

Regardless, the end of the book had a nifty code:
128-10-93-85-10-128-98-112-6-6-25-126-39-1-68-78

Immediately I resist the urge to type it into Google. I know I can solve this. First thing I did was count the number of characters. 16. 16 * 8 = 128 bits. Could this be used to access an HTTPS page on a website? Dan Brown could have a personal page, maybe the book publisher. I check the copyright date: 1996. I doubt he had a page back then. Next, Its not an ASCII string (too many control characters, and even by adding 64 to bring the smallest number up to Letter range, then 128+64 is in the line drawing characters of 8 bit ascii.) Nothing higher than 128. What if it is 7 bit ascii, alined on 8 bit boundries? Well 128 bits doesn't /7 evenly, so no. Maybe there are page numbers? Nope, I dimiss that because that would change from hardback to softback. Besides its a 400+ page book, and the code would use less than half of it. That 128 is bugging me. 10000000 ... hmmm ... Wait a sec, there are 128 chapters, not including epilogue and prologue... (I remember because I hate small chapter books). I immediately notice that there are two 128s, 6s and 10s. I look at the first letter of these chapters, and think I'm chasing nothing until I see Chaper 10 starts with E. That makes 2 E's and 2 A's. So we have at least 4 vowels over 16 letters. Sounds good.

So I write down all the first letters of each chapter and I get this:

W E C G E W H Y A A I O R T N U

Well 4 vowels in a row is wrong. I look at the code for several more minutes, and then remember how they used Caeser squares alot in the book. In fact 2 seperate times, including once in the last few pages. Furthermore caeser squares were the only simply form of crypto they talked about in the book. Well I have 16 letters...

W E C G
E W H Y
A A I O
R T N U

We Are Watching You. Not Kryptos, but certainly made my morning.

] The revolving wheel cryptographic principle that
] underlies CSP-488 was invented by Leo Battista Alberti
] during the fifteenth century. Centuries later, Thomas
] Jefferson re-invented a "Wheel Cipher" that was
] practically identical in principle, then followed by
] Major Bazeries around 1901 and Colonel Parker Hitt in
] 1914. All independently conceived of a device employing
] the same principle.

I keep wondering if something like this is going to be the key to decrypting Kryptos ...

Cipher Device: CSP-488

] The October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iraq's
] Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) has been dissected like no
] other product in the history of the US Intelligence Community.
] We have reexamined every phrase, line, sentence, judgment and
] alternative view in this 90-page document and have traced their
] genesis completely. I believed at the time the Estimate was
] approved for publication, and still believe now, that we were on
] solid ground in how we reached the judgments we made.
 . . .
] The only government in the world that claimed that Iraq was not
] working on, and did not have, biological and chemical weapons or
] prohibited missile systems was in Baghdad.
&nbsp. . .
] Those who conclude that no threat existed because actual weapons
] have not yet been found do not understand the significance posed
] by biological and chemical warfare programs in the hands of
] tyrants.

A November 2003 statement from the CIA's Stu Cohen, the Chairman of the National Intelligence Council.

And yeah, I also have a soft spot for the page, since they use a picture of Kryptos in the banner. :)

Iraq's WMD Programs: Culling Hard Facts from Soft Myths

] In research described in the journal Science last month,
] the team looked at footnotes from scientific articles in
] three major journals -- the New England Journal of
] Medicine, Science and Nature -- at three months, 15
] months and 27 months after publication. The prevalence of
] inactive Internet references grew during those intervals
] from 3.8 percent to 10 percent to 13 percent.

They cite the average half-life of a particular webpage as about 100 days.

In compiling my Kryptos site, I run into this all the time. I find really awesome information and pictures and link to them, but then within a few months, those valuable pictures are gone. So now, I find myself archiving/mirroring anything I find, so that I can re-post it if it vanishes. Does this mean I'm violating copyright? Or saving sometimes irreplaceable information for future researchers? I say the latter, but the time that I spend in conserving other people's work does feel awkward to me at times ...

On the Web, Research Work Proves Ephemeral (washingtonpost.com)

This is an article in Russian that covers the cracking of the Cyrillic Projector Code. For an English translation check:

http://www.elonka.com/kryptos/mirrors/computerra.html

Russian Magazine 'Computerra' Covers Cyrillic Projector

] The "Cyrillic Projector" is just one of a number of code-bearing
] sculptures created by artist James Sanborn. The most famous,
] Kryptos, made front-page headlines in 1999 when code-breakers
] deciphered three-quarters of the secret message in the stone and
] metal sculpture. The last part, however, is still uncracked.

For those who aren't AAAS members, I also have a mirror page of the Science Magazine article here:

 http://www.elonka.com/kryptos/mirrors/ScienceMagazine.html

(subscription reqd) Science Magazine - Cryptic Sculpture Cracked

] After a decade, the mystery revolving around the Cyrillic
] Projector, located in the area between the Fretwell and
] Friday buildings, has been solved by an international
] group of cryptographers, the Kryptos Group.

This is from the University of North Carolina-Charlotte campus newspaper.

NinerOnline.com - Campus mystery solved

I was reading my weblogs earlier today, and noticed this webpage linking to my Projector webpage. It claimed to have the solution technique for Sanborn's decade-old Cyrillic Projector, though it didn't have any English plaintext or any kind of contact information.

I've seen anonymous "solutions" before with no basis in reality, so treated it with skepticism at first, but, several hours and a flurry of IMs, emails, and Excel spreadsheets later, I can confirm -- somebody's cracked it! More details will be coming soon, as I try to find out *who* did it so that they can be congratulated properly, and post the full English plaintext. In the meantime, anyone who wants to see the Russian plaintext, email or IM me privately and I'll show you what I've verified so far. I need help translating!

Elonka :)

(10/11/2003 update): At the request of the original author, I have mirrored the solution page on my own site, and changed this meme's URL accordingly)

Cyrillic Projector Solution