Depuis que l'auteur de best-sellers Dan Brown s'intéresse à elle, des centaines d'amateurs tentent de décrypter son message codé. Mais cela fait déjà quinze ans que Kryptos, sculpture érigée au QG de la CIA à Washington, résiste.

New article about Kryptos that just appeared in a French tabloid.

Liberation.fr - Da VinCIA code (& Kryptos)

A Web forum where cryptographers collaborate on the puzzle went from attracting about 50 hits a day to thousands of hits a day, according to its moderator Elonka Dunin.

Kryptos (and Elonka) on CNN.com

A témával foglalkozó Elonka Dunin arról számol be, hogy webszájtján az utóbbi időben egyre többen járnak. A weboldal korábban napi 5-600 látogatót fogadott, mostanában viszont előfordul, hogy 24 óra leforgása alatt harmincezren jönnek.
A hirtelen magszaladt érdeklődésen a Kryptos-szobor létrehozója, Jim Sanborn is csodálkozik. A művészt 1989-ben kérte fel a CIA akkori igazgatója, William Webster az alkotás elkészítésére. Sanborn az egyik kódfejtővel, Ed Scheidttal közösen tervezte meg a titkos szobrot.

I got a smile out of seeing this. I don't speak Hungarian, but my ancestry is Hungarian (I am named Elonka because I was named after my grandmother, ilona, who had Hungarian parents). So it's a neat kind of "full circle" feeling to see my Americanized-spelling name of "Elonka" on a Hungarian webpage....

Kryptos in Hungarian

Decius wrote:

Elonka wrote:
I continue to be fascinated with how the Kryptos story is being disseminated around the world from the recent articles.

Well, you're on top at Boing Boing right now...

Yup, I was already getting a lot of traffic from the Guardian article, but the new surge definitely looks Boing-Boing-Related:

Unique visitors/day to elonka.com:

6/10: 3002
6/11: 3059
6/12: 2652 (-- Taper off from Guardian article
6/13: 2462
6/14: 1870
6/15: 4026 (-- New surge from Boing-Boing, and bbspot
6/16: 4243

For reference, baseline traffic is usually about 500 visitors/day.

Totals:

VISITS

Total 476,966
Average Per Day 3,045
Average Visit Length 4:13
Last Hour 30
Today 245
This Week 21,314

PAGE VIEWS

Total 1,093,019
Average Per Day 7,843
Average Per Visit 2.6
Last Hour 90
Today 692
This Week 54,903

RE: Press Ripples

I continue to be fascinated with how the Kryptos story is being disseminated around the world from the recent articles.

When the WSJ front-page article came out, it was in a "subscription-only" section of the WSJ site. The only link to it via Google News, was on the Pittsburgh Post Gazette site, which had it verbatim.

But the UK Guardian piece that ran in their Saturday paper is public, and is being picked up in interesting places. They all seem to be taking the exact text, though sometimes they'll change the headline. Six different sites have picked it up so far, in vastly different parts of the world. I wonder which ones are swiping the Guardian article, and which ones are swiping from one of the other "upstreams".

A check of Google News this morning:

Guardian Unlimited, UK - Jun 10, 2005 (the original piece)
Headline: "Interest grows in solving cryptic CIA puzzle after link to Da Vinci Code"

The Observer, UK - Jun 10, 2005 (sister site to Guardian)
Headline: Same

Mail & Guardian Online, South Africa - Jun 10, 2005
Headline: "Interest grows in solving cryptic CIA puzzle"

Mathaba.Net, Africa - Jun 11, 2005
Headline: "High interest in solving CIA Kryptos after link to Da Vinci Code"

Hindu, India - 19 hours ago
Headline: "The secrets of Kryptos and a code to break"

Taipei Times, Taiwan - 13 hours ago
Headline: "Interest grows to crack CIA puzzle"

Free Press International, Texas - 5 hours ago
Headline: Same as Guardian

. . . Elonka Dunin, who runs the most comprehensive website on Kryptos (www.elonka.com/kryptos) said recent activity has surged.

"My baseline was about 500-600 unique visitors a day. But I recently got 30,000 over a 24-hour period," said Ms Dunin, an executive at a Missouri-based internet game company, Simutronics.

The Guardian | Interest grows in solving cryptic CIA puzzle after link to Da Vinci Code

Morning Edition, June 9, 2005 · For 15 years, a bronze sculpture in the CIA's courtyard has taunted amateur and professional code-breakers alike. Kryptos is a copper wall that features four long coded passages. Cryptographers from the National Security Administration and the CIA have cracked the first three.

I was *extremely* annoyed to only find out about this segment *after* it aired. But at least there's a stream on the website.

I'm also very disappointed in NPR, since it looks like they pulled most of the factoids for their piece straight out of the Wall Street Journal article. I got no contacts from them, whatsoever, which is a big flag to me that the reporter was *not* doing their homework. I'd had higher hopes for NPR's journalism. Then again, they did get quotes from Sanborn and Scheidt, so that's good.

I also find it amusing that the mainstream press is just now catching up with the article that Wired.Com did over four months ago. The reporter for the wired.com piece, Kim Zetter, did an excellent and thorough job, and it's really her article that eventually sparked the WSJ article, which sparked multiple types of coverage: An invitation for me to be on a local St. Louis talk-radio show, an upcoming piece on Philadelphia media for another Kryptos researcher, a CNN segment that'll probably air next week, and the NPR segment which aired today. And the NPR segment is probably what sparked an article that'll be upcoming in the U.K. newspaper "The Guardian", probably hitting the wires this weekend.

It's fascinating watching the press ripples, to see who picks up which story.

And tracing backwards: Kim's wired.com article was sparked by the talk I gave at Def Con, which can be traced back to my own introduction to Kryptos, via the PhreakNIC v3.0 Code which JonnyX wrote back in 1999.

"The flapping of a butterfly's wings," indeed....

Elonka :)

NPR : CIA Experts Still Spooked by Kryptos Puzzle

Episode 99 - Kryptos

Airdate: 2005-06-08
Length:1:31:48
Size:15.69 MB

Hosts:StankDawg & Elonka

Fun 90-minute episode this week. Main topics: E-3, Hero's Journey, Privacy, Identity Theft, and Kryptos.

Binary Revolution - Episode #99

Sen. John F. Kerry's grade average at Yale University was virtually identical to President Bush's record there, despite repeated portrayals of Kerry as the more intellectual candidate during the 2004 presidential campaign.

Kerry had a cumulative average of 76 and got four Ds his freshman year — in geology, two history courses and political science, The Boston Globe reported Tuesday.

"I always told my dad that D stood for distinction," Kerry said in a written response to reporters' questions.

LOL! I found this story pretty amusing. Though it immediately makes me wonder: Why now? Why didn't this come out during the campaign?

Kerry's Yale Grades Similar to Bush's

Today's cybercrooks are becoming ever more tightly organized. Like the Mafia, hacker groups have virtual godfathers to map strategy, capos to issue orders, and soldiers to do the dirty work. Their omertà, or vow of silence, is made easier by the anonymity of the Web. And like legit businesses, they're going global. The ShadowCrew allegedly had 4,000 members operating worldwide -- including Americans, Brazilians, Britons, Russians, and Spaniards. "Organized crime has realized what it can do on the street, it can do in cyberspace," says Peter G. Allor, a former Green Beret who heads the intelligence team at Internet Security Systems Inc. in Atlanta.

Hacker Hunters