elahieh

When people come across Sanborn's 2005 comment concerning K4 ... "If a person deciphers and sends me the exact decipherment – if it can be deciphered exactly, considering most of my things are rife with mistakes on purpose – I'd probably let them know that they got it if they did." do you not think the rational people give up at that point? It's not very encouraging. Do you think the NSA people still looking at it at are basically just there because of Scheidt's reputation?

The most charitable interpretation of "if it can be deciphered exactly" is that it actually refers to the duress cipher concepts in K2 - that is, it can't be a "coincidence" that you can get both "IDBYROWS" and "LAYERTWO" from very similar ciphertext. (Anyone who doesn't believe me, try constructing something like that with a Quagmire III cipher.) The Kryptos dinner in 2015 was taped and put on YouTube, and Scheidt discusses duress ciphers and masking there.

My posts were more along the lines of ... Scheidt taught Sanborn the techniques used in the sculpture, said he enciphered the first three parts himself, is "confident" that K4 was enciphered correctly, and yet Sanborn has said he'd be "modifying systems and developing my own which would make it virtually impossible for [Scheidt] to decipher all of it" ... you've got Scheidt talking about "constraints" and "limitations" ... that is, advising Sanborn that certain things would be impossible to crack at that length; but nobody really knows if Sanborn has stepped outside those parameters or boundaries and made something which really is impossible to decipher.

To give a concrete example, the four-square cipher ... it would be merely difficult to break a 97-character code with the standard or Kryptos alphabet in the top left and bottom right squares (English plaintext). If Sanborn has thought "ah well, I'll show those CIA guys how it's done ... I'll make it impossible for Scheidt to decipher it!" and put random stuff in the top left and bottom right, then it becomes impossible, because the unicity distance of the cipher will be more than 97 letters. The practical effect is the same as a one-time pad.

So it becomes an interesting question - why are the NSA guys who made the initial breaks in K1-3 in 1992 still working on it, given that Scheidt said he's never checked it? Them and "dozens" of others at NSA. Anything could be happening. One explanation is that they think given Scheidt's public involvement and his reputation, it's designed to be breakable but hard; another one is just that it's about sunk costs, they've spent so much time on it, might as well just keep going!

Just to add some context to your "conflicting stories" remark, yes, the statements by Sanborn and Scheidt really go both ways ...

Sanborn did say he'd be "modifying systems and developing my own which would make it virtually impossible for [Scheidt] to decipher all of it", there are mistakes in the first three parts, and he has even hinted that a unique decipherment might not be possible. Objectively speaking this is rather discouraging for would-be solvers – if he expects a CIA cryptography expert cannot solve it, why should anyone else be able to?

On the mildly positive side, Scheidt did say in 2005 that he was “confident” the part four encipherment had been done correctly and Sanborn said in 2006 he was “pretty sure” about part four.

You founded a Yahoo mailing list back in 2003 dedicated to solving Kryptos which has levelled off in terms of members and posts. There are about 20,000 messages and 3,000 members.

People who've solved challenges like the Belfield "Can you crack the Enigma Code" book, people who've solved other parts of Kryptos like Ed Hannon formerly of NSA, and Jim Gillogly who publicly solved K1-3 have left or don't post much.

I joined last year after holding off for a while, although I was warned that the mod deletes links from posts and doesn't allow code. Also there was a massive Yahoo hack after which many people left and didn't come back.

After joining, I can see why people don't come back or participate. Sadly, I can see why you don't post much either. Virtually all the (recent) posts are gibberish, Nostradamus, Knights Templar, alphabet soup, anagramming, Scrabble bag type stuff. The mod is fine with that. There's nothing that resembles classical cryptanalysis or American Cryptogram Association type ciphers, or any discussion of coding which might help. One of the most interesting posts in the last 7 years I've seen was actually outside the group, Gillogly's interview with KryptosFan.

People learned to get around the mod by using the "upload file" feature, which sends a "New file uploaded" message to the list. Universally, when you look at the file they uploaded it's something comprehensible only to themselves, if that. A list of 300 "codewords", or a random six letter phrase. Some of the biggest posters are case studies in psychoceramics.

Essentially, there's no ranking of posts - everyone has to wade through megabytes of rubbish, looking for messages which might be of some use.

In addition, the Yahoo mailing list search function is very slow, ineffective and a total PITA, and a reader can't move through messages quickly. It's hard for a reader to download the archive.

So - I recognize it's a "unique" problem, but if you had to design a collaborative attempt to solve a problem like this again (2019 not 2003), what kind of platform would you use? How would you design a moderation process to encourage the experts to stay and contribute while ensuring the cranks don't drown out the useful discussion?