Sign up to save your podcasts
Or
Share The Kryptos Sculpture
Share to email
Share to Facebook
Share to X
Share to email
Share to Facebook
Share to X
Or
The Kryptos Sculpture
At CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, stands a copper sculpture covered with encrypted text. Created by artist Jim Sanborn and dedicated in 1990, Kryptos contains four coded passages designed around the world of secrecy, intelligence, and cryptography. Three were deciphered years ago. The fourth resisted codebreakers for decades. ([CIA][1])
The story took an unexpected turn in 2025. Researchers located the plaintext of the final passage within Sanborn's archived papers, but they did not discover the cryptographic method needed to derive it from the sculpture. Sanborn's archive, including the information needed to decipher the passage, was later sold to an anonymous bidder for $963,000. ([AP News][2])
The hidden words are now known to a small number of people. But the puzzle remains. Can anyone independently discover how Kryptos was actually meant to be solved?
The story took an unexpected turn in 2025. Researchers located the plaintext of the final passage within Sanborn's archived papers, but they did not discover the cryptographic method needed to derive it from the sculpture. Sanborn's archive, including the information needed to decipher the passage, was later sold to an anonymous bidder for $963,000. ([AP News][2])
The hidden words are now known to a small number of people. But the puzzle remains. Can anyone independently discover how Kryptos was actually meant to be solved?
View all episodes
By What Was Never ExplainedAt CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, stands a copper sculpture covered with encrypted text. Created by artist Jim Sanborn and dedicated in 1990, Kryptos contains four coded passages designed around the world of secrecy, intelligence, and cryptography. Three were deciphered years ago. The fourth resisted codebreakers for decades. ([CIA][1])
The story took an unexpected turn in 2025. Researchers located the plaintext of the final passage within Sanborn's archived papers, but they did not discover the cryptographic method needed to derive it from the sculpture. Sanborn's archive, including the information needed to decipher the passage, was later sold to an anonymous bidder for $963,000. ([AP News][2])
The hidden words are now known to a small number of people. But the puzzle remains. Can anyone independently discover how Kryptos was actually meant to be solved?
The story took an unexpected turn in 2025. Researchers located the plaintext of the final passage within Sanborn's archived papers, but they did not discover the cryptographic method needed to derive it from the sculpture. Sanborn's archive, including the information needed to decipher the passage, was later sold to an anonymous bidder for $963,000. ([AP News][2])
The hidden words are now known to a small number of people. But the puzzle remains. Can anyone independently discover how Kryptos was actually meant to be solved?