Elonka's Kryptos Page

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Kryptos is a sculpture located on the grounds of CIA Headquarters in Langley, Virginia. Installed in 1990, its thousands of characters contain encrypted messages, of which three have been solved (so far). There is still a fourth section at the bottom consisting of 97 characters which remains uncracked. This webpage contains some information about the sculpture, including some photos collected from around the web, some photos and rubbings of the sculpture taken by your intrepid webmistress, links to other articles and Kryptos discussion groups here and there, and information about other encrypted sculptures which have been created by the sculptor, Jim Sanborn.

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Kryptos links:

• Transcript - The complete text of the sculpture

• New? Start here! FAQ - The answers to many frequently asked questions about Kryptos

• Articles and Videos:
  • Short March 18, 1991 article in Time Magazine
  • Transcript of April 2, 1991 World News Tonight interview with sculptor Jim Sanborn
  • ABC News article, 6/15/1999 (archive.org mirror)
  • ABC News interview with David Stein (archive.org mirror)
  • David Stein's internal CIA report on how he cracked parts 1-3 of Kryptos
  • 6/16/99 New York Times article and 6/17/99 London Times articles about Gillogly's solution
  • 7/19/99 Washington Post article
  • December 1999 article in Dr. Dobb's Journal (archive.org mirror)
  • March 17, 2000 article in the Baltimore Sun about the NSA team in 1992 that cracked the first three parts
  • 10/8/2003 UNC Charlotte campus article about the cracking of the Cyrillic Projector
  • 10/9/2003 St. Louis Post-Dispatch article about Elonka Dunin (your intrepid webmistress) and her cryptographic odysseys
  • 10/13/2003 KFTK audio interview of Elonka Dunin by Charles Jaco
  • 1/21/2005 Wired.com article about Kryptos (includes transcripts of interviews with both Sanborn and Scheidt)
  • 5/27/2005 Wall Street Journal article: "CIA sculpture 'kryptos' draws mystery lovers"
  • 6/8/2005: BinRev Episode #99 Elonka Dunin co-hosts an underground radio webcast. Subjects are privacy, E-3, identity theft, and Kryptos. For Kryptos information, listen to the last half-hour of the 90-minute webcast (archive.org mirror)
  • 6/11/2005, UK's The Guardian: "Interest grows in solving cryptic CIA puzzle after link to Da Vinci Code"
  • 6/19/2005, CNN: "Cracking the Code" (includes interview with Sanborn)
  • 7/5/2005 CTV, "Interest soars in solving the CIA's 'Kryptos' (includes link to 2-minute Canadian TV video segment with Sanborn interview)
  • 4/20/2006, Wired.com, "Last Piece of the Puzzle?" - Sanborn announces different answer to K2
  • 4/22/2006, New York Times - "A Break for Code Breakers on a C.I.A. Mystery" (story was also #1 news item on AOL)
  • 5/17/2006 Hartford Courant, "Uncrackable Code?"
  • July 24, 2007: Kryptos on the PBS NOVAscienceNOW program. Excellent 10-15 minute video segment (click on the link to watch it on the web, though if the video is not available, there should still be a transcript) YouTube mirror
  • April 20, 2009, Wired magazine article: Mission Impossible: The Code Even the CIA Can't Crack (also reprinted in Spring 2010 Collectors edition of U.S. News and World Report on "Secrets of the Lost Symbol")
  • May 4, 2009, KMOV television news segment, Cracking the Kryptos Code
  • May 18, 2009, The Independent, 'Kryptos' and Dan Brown: Inside the CIA's code of secrecy
  • September 21, 2009, WTOP News Radio, Dan Brown's 'Lost Symbol' details local mystery
  • November 17, 2010, Wired: Kryptos artist to reveal rare clue to baffling CIA sculpture
  • November 19, 2010, Wired: Kryptos artist launches website to receive solutions
  • November 20, 2010, The New York Times: Sanborn announces clue to part 4 of Kryptos
  • November 21, 2010, Wired: 'Berlin' Is Revealed as Kryptos Clue
  • June 5, 2013, Wired: CIA Releases Analyst's Fascinating Tale of Cracking the Kryptos Sculpture (about David Stein's work in 1998)
  • June 2013 release of 1999 internal CIA document, Studies in Intelligence, David Stein's report (redacted version), released in National Security Archive. (pdf)
  • July 10, 2013 Wired: About Elonka's FOIA request to the NSA for their documents from the early 1990s. Documents reveal how the NSA cracked the Kryptos sculpture years before the CIA
  • June 8, 2014 Eurogamer: The game developer, the CIA, and the sculpture driving them crazy
  • November 20, 2014, Wired article by Kim Zetter
  • November 21, 2014, New York Times article by John Schwartz
  • Recommended! July 8, 2019, CNN / Great Big Story, 6-minute video,"Cracking the Uncrackable Code, with some new close-up footage of Kryptos.
  • January 29, 2020, New York Times, "This Sculpture Holds a Decades-Old C.I.A. Mystery. And Now, Another Clue", article by John Schwartz and Jonathan Corum with the new Kryptos clue: NORTHEAST
  • January 30, 2020, New York Times, "How I Got the Latest Clue to a 30-Year-Old Puzzle at the C.I.A.", blog by reporter John Schwartz about the new clue
  • Recommended! May 4, 2024: Awesome 47-minute video by LEMMiNO. It summarizes the story of Kryptos thus far. Also has a superb list of references.
  
  
• Radio interviews and podcasts
• August 26, 1999, NPR interview with sculptor James Sanborn
• June 9, 2005, NPR Radio: "CIA Experts Still Spooked by Kryptos Puzzle" - includes interviews with Sanborn and Scheidt (transcript)
• April 21, 2006, NPR "All Things Considered" - Interview with James Sanborn and Elonka Dunin about the K2 announcement
• BBC Radio 4 "Americana", January 2, 2011, Interview with Elonka about Kryptos and computer AI, starting around 19m30s
• September 9, 2016, A Nashville cryptography expert hs been trying to crack this CIA riddle for 16 years - Interview on NPR Public Radio
• July 7, 2020, CNN / Great Big Story Podcast, "Kryptos, the Uncrackable Code", 19-minutes, producer Drew Beebe discusses the 2019 GBS video, with additional interview comments from Jim Sanborn and Elonka Dunin, and updates the story with the new 2020 NORTHEAST clue.


• Books:
• Non-fiction
• The Mammoth Book of Secret Codes and Cryptograms, 2006 (contains a brief overview on a few pages about Kryptos)
• Atomic Time, 2003 - About Sanborn's 2003 exhibit "Atomic Time". Contains a page about Kryptos
• Secrets of the Lost Symbol, 2009, edited by Dan Burstein and Arne de Keijzer, has two Kryptos-related articles: "Interview with Jim Sanborn", and "Kryptos: The Unsolved Enigma" by Elonka Dunin
• (First edition, December 2020) Codebreaking: A Practical Guide by Elonka Dunin and Klaus Schmeh, with an Appendix on Kryptos
• New! (September 2023) Codebreaking: A Practical Guide (Expanded edition) has an updated appendix on Kryptos
• Fiction
• Dan Brown, The Da Vinci Code, 2003 -- contains two veiled references to Kryptos, hidden in the artwork of the U.S. bookjacket
• Dan Brown, The Lost Symbol, 2009 -- The Kryptos sculpture is a recurring theme throughout the novel, and a character name, Nola Kaye, is an anagrammed version of "Elonka". :)


• Other media where Kryptos gets a mention:
• A small model appears in the 2005 episode "S.O.S." of the TV show Alias
• It is mentioned in the 2009 song "Obfuscation" on the album The Great Misdirect
• A photo of Kryptos is visible in several scenes of the Feb 4, 2000 episode of King of Queens


• Pictures:
• Kryptos, the Bird's Eye View - Aerial photos of the Kryptos location, along with more information on the latitude/longitude coordinates and the additional Kryptos pieces.
• A collection of miscellaneous pictures of Kryptos (and its surrounding courtyard)
• Courtesy of Jim Gillogly - a series of detailed photos of the Kryptos sculpture and related pieces scattered around the area (including the Morse code segments), taken by Jim Gillogly on 10/27/1999 (images copyright Jim Gillogly)
• A topographical map of the area around the Kryptos sculpture
• Mapquest aerial photo of the area (click on the tab that says "Aerial Photo")
• Windigo's Kryptos map page (collection of maps of the area around Langley)
• Xenon's calculation of where the lat/long coordinates point to (look for the red dot)
• Kryptos rubbings and images which were obtained in October 2002


• Discussion Threads:
• Changed in 2019! Groups.io Kryptos Group Created in May 2003 (originally on yahoogroups then ported to groups.io in 2019), this is a moderated list devoted to sharing information and analysis about the Kryptos sculpture. If you join one thread, this is the one to join. 2019 Note: This includes all of the discussions from the Kryptos Yahoogroup, which needed to move from Yahoogroups due to Yahoo's reorganization. Anyone with access to the old Yahoogroup should have been automatically subscribed to the groups.io version. If not, you can join by sending an email to kryptos+subscribe@groups.io (and here's an archived link to the old Kryptos Yahoogroup)
• Kryptos_Sculpture Yahoogroup - A secondary list, unmoderated, formed in December 2003 for more "pure brainstorming" purposes, or for overflow of side threads from the main list.
• Discussions about Kryptos in the sci.crypt newsgroup
• Kryptos Sculpture group on Facebook, created in 2013
• Slashdot threads:
• June 16, 1999 thread about Kryptos
• June 30, 2003 thread about the Quicksilver code, with a side thread about Kryptos
• September 22, 2003 thread about the cracking of the Cyrillic Projector Code.
• January 23, 2005 thread about Kryptos, referencing the January 21 2005 Wired article
• April 20, 2006 thread about the Kryptos K2 announcement
• April 21, 2006, Crypto-luminary Bruce Schneier's blog about the K2 announcement
• Reddit AMA ("Ask Me Anything") with Elonka on July 9, 2019, discussing Kryptos, other things cryptographic, game development, and other miscellany.


• Miscellaneous Links and Additional Information:
• A timeline of the creation of the Kryptos and "sister" KGB codes, along with who has been involved with their solutions
• The CIA's info page and Flash video about Kryptos (Note: Do *not* rely on any of the information from this page. There are multiple errors in the text transcript, and even the history information is out-dated and incorrect.)
• NSA's webpage on declassified information about Kryptos from the recent FOIA requests
• Collected information about Kryptos from the American Cryptogram Association (be aware that the Kryptos transcript in CIA_clue.txt has errors, so do not use it)
• A collection of links compiled by Chris 'Xenon' Hanson
• Doug Gwyn's transcription of the Kryptos sculpture (ciphertext is accurate, but has one error on the tableau side)
• The Kryptos listing at the Smithsonian Art Museum database
• Oxford University site with scans and an exact transcript of Howard Carter's diary from the opening of King Tut's tomb (part 3 of Kryptos is paraphrased from this). Check November 26, 1922
• A June 2000 poem by Gerald Schwartz that includes some text from Kryptos
• The Kryptos Wiki Database at yak.net - Lots of good info and pictures here.
• The Kryptos Wikipedia page.
• Monet's Kryptos Observations - Includes lots of closeups of parts of the sculpture from miscellaneous sources (newscast videos, etc.).
• Irina Dubova's site about the Cyrillic Projector. Includes notes of an interview with Sanborn
• The Kryptos Project, extensive site, maintained by Kryptos researcher Jew-Lee Lann Briere.


• Information in other languages:
  • French: Les sculptures de James Sanborn (Summary of info about Kryptos and Cyrillic Projector)
  • Russian: Игры разума, подвижного как ртуть (magazine article about the cracking of the Cyrillic Projector.) english
  • Turkish: 1990 yilinda eski CIA'li Jim Sanborn tarafindan tasarlanan Kryptos'un kenarlarinda gizli 865 harflik sifre, CIA içinde dahi çözülemiyordu.
  • Japanese: Hotwired Japan
  • Portuguese: Kryptos, uma escultura cheia de letras no quartel general da CIA (10/26/04 - Kryptos, a sculpture covered with letters in the CIA courtyard)
  • Hungarian: De az utalások igen rejtettek, és a Kryptos kódjának K4-ként emlegetett negyedik része eddig ellenállt minden megfejtési kísérletnek.
  
  
• Information on other Sanborn artwork:
  
  
  • The Cyrillic Projector - Located in Charlotte, North Carolina, this is another cryptographic sculpture that Jim Sanborn created after Kryptos
    9/20/2003 - The Cyrillic Projector code has been cracked!
  • Sanborn's Antipodes sculpture at the Hirshhorn Museum in DC - This sculpture contains the text of Kryptos on one side, and the text of the Cyrillic Projector on the other
  • List of Jim Sanborn's works, exhibitions, and awards
  • Jim Sanborn's Wikipedia biography
• Spoilers (solution files):

Notes: In April 2006, sculptor Sanborn announced a corrected solution to K2, so some of the below pages are out of date. For details on the corrected solution, please read the announcement.

In November 2010, Sanborn offered a clue, that the ciphertext letters NYPVTT in K4 decrypt to the plaintext letters BERLIN.

In November 2014, Sanborn offered a second clue, that the word after BERLIN is CLOCK

In January 2020, Sanborn offered a third clue, the word NORTHEAST

In April 2020, in the early days of the pandemic, Sanborn offered a third clue, the word EAST, in email correspondence. This was approved for public release in August 2020

Assuming that all clues are correct, this means that the final answer to K4 will have the words in these locations:

                                       .... 
            .................EASTNORTHEAST. 
            ............................BER
            LINCLOCK.......................
      

• Jim Gillogly's 1999 solution of parts 1-3
• David Stein's report on how he solved parts 1-3 (from unredacted report obtained in 2004)
• David Stein's report (redacted version), released in National Security Archive. (pdf)
• 2014: As the result of multiple FOIA requests, we now have the internal NSA correspondence from the early 1990s
• Bill Houck's 2003 explanation of how to solve Parts 1 and 2 of the Kryptos sculpture. (archive.org mirror)
• A Flash utility which can build the vigenere tables needed to solve parts 1 and 2
• My (Elonka Dunin's) speculative "pencil and paper" explanation of how to solve Part 3 of the sculpture
• A page listing a method for doing a column transposition of part 3
• Interactive Kryptos solvers. Got a guess on how to solve part 4? Try it out on one of these pages:
  • John Wilson's Kryptos page, including an interactive Kryptos solver.
  • Rumkin's Vigenere Cipher utility
• Unsolved: Part 4 of Kryptos (the last 97 characters), as of August 2025, remains unsolved:

                                     OBKR 
          UOXOGHULBSOLIFBBWFLRVQQPRNGKSSO 
          TWTQSJQSSEKZZWATJKLUDIAWINFBNYP 
          VTTMZFPKWGDKZXTJCDIGKUHUAUEKCAR
        

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Elonka's Journal(s):

Second visit! In March 2019, with the help of the CNN "Great Big Story" video crew, I was able to visit Langley for a second time. For a detailed visit report, along with some additional pictures (which I am still processing) please see the archived messages in the Kryptos discussion group (free to join). The resultant video was released in July 2019 and a podcast with additional information in July 2020.

First visit: On Friday, October 18th 2002, I had the rare opportunity to closely examine the Kryptos sculpture in the main courtyard. Due to understandable security reasons, I was not able to take my own pictures, but my guides kindly arranged for an official photographer to take a few pictures of me next to the sculpture, plus I was permitted to take some rubbings of Kryptos itself. Each rubbing was done on a standard 8.5 x 11" piece of paper, which gives an idea of the size of the sculpture. And yeah, I know the rubbings are smudged and uneven. I've never done rubbings before, so I make no claims to skill at this! (grin). If you'd like to see them though, check here to see the rubbings. A couple in particular that are worth checking out came from the top line of the lower left panel in the picture. The letters there are "ENDYAHROHN..." This particular line is of interest because a few of the letters were out of alignment with everything else. In the "NDY" and "AHR" rubbings, you can see that the letters "Y", "A", and "R" are a couple centimeters out of alignment. All the other rows on the sculpture seemed to be properly aligned though. So was it an error in the sculpting process, or a deliberate misalignment related to some part of the code? Heck if I know, but here're the ahr and ndy rubbings if you'd like to see them.

Note: I have heard that there are other related sculptures around the complex, including some with morse code messages, but I was unfortunately unable to see these due to time limitations.

Another interesting sight was late in the afternoon, when I was standing near the red petrified wood "gnomon", and when I looked at the white rock on the right, I saw letters illuminated on it. This was especially odd because for this to occur, the light source would have had to have been behind the sculpture, but the sun was still off to the left, so how could that be? Upon further investigation, what I found was that the sun's rays were hitting the windows of the New Headquarters Building behind the sculpture (you can see the green-tinted windows in the photo), and then the glare from the windows was shining back on the sculpture in such a way as to shine beams of "letter" light back onto the white rock, making letters ripple across the surface. It was actually quite pretty!

Another observation I was able to make had to do with the latitude and longitude coordinates that are referred to in the second part of the deciphered code. According to Gillogly's translation, it says:

"It was totally invisible. How's that possible? They used the earth's magnetic field. x The information was gathered and transmitted undergruund to an unknown location. x Does langley know about this? They should: it's buried out there somewhere. x Who knows the exact location? Only WW. This was his last message. x Thirty eight degrees fifty seven minutes six point five seconds north, seventy seven degrees eight minutes forty four seconds west. ID by rows."

Checking those coordinates (38 57 6.5 N, 77 8 44 W) via one of the online mapping services such as Mapquest, Terraserver or Topozone, it obviously points to the general area of CIA Headquarters in Virginia, though the different maps disagree as to the exact location (plus of course it's very hard to see something at that level of detail). Of particular interest to me is the "6.5 seconds" resolution of the north latitude, since this "tenth of a second" resolution narrows a location down to a very specific area (maybe 10-50 feet across).

There'd been some speculation that the coordinates pointed to the exact location of the Kryptos sculpture itself. By my own calculations with a GPS though (granted, it's a cheap GPS which may have its own accuracy errors built in), the coordinates point to an area about 150' southeast of the sculpture. This was in another courtyard on the other side of a walkway, and I couldn't get into that courtyard because there was a sign saying "emergency exit only". Looking through the windows though, I saw a courtyard with another walkway, some more landscaped areas, and, right where I thought "x marks the spot" might be, I saw an area with a tree and, of most interest, a manhole cover.

At the base of the Kryptos sculpture itself is a round pool with a built-in fountain/pump, forcing water in a circular motion around the pool. I couldn't see into the pool because the water was too murky. As sheer speculation though, what I'm wondering, is whether the manhole cover might lead to some utility tunnels underneath the courtyard, perhaps even to the location of the pump that controls the fountain. There might be another clue or message near that "undergruund" pump.

It is of course impossible for me to explore down that utility tunnel, and probably just as unlikely for any of the agency's analysts to go down there. I'm hoping though that someone there might befriend one of the maintenance staff who *can* go down there, and see if there's anything interesting!

Lastly, I must offer heartfelt thanks to my guides around the building, who patiently answered my questions, worked through the redtape required in order for me to visit, showed *enormous* patience in waiting for me while I examined the sculpture and obtained the rubbings, and acted as gracious (and did I mention patient?) hosts. Thank you!

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Site created 10/24/2002

May 2024: General update, cleaned up some links, reformatted page a bit, posted link to the new LEMMiNO video

January 2020: Updated link to new version of Kryptos discussion group on groups.io, which has been ported over from Yahoogroups.

July 2019: Miscellaneous cleanup, fixing some broken links lost to web-rot. Added a couple new links, information about March 2019 visit

November 2014: Posted info about new Kryptos clue

July 2013: General cleanup, removed a bunch of dead links, added a couple new (live) ones, including FOIA-obtained report about NSA's work on the sculpture in the early 1990s, as well as the comprehensive Wired article about the release.

October 2011: Adding FB "like" button

November 2010: Updating press links, info about the new "Berlin" clue

August 2010: Added link to jimsanborn.net

March 2010: Link updates, added ''Secrets of the Lost Symbol'' article, added links to kryptos.info and kryptosrevisited.com

September 2009: Miscellaneous link updates

May 2009: Added links to Wired article and KMOV TV segment, updated a couple other links that had succumbed to web rot.

August 2008: Added link to upcoming PBS segment

April 2008: Adding link to How Stuff Works video, plus other miscellaneous updates

July 2007: Updated

January 12, 2007: Fixed some broken links

April 26, 2006: Created new "Radio interviews and podcasts" section

April 20, 2006: Posted link to announcement about corrected K2 text, added Wired article, updated spoilers section

2006: Fixed broken image, added link to Croatian article, started Books section

November 2005: Added link to Irina Dubova's site

October 2005: Added link to Monet's intriguing webpage.

September 2005: Removed links to the late Gary Warzin's email address. Rest in Peace, Gary. :/

July 2005: Added links to article in French newspaper Libération, and Canadian TV interview with Sanborn

June 2005: Added links to Binrev Episode #99, NPR segment, Guardian article, Hungarian Kryptos page, CNN articles

May 27, 2005: Added link to Wall Street Journal article

March/April 2005: Added links to a couple new articles, as well as a new Kryptos site in Argentina.

January 2005: Added links to Kryptos information in Spanish, Japanese, Turkish, Portuguese, and Dutch. Added link to new article and Scheidt/Sanborn transcripts at wired.com site, and updated FAQ with the new information. Fixed links to articles that had been lost to web rot, by linking instead to the mirrors at the wonderful archive.org site. Added link to Stein report, and Jaco radio interview. Mirrored some other information from David Wilson's now defunct website (thanks to David Wilson for as long as it lasted though!)

8/20/2004: Fixed and updated some links to other sites and discussion groups.

1/9/2004: Added heads-up about Kryptos being on "Good Morning America" on 1/12

1/6/2004: Added link to German news item and Slovakian article that covers Kryptos.

1/2/2004: Added link to transcript of 4/2/1991 World News Tonight interview with Jim Sanborn, moved older updates to their own page.

For older updates, please check here.

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The Kryptos sculpture is copyrighted as of 1988 by Jim Sanborn. Images used with permission.