The first three ciphers were embarrassingly simple such that even the most amateur cipherpunks would never propose such schemes for something that actually required protection. For K4, people are coming up with wildly convoluted decryption schemes that would be completely impractical for an operative to implement. It should be something simpler than all these wild meanderings and special cases, but with multiple rounds or layers and possibly some output feedback or block chaining. That still keeps it simple but makes it much more secure and difficult to decrypt. However, it would be interesting if it turned out to be something dependent on highly irregular marking, correlating, tweaking, rotating, etc...
I was impressed at your representation of the K1-K3 mechanics. Throughout the video I noticed key elements that you recognized for the flip to K4 but I also noticed the point where you had diverted to try to find keywords that were embedded into the anagrams of the ciphertext of the puzzle. The puzzle crescendos to an apex building on keywords with themes of an Architect. Aligning the K3 Plaintext over the K4 Ciphertext, you get the layout of a 32x14 letter grid according to Monet, that exposes the "Kryptos Pyramid". I noticed this one hint Sanborn stressed the most left out in your examinations which were thorough but somewhat misdirected a bit. The Kryptos Pyramid is cut out of this layout and then arranged in a pie of wedges, and read as if on graph paper. With the layout of this new ciphertext block it is then formed into a repeating pattern to form a huge Tableau. The ciphertext of K4 is then laid across the Tableau as a series of 97x97 letter guides. The Tableau is set. There is now a strong diagonal line from the NW corner to the SE corner of this Tableau. This pattern stands out clearly and the entry of the ciphertext creates patterned abscissas where the letters match up, revealing a series of lines that show an image that matches the cross section of the Unfinished Pyramid of the Masonic Temple in Burlington, VT. The resulting 97 letters of the entry into the ciphertext produce a strand to be laid across the ciphertext of K4, and a monoalphabetic substitution is used TWICE to crack that strand to align to BERLIN CLOCK. The resulting message derived by Ian James Colmer in 2015 is found here and is shown along side the methods I used to flip to Layer Two: facebook.com/CrackedKryptos The Field Agent that you were clued into locating is actually two agents, one X in the West, and the other in Vermont, following the compounding clues that show both the same messages in the puzzle, and corresponding to the hints and guides located in the SW corner of the 32x14 letter grid Monet presented. TTUTVT is the Abscissa in the corner and is used to rotate the Ciphertext for Layer Two's entry into a new Tableau position. When compiling the rotated ciphertext of the puzzle and confining it to 14 letter lines (VT = 14th State) you get the extra letter J, and removing that and placing it above the extra L in the Kryptos Vigenere Tableau you press the letters and shift the two sections individually over one letter, filling the blocks. Extra Extra....Read All About It on the link I posted. YAR appears to be squeezed pushing out the letters, hinting to move them over to cause the effect. Why are Pirates bad at playing golf? Because they can't make Par, they only make YAR......
I can be reached at my email linked in my account about info page if you would like to work with me on some graphics for the reveals of the breaks. Colmer got a confirmation from Jim Sanborn when he listed a partial strand about his method, as Sanborn has said you can send in that for confirmation if you are trying to see if your method is correct, but Colmer seeing the info somehow decided not to pay for it a second go around, and assumed that his method was correct based on the methods of the partial strand he submitted, and instead he revealed the information to me in emails and to the American Cryptogram Association's Discussion Page on FB. He also made sure to remove his account and his info before leaving the group and closing his FB account. He later was exposed as being an associate of Jeffrey Epstein, hosting his photo and listing him on the board of directors of his company Lifeboat.com so it is apparent that he may have had ties to the Intelligence Community in some manner through Epstein or others who may have revealed this part of the puzzle, escalating the mystery to a new level. Kryptos means Hidden in English and Hidden in Spanish is Occulto....the puzzle masks the locations of the Two Hidden Occult Agents Your discovery of the hidden anagrams of LETHEAN PARASYTOLE are key, as they show an additional anagram that points to two themes about these agents and the murders that they were involved in when plotting this cult affair in both locations with help from the Agency. The Puzzle is a teaching tool for the crafting of ciphers that the Agency has crafted for their future operations IMO as these keywords are derived scientifically, and at the same time divert from the Puzzle's main course....as your discovery was clearly unintended but intentionally added as a possible clue to the identity that is formed from the examination of all the clues together. LETHEAN PARASYTOLE can form these words easily, with only a few missing letters. HE AN OLE LETHAL PARASYT - the agent in the West HE AN OLE LEAN PARAtrooper - the agent in Vermont HE LET AN OL PEARL STO - the theme from the Burlington Temple's Historical references, and an Old Pearl St. Store (Ben and Jerry's) HE AN OLE LEAHE LET PARASYT - describing Patrick Leahy letting a "parasite" go free The two agents were a part of a notorious "Z" operation, as the ciphers in Layer Two reveal the phrase 'OL WING WALCAR' The puzzles are practically speaking to one another, with Kryptos continuing their affairs as if a clock ticking. facebook.com/ZodiacCiphersSovled They were hiding their operations in plain sight, with the obvious END WTC abscissa formed in the NW corner of the lower half of the ciphertext, and as you can see set up more ciphers that describe their following stages of operations in this new examination of the Amerithrax Letters as well, with "Mr. Z" making his signature in two different ciphers that were discovered. facebook.com/AmerithraxLettersDecoded
Love this video! Especially how you used everything on the sculpture and every clue that Sandborn has given. I might have missed it though but I didn't understand why you thought the finale solution was split into 11 different puzzles? So for this theory, does that mean that each of the 11 pieces uses either keyword one or two against another section of the text to solve?
Eleven different puzzles because there are eleven numbers in the Lat/Lon coordinates: 38-57-6.5, 77-8-44. I figured each number was an index into a list of alphabets, but now I'm thinking they might be the amount to shift the alphabet (or something), since Sanborn said something about trying every possible shift. Also, eleven keywords, one for each section, made from the ciphertext of K1 and K2 (or K3 maybe?). Breaking the puzzle into pieces thwarts attempts to use frequency analysis, etc. That "masks the English". Sanborn also said that the keys (keywords?) are the algorithm (to encrypt/decrypt), but I haven't entirely figured that one out yet.
Wow, this was so well done! Just discovered Kryptos this year and this video gave me alot of ideas. Going back to the The Berlin Clock to see how JS could have applied set theory to K4. Im somewhat convinced that K4 has a form of artistic substitution going on that would explain why its an analog solution that cant be brute force cracked by computers. JS was an artist first before learning cryptography, no? Perhaps the answer lies in a graphic representation of K4 that requires intuition to decipher and not just raw calculation/frequency analysis. i love your theory on the masking technique, this video was immensely helpful. My only other current theory is this: K4 is a One Time Pad that uses one of Howard Carters' many books as the key, which would explain why we can't find the algorithm so easily. Perhaps clues to the section or page of Carters' book that are the basis of the One Time Pad are in the sculpture somewhere but I have yet to find it. Just an idea.
Good! I am glad this video is helping spawn new ideas for people. Sanborn mentioned that "every possible shift" should be tried, so I try to keep that in mind when trying out new ideas. Also, I think Sanborn gave us the word-clues (like BERLIN) thinking that someone might be able to reverse engineer the alphabet which he used on K4. But I haven't figured out how to do that yet.
@@k4hasgotme Reverse engineering the alphabet from the three word-clues must be one of the best ways to approach it. Thank you for putting such a great compendium of info together in one place. One of the other approaches I've thought of is a multi-dimensional approach. I was a toddler when the sculpture was made but I watched Elonka's presentation on youtube and started to include considerations Sanborn may have experienced in 1988-90. I am an amateur sculptor myself and one of my first impressions on seeing the solutions was that K1's substitution clue could be one dimensional (shading vs darkness/illusion etc). K2 could be two dimensional (coordinates etc.) K3 could be three dimensional with the route substitution to the keyed columnar transposition (you have to leap through/see through the third dimension to apply the substitution - might be a stretch but who knows). Sanborn might have crafted K4 with a 4th dimensional perspective in mind. I'm not trained in cryptography but while learning Vigenere and other ciphers, I briefly browsed for a cipher that doesn't use up or down/cardinal directions but inside-out or spiral configurations and found nothing. I'll probably redouble my efforts into reverse engineer the alphabet after watching your video because I think you hit on something with the 6 deconstructed alphabets. A few days ago I just read the NSA's Z group memos on Kryptos that Elonka got from her FOIA request where it mentions that K1 used 10 alphabets and K2 used 8. Thank you again for sharing all of this, it has helped alot of people.
FYI: In case it hasn't already occurred to you, the 10 alphabets on K1 are from one keyed alphabet, just shifted 9 times. Same with K2 and the 8 alphabets.
Technically I guess there are only 8 alphabets for K1, and 5 alphabets for K2, because of repeated letters in the keywords PALIMPSEST and ABSCISSA. Each alphabet is shifted so it begins with one of the letters of the keyword, thus making some of the alphabets repeats.
@@k4hasgotme Awwwwwwwwwwwww interesting, I didnt know that, thank you for clarifying. I didnt realize that the shifts you mentioned are in relation to the deconstruction of the alphabets by keyword. Does that mean there are a finite amount of shifts possible based on keyword? If so then thats superb, I have to go back and learn more about applying alphabets to ciphers. Thank you kindly, I may have skipped the importance of that while reading up on Vigenere ciphers, especially if working backwards from Northwest/Berlin/Clock. It makes a big difference of K4 is indeed meant to be split into two puzzles at the 7th column boundary even though that makes perfect sense regardless of if keyword A is Kryptos or Lethean. Working backwards Id probably assume 7-18 character keyword(s) and pre-map possible shifts in between by leaving blank spaces and then fill them in with Northeast/QQPRNGKSS, BERLIN/NYPTT, AND CLOCK/MZFPK and see if filling in arbitrary alphabets around them gives any discernible words in either direction. Like you said , the problem is accounting for repeated letters/repeated rows of alphabet kind of make the amount of shift possibilities exponentially large. Damn, I gotta buy alot of graph paper or try this in Excel to plot that many without it taking a century.
In hindsight I should have specified that the two words BERLIN CLOCK presented at 36:36 were clues provided by Mr. Sanborn as a partial solution to the K4 puzzle. Also, I learned how to upload a transcript and create subtitles. Anyone can now contribute subtitles in other languages than English. To do so, follow this link: ru-vid.com_video?v=yKRZ0rvAf4I&ref=share
Check out the Berlin peace clock, started ticking when the Berlin wall fell which was one month before Edward Scheidt left the CIA and about exactly a year before the Kryptos was revealed, also coincidentally Berlin has the same time zone as Cairo which could tie into the third passage also i think that the third passage is supposed to represent the Berlin wall being torn down, i reckon you have to use the time it started ticking via a hill cipher to crack it but beyond that i'm stuck. hopefully you can do better than me i'm done lmao.
www.wired.com/2014/11/second-kryptos-clue/ "Sanborn told WIRED that he's always been fascinated by Berlin's many clocks but the Berlin Clock in particular has intrigued him the most. The clock, also known as the Berlin Uhr or Set Theory Clock..."
@@k4hasgotme Consider the following: Why would Sanborn design the Puzzle in such a way, that the clue for revealing the plaintext only becomes available after you have already revealed the plaintext?
Hey k4hasgotme. I was so happy my favorite documentary channel lemmino made a video on Kryptos and was hoping for it to break the streak of Kryptos videos with very little info. i watched it but I get the feeling that he left out a lot of important things and solutions. You seem very educated on this topic and I wanted to ask how do you feel about his new video and do you think it's pretty all-encompassing?
hey, I’m also coming from the lemmino video he put his email responding to another comment here, that’s probably a better way to contact him. Sort by newest, it was about 2 months ago
Well there must be something with the light the sun and the location of the panel, like super impose the panels or some light /shade shadow thing, the 3 alphabet also makes me think about 3 axis, like a 3d thing that the panels can be aligned in such a way they do the XYZ coordinates. Like a cube, there are 3 axis planes.... Or the way this resables a book page, looks like you could fold it in 4, and overlay the letters...? dont know..
"PALIMPSEST" actually looks like a key piece of wordplay with the first letter missing from one of the words. If this is the case, then the solution to this part would be "Glimpse into the PAST",with the G the missing first letter.
Additional ideas to consider (hopefully something here will be useful to someone): 1) In general, a repeated letter found in a cryptogram may be a clue for decrypting the cipher text (CT). Kryptos contains the repeated letter: "WW". 2) The 'W's in K4 may be section dividers like the 'X's in K1 and K2. In the comments of this video, "MrBoscarin" offered some interesting information about the CT of K4 when it is divided at each letter 'W'. So, if the 'W's are like the 'X's in K1 and K2, how did they all come out as 'W's in the CT? The 'X's in K1 and K2 appear to be random letters in the CT of K1 and K2. And I doubt that the 'W's will become 'X's when K4 is decrypted in its current state. So, what occurred to me is that, Sanborn, after encrypting K4, may have done a Caesar Shift (at least on each section which contains a plain text 'X') so that each X-letter would be forced to show as a 'W'. This would mean that the CT may need to be shifted, using a Caesar Shift, before attempting to decipher K4. Sanborn did say to "try every possible shift". 3) The letter 'W' also appears when performing a "Rail Fence Cipher" (RFC). The RFC is used as a way to shuffle the letters of a message, or CT, or even an alphabet. It is a form of transposition cipher. The letters are written in a 'WWW...' pattern and then removed by rows. How many rows you use is up to you. Using RFC would be an alternative to the decimation method mentioned in my video for scrambling the letters of an alphabet. 4) In general, isolated numbers found in a cryptogram may also provide clues for decrypting the cipher text. Kryptos contains the numbers 38-57-6.5 77-8-44. 5) In my video, the CT of K4 gets divided into rows of 18 letters. The keywords LETHEAN and PARASYSTOLE together are 18 letters in length. There are marks at the 18th letters of both K1 and K2 in the photo of the code sheet which Sanborn provided to the public. Also, the keywords PALIMPSEST and ABSCISSA together are 18 letters in length. So, it appears that K4 is to be divided into 18-letter sections, with the last one being 7-letters. However, there may be another level of subdivision (perhaps for switching alphabets, or resetting a keyword every few letters) by using the latitude/longitude numbers: 385765/77844. When repeating this pattern, however, it does not align with the end of K4, at the 97th letter (which may or may not matter). It does align at 98. But, if the longitude is placed first (77844/385765) and repeated, there is an alignment at the 97th letter. The same when just the longitude (77844) by itself is repeated. FYI: ABSCISSA (the keyword of K2) means the "horizontal axis" of a coordinate system, and longitude is the horizontal axis of the lat/long system. 6) Sanborn has made comments along the lines of: 1) he was surprised that no one had picked up on the most obvious key sitting in plain view and 2) he was surprised no one had recovered the original matrix. Perhaps the "most obvious key" is the number 31. The code chart photo shows K1 and K2 were originally laid out in rows of 31 letters. The CT of K4 has three rows of 31 letters. The Kryptos Vigenere Tableau was extended by four columns which makes each row to be 31 letters. And, as "MrBoscarin" pointed out in the comments, if you take the latitude numbers 38+57+65 and subtract the longitude numbers 77+8+44 the result is 31. So, what could the number 31 be in reference to? The names of months of the years which have 31 days - used as keywords? The Baudot Code alphabet which is numbered 0-31 and is used to transmit Morse code? Or perhaps a clue to use exclusive-or (XOR) to encrypt and decrypt. I know that Sanborn has repeated many times that he is not very good at math, but a fixed matrix can be laid out on paper showing the results of doing an XOR operation of every number from 0-31 against every other number from 0-31. That way, all that is required is to look up one number across the top and the other number down the left side and find where the row and column intersect... just like a Vigenere Tableau.
I think the uncovering of LETHEAN and PARASYSTOLE was genius, but they really read to me as part of the overarching puzzle, not K4. But he did say K (1-3) would be used to solve K4 so i guess its possible?
Sanborn has said that the keywords are hidden in the sculpture and that the keywords are the algorithm used to solve K4. So the questions is, what do Lethean and Parasystole mean? Is Lethean a river or stream like the river Lethe in Greek mythology, or does Lethean refer to covering up, hiding, or forgetting (which is what happens to a person who crosses the river Lethe)? If so, how does that become an algorithm for encryption? As for Parasystole, what, in cryptology, is a pacemaker? Is it a keyword, an alphabet or something else? If there are two pacemakers, how are they used? Answering these questions are what's stopping me from solving K4.
The raised YAR spell ray. As in, ray of LIGHT. Alluded to tin the first k1 cipher. The absence of light, or a ray of light. Thats one of the clues no one gets.
The reason the creator released it as a clue, is because the reference to light is a key to solving the puzzle. When berlin clock comes into view, your mind is meant to shift to light. And in the beginning, god seperated the light from tje dark. And he called the light day, owr.
The reference is because it switches from using greek references to using hebrew refrences. Greek and hebrew both use gematria. And the english language also can be used for gematria. But i would bet they used it as a marker to look beyond english. As it uses greek, and english. The bible also uses greek and english, but also hebrew. Have you forgotten the hebrew gematria as a mathematical device? The CIA hasnt. It employes a lot of jews who havent.
Your frequency analysis of JKQVXZ is incorrect. Pause the video at 3:46 and recheck your frequencies, eg. the bottom row of K4 should be 140112 (the character Z appears at position 5 and 13).
You're correct. I checked, and there are several incorrect numbers in the Q and Z columns. (Bad spreadsheet programming.) Fortunately, the outcome of the analysis for each line remains the same. So no harm done overall.
alternative could be anethole parasyte as a different way of further unscrambling the key words. this seriously though has one of the best and intuitive ways of explaining the last cypher. it even still works with the latest releases of information of EAST and NORTHEAST as the plaintext. gonna try and dick around with this for a few days and work out maybe some other patterns from this. fun stuff, good puzzle for sure
i don’t think you did. I have always appreciated gary phillips for helping me see the artistry in encryption. every solution i have heard for 10 years I immediately did not like because they were not artistic in the same way- yours is the first presentation since his now defunct realm of twelve that made truly complete sense, spoke the language of encryption and accounted for every clue in a way that felt consistent. you skipped over the clues on the grounds, but they aren’t entirely necessary- as JS has said, and you have shown. i think you’re at the door.
I suspect the six alphabets might be replaced by a Jefferson disk/M-94 cipher device created from the Vigenere Tableau, making all 25 alphabets 31 letters long then decimating each one. But, no success with that yet either.
Well done vid but if K4 indeed requires all that columns sliding and the rest then it was made overly complicated for the sake of being complicated: too much work and not enough fun to decrypt it. And if it's indeed as convoluted as you suggest then this encryption could not be used as a secure communication method between two parties ..
No argument from me on that. The message of K4 would have to be non-urgent, very sensitive/secret information and the recipient would have to be highly trained in the art of steganography as well as cryptography, especially the method which Sanborn used on K4, which is non-standard.
This was my thought exactly. This is a very field-unwieldly approach, but an agent trained a long time in the technique specifics and variations could possibly have enough memory to recover all of all the intricate techniques and embeddings, and could successfully find keys and decrypt at a desk with some time and dedication.
Sometimes I don't get a notification from YT about new comments, so my apologies for the delay. I haven't done much with Kryptos for months. One time I went 10 months without working on Kryptos. I usually wait until I have an epiphany, then try it out, then take a break again when I run out of ideas to try. I've been hoping ever since I uploaded this video that it would spark an epiphany in someone else and they would solve K4.
Nope! www.wired.com/2014/11/second-kryptos-clue/ "Sanborn told WIRED that he's always been fascinated by Berlin's many clocks but the Berlin Clock in particular has intrigued him the most. The clock, also known as the Berlin Uhr or Set Theory Clock..."
revisiting this after 3 more clues revealed.. i am even more impressed than i was. I have often considered that every single clue must mean something and you have definitely demonstrated that. It seems so much like you've solved it though. I'm not even sure what to try in terms of a next move
I've been using the tableau on the other side to pad your key streams. I was drawn by the pairs of letters to look for letter streams with those repeating letters within the sculpture and there are 4 of each on the right side.... I don't want to post everything I did next here. but I wouldnt have seen this without your video.
Decrypting with the 'C' results in the letter 'L' (i.e. ILLUSION) and decrypting with the 'S' results in the letter 'Q' (i.e. IQLUSION). So, it appears that Sanborn wanted to know, for some reason, which letter to modify in the keyword PALIMPSEST to get the letter 'L'. Why, I don't know.
I don't. That's why I said "it appears". It also looks like Sanborn spelled PALIMPCEST with a 'C' on the entire first row, then went back an over-wrote the 'C' with an 'S'. Maybe he just missed the one on the second row. But I find it an interesting coincidence that 'C' decrypts to 'L'.
Unfortunately, all the ad hoc choices in shifting, deletion, etc. which added lots of entropy without revealing substantial plaintext indicate that the analysis is unlikely to be correct. Using such methodology one can easily manufacture patterns that have no objective meaning but occur more or less randomly. Back in Friedman's day this was seen in a lot of the "proofs" that Bacon was the true author of works more commonly attributed to Shakespeare.
It appears that some viewers are missing the concept of there being two parts to deciphering K4 and that this video only presents a theory of part one (the technique Sanborn may have used to mask the English language). This video makes no attempt at all towards showing how to solve K4, which would be part two. Ed Scheidt: "you need to solve the technique first and then go for the puzzle." The "shifting, deletion, etc." shown in the video pertains to uncovering the masking technique, therefore there is no presentation of "revealing substantial plaintext", because that would only occur in part two of deciphering K4, which is outside the scope of this video.
@@k4hasgotme take K4 and remove the 5 Ws in it, you'll end up with six shorter messages. Take messages 1,3,5 and messages 2,4,6 and join them to have two groups of 46 letters each . Apply frequency analysis to each of these to groups . You'll see that they have the same number of letters appearing with the same frequency, for example 1 letter with frequency 5 each, 2 letters with 4 and so on. Have you ever heard about this concept before? I have some more ideas about the whole thing as well
Wow! Intriguing! Not sure where it might lead, but it makes me stop and think about how K4 might have been structured in order to produce these results. Hmm. Any more ideas like this?
@@k4hasgotme consider the cypher text panel in rows of 31 (Because( 38+57+65)-(77+8+44)=31 ). label every letter with its coordinates in this form: (row, column) as you would do in a cartesian system. Start counting from the top left hand corner instead of the origin, so the first letter of K1 is (1,1) and so on. Now look at the 3 misspellings L/Q, U/W, E/A in K3. This last one placed as it appears in the pt(I think there Is an L in the ct at the place of the misspelled A). Their coordinates in the system described before have to be turned into letters of the alphabet kryptosabcdefghijlmnquvwxz, where every number mod26 stands for a letter starting with K=0. The anagram of the resulting letters spells "Key six" or better in my opinion "x is Key". This is an original idea of mine, never read about this anywhere else. Not sure It means something either.
Interesting discovery. Not sure it helps. The number 31 appears several places in Kryptos (code charts, K4 width, tableau width) but I had not noticed the equation: (38+57+65)-(77+8+44)=31. I'm fairly sure a 31-letter alphabet was used in K4. I had a thought on the 'w's in K4. They could be spacers between phrases, and the solution to K4 (once discovered) may need to be shuffled as you described earlier (1,3,5 & 2,4,6) in order to make sense of it.
