Documents reveal that NSA beat CIA to the punch in decoding Kryptos- years ahead

[NO ONE]

[img]http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/threatlevel/2013/06/kryptos.jpg[/img]

[quote]
It’s a story that has largely remained buried in the NSA archives until Elonka Dunin unearthed it in a recent FOIA request. Dunin is the premier expert on Kryptos who oversees a Google Group dedicated to cracking the code and also maintains a website dedicated to the sculpture.

Although a Baltimore Sun story about Kryptos in 2000 disclosed that the NSA had cracked three sections of the puzzle, many of the details behind the efforts were not revealed.
...
It all began in 1988 when the CIA Fine Arts Commission commissioned local artist James Sanborn to create a cryptographic sculpture for a courtyard on the CIA campus. Sanborn completed the two-part sculpture in 1990, which included stones laid out in International Morse code near the front entrance of the CIA campus, and a 12-foot-high, verdigrised copper, granite and petrified wood sculpture. The latter, which is the more famous part of Kryptos, was inscribed with four encrypted messages composed from some 1,800 letters carved out of the copper plate.
...
In 1991, while on a trip to the CIA, a group of NSA cryptanalysis “interns” diligently scribbled all the letters from the sculpture onto sheets of paper and brought them back to the NSA so curious analysts there could take a crack at it. In December 1991 a group of NSA analysts met in a conference room at the NSA to discuss the sculpture and what methods of decryption they might apply, including classified methods used internally by the NSA.
...
...it was just three analysts who solved the codes, one tackling each section of the puzzle.
...
In June 1993, after the three parts were cracked, an internal letter announcing the feat was sent to Admiral McConnell at the NSA, marked “For Official Use Only” and informing him that the deed was done.[/quote]

[url=http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2013/07/nsa-cracked-kryptos-before-cia/?cid=9651674]Read the full article here[/url]

Really interesting shit.

[Elfy]

ownt

[Jeep-Eep]

Interservice rivalry at it's best, folks.

[catbarf]

[QUOTE=Jeep-Eep;41396010]Interservice rivalry at it's best, folks.[/QUOTE]

It's cool stuff, but a couple of interns decrypting an art sculpture is not exactly what I would term 'interservice rivalry'.

[saming]

I read that as Krypton and thought NSA was getting involved in Ћ Superman movies.

[pentium]

Well the NSA was running [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FROSTBURG]Frostburg[/url] in the 90's. Connection Machines were famous for outperforming every computer in existance.

[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BH8X8w8a4f4[/media]

[Jeep-Eep]

[QUOTE=catbarf;41396152]It's cool stuff, but a couple of interns decrypting an art sculpture is not exactly what I would term 'interservice rivalry'.[/QUOTE]

It's more productive than some exhibits of it, that's for sure.

[pentium]

[QUOTE=PelPix123;41396339]80 gigaflops? I think that's the power of the laptop I'm on, if you consider peak theoretical performance of the GPU as well.

Edit:

Actually, this laptop is about 160 gigaflops, so it's twice as powerful as the Frostburg.[/QUOTE]

Yet Firefox is probably a laggy piece of shit on it still. :v:

[turke]

[QUOTE=saming;41396254]I read that as Krypton and thought NSA was getting involved in Ћ Superman movies.[/QUOTE]

stop using Ћ

[saming]

[QUOTE=rampageturke 2;41396433]stop using Ћ[/QUOTE]

Ћ what ? Ћ WHAT ?

[B_I_G__C_U_M]

[QUOTE=saming;41396500]Ћ what ? Ћ WHAT ?[/QUOTE]

you're not funny