Kryptos is a sculpture created by American artist Jim Sanborn. It is located on the grounds of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) headquarters, the George Bush Center for Intelligence in Langley, Virginia.
The sculpture was unveiled on November 3, 1990. Since that time, people have guessed about the meaning of the four coded messages on it. Three of these messages have been solved, but the fourth message remains unsolved and is one of the most famous mysteries in the world. The artist, Jim Sanborn, has said that a fifth coded message might appear after the first four are solved. Many people, both amateur and professional code experts, continue to try to solve the fourth message. The artist has provided four clues to help with this task.
Description
The sculpture has four large copper plates and includes other materials like water, wood, plants, red and green granite, white quartz, and petrified wood. The most noticeable part is a large S-shaped copper screen that looks like a scroll or paper from a printer. Half of it has encrypted text made from the 26 letters of the Latin alphabet and question marks, cut into the copper plates. It is placed in the northwest corner of the New Headquarters Building courtyard, outside the agency's cafeteria. The main sculpture contains four separate messages, three of which have been solved.
Sanborn also placed other artworks on the CIA grounds, such as large granite slabs with copper sheets outside the entrance to the New Headquarters Building. Morse code messages are on these copper sheets. One stone slab has a compass rose pointing to a lodestone. The ciphers become more difficult as you move from the entrance into the courtyard, similar to a fossil. Other parts of the installation include a garden, a fish pond with benches on both sides, a reflecting pool, and other stones, like a black triangle-shaped slab.
The name Kryptos comes from the Greek word for "hidden." The theme is "intelligence gathering." The sculpture cost $250,000 to build in 1988, which is about $660,000 today.
Encrypted messages
The secret message on the left side of the main sculpture has 869 characters total: 865 letters and 4 question marks. In April 2006, Sanborn shared that one letter was left out from this side of Kryptos "for aesthetic reasons, to keep the sculpture visually balanced." There are also three misspelled words in the plain text of the first three sections, which Sanborn said was intentional. Three letters ("YAR") near the start of the bottom part of the left side are the only characters on the sculpture written in superscript.
The right side of the sculpture includes a special encryption chart with 867 letters. One line of the chart has an extra letter ("L"). Bauer, Link, and Molle suggest this might connect to the Hill cipher, as the letters "HILL" appear in order down the rightmost column with that extra "L." However, Sanborn did not include the extra letter in the small Kryptos models he sold.
Sanborn worked with Edward Scheidt, a retiring CIA employee, to create the cryptographic systems on the sculpture. Scheidt said the encryption difficulty was about nine out of ten. He intended for the puzzle to be solved in five to ten years. He also mentioned there was an intentional "change in the methodology" of the encryption. In a 2005 interview, Sanborn said he planned a way to confirm a correct solution if he died before the sculpture was fully deciphered. In 2020, he stated he would put the secret to the solution up for auction after his death.
In August 2025, Sanborn announced that the K4 solution, a prototype sculpture, encryption tables, and other related items would be auctioned by RR Auction later that year.
In October 2025, RR Auction officially listed the Kryptos auction as part of the sale titled "Decoding History: Kryptos, Enigma and the Rosetta Stone," running from 16 October to 20 November 2025. The same collection included a signed first-edition set of Howard Carter’s The Tomb of Tut-ankh-Amen, also available from 16 October to 20 November 2025.
Sanborn said the sculpture contains a riddle within a riddle, solvable only after the four encrypted sections are deciphered. He gave conflicting information about the sculpture’s answer, saying at one time he shared the full solution with then-CIA director William Webster during the dedication ceremony, but later said he did not. He did confirm that a part of the second message’s plain text reads, "Who knows the exact location? Only WW."
Solvers
The first person to publicly share that he had solved the first three parts of the Kryptos puzzle was Jim Gillogly, a computer scientist from southern California. He used a computer to solve these parts and shared his answers in 1999. After Gillogly's announcement, the CIA said that their analyst, David Stein, had solved the same parts in 1998 using pencil and paper. At that time, this information was only shared within the intelligence community. A public announcement about Stein’s solution was not made until July 1999. However, in November 1998, it was reported that "a CIA analyst working on his own time [had] solved 'the lion's share' of it."
The NSA stated that some of their employees had also solved the first three parts of the puzzle but did not share names or dates until March 2000. At that time, it was learned that an NSA team led by Ken Miller, along with Dennis McDaniels and two other unnamed individuals, had solved passages 1–3 in late 1992. In 2013, after a Freedom of Information Act request by Elonka Dunin, the NSA released documents showing that these attempts to solve the Kryptos puzzle in 1992 were made following a challenge by Bill Studeman, then Deputy Director of the CIA. These documents showed that by June 1993, a small group of NSA code experts had successfully solved the first three parts of the sculpture.
Earlier attempts to solve Kryptos suggested that passage 2 ended with "WESTIDBYROWS." However, in 2005, Nicole Friedrich, a logician from Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, found that another possible solution was "WESTXLAYERTWO." On April 19, 2006, Sanborn informed an online group focused on the Kryptos puzzle that he had made an error in the sculpture by leaving out an S in the coded message (which corresponds to an X in the plain text). He confirmed that the correct ending of the plaintext for passage 2 was "WESTXLAYERTWO," not "WESTIDBYROWS." In July 2025, it was noted that "LAYERTWO" matches Page 170 of Carter's account of "what we may call the second layer" in reference to a painted treasure chest that presented a significant challenge for an expedition team.
Solutions
The following are the decryptions of passages 1–3 of the sculpture. Blank spaces have been added to the texts for readability, but any misspellings present in the text are included exactly as they are.
The translations of the International Morse code (sometimes called K0) that are assigned to the copper slabs when viewed from the south:
E E VIRTUALLY E | E E E E E E INVISIBLE
DIGETAL E E E | INTERPRETATIT
E E SHADOW E E | FORCES E E E E E
LUCID E E E | MEMORY E
T IS YOUR | POSITION E
BETWEEN SUBTLE SHADING AND THE ABSENCE OF LIGHT LIES THE NUANCE OF IQLUSION
The word IQLUSION was claimed to be an intentional misspelling of ILLUSION by the creator, Jim Sanborn. This is supported by how the word appears on the original coding charts provided by Sanborn.
On line 7, column 26 of the original coding chart, the keyword "PALIMPSEST" is actually misspelled with a C, while the word ILLUSION is correctly spelled above it. When the KRYPTOS Vigenère tableau is used to encode the word ILLUSION into ciphertext with the keyword PALIMPCEST, the combination of the first L in ILLUSION and the C in PALIMPCEST produces the letter K in the ciphertext, which matches the original coding chart and is correctly transcribed onto the sculpture. If the keyword had been spelled correctly, the letter K would instead encode to W. Conversely, if the plaintext word IQLUSION had been encoded with a properly spelled keyword, the resulting ciphertext letter K would match what is seen on the sculpture. This type of intentional spelling error also occurred in passage 2 with the word UNDERGROUND, but in this case, the keyword and ciphertext are correctly spelled on the coding chart. Whether the error was intentional or not, a change occurred during the process of copying the ciphertext onto the sculpture.
Due to a previous issue involving an omitted S that was later identified as an error, it is unclear whether these spelling errors were meant to be part of the puzzle, meant to mislead people, or were accidental. When Sanborn was asked about the process, he said, "You could not make any mistake with 1,800 letters. It could not be repaired." This is supported by Sanborn's earlier statements in 2005, where he claimed, "most of my things are rife with mistakes on purpose."
IT WAS TOTALLY INVISIBLE HOWS THAT POSSIBLE ? THEY USED THE EARTHS MAGNETIC FIELD X THE INFORMATION WAS GATHERED AND TRANSMITTED UNDERGRUUND TO AN UNKNOWN LOCATION X DOES LANGLEY KNOW ABOUT THIS ? THEY SHOULD ITS 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 X LAYER TWO
In section 6 of the original coding charts, the plaintext word UNDERGROUND is correctly spelled, and columns 20–27 of the tableau also contain the correct spelling of the keyword "ABSCISSA," with the corresponding letter E in the ciphertext directly under the O. However, when transcribed onto the sculpture, the letter E somehow became an R. When the KRYPTOS Vigenère tableau is used to decode this message, the combination of R in the ciphertext and S in the keyword produces the letter U in the plaintext. The coordinates mentioned in the plaintext, 38°57′6.5″N 77°8′44″W / 38.951806°N 77.14556°W / 38.951806; -77.14556, have been interpreted using a modern system for measuring the Earth's shape as indicating a point approximately 174 feet (53 meters) southeast of the sculpture.
SLOWLY DESPARATLY SLOWLY THE REMAINS OF PASSAGE DEBRIS THAT ENCUMBERED THE LOWER PART OF THE DOORWAY WAS REMOVED WITH TREMBLING HANDS I MADE A TINY BREACH IN THE UPPER LEFT HAND CORNER AND THEN WIDENING THE HOLE A LITTLE I INSERTED THE CANDLE AND PEERED IN THE HOT AIR ESCAPING FROM THE CHAMBER CAUSED THE FLAME TO FLICKER BUT PRESENTLY DETAILS OF THE ROOM WITHIN EMERGED FROM THE MIST X CAN YOU SEE ANYTHING Q ?
This is a paraphrased quotation from Howard Carter's account of the opening of the tomb of Tutankhamun on November 26, 1922, as described in his 1923 book The Tomb of Tutankhamun. The question at the end is asked by Lord Carnarvon, to which Carter replied in his expedition notes, "Yes, wonderful things."
Clues given for passage4
In 2006, Sanborn mentioned that mistakes in passage 2 of Kryptos were connected to clues in the first three passages, which help solve passage 4. In November 2010, Sanborn shared a clue: the letters "NYPVTT," which are the 64th to 69th letters in passage 4, become "BERLIN" after decoding.
In November 2014, Sanborn gave another clue: the letters "MZFPK," the 70th through 74th letters in passage 4, become "CLOCK" after decoding. The 74th letter is "K" in both the original message and the coded message, showing that a letter can remain the same after encryption. Sanborn also said, "You'd better delve into that particular clock," but noted there are many interesting clocks in Berlin. In 2025, Sanborn confirmed the original message referred to the World Clock.
In January 2020, Sanborn shared a new clue: the letters "QQPRNGKSS," which are the 26th to 34th letters in passage 4, become "NORTHEAST" after decoding. In August 2020, Sanborn revealed that the letters "FLRV," the 22nd through 25th letters in passage 4, become "EAST" in the original message. He mentioned he had shared this information with others as early as April.
In August 2025, Sanborn wrote to The Washington Post about auctioning the solution to passage 4. He hoped the buyer would keep the solution private and wrote, "If they don't then (CLUE) what's the point? . . . Power resides with a secret not without it." He planned to sell the solution on November 20, his 80th birthday. The auction, held by RR Auction, was expected to earn between $300,000 and $500,000. Sanborn explained the decision to sell was difficult and acknowledged some in the Kryptos community would be upset, but he no longer had the resources to maintain the code or continue other projects.
In October 2025, RR Auction listed the Kryptos archive, including the solution to passage 4, a prototype, encryption tables, and related items, as part of a sale titled "Decoding History: Kryptos, Enigma and the Rosetta Stone." The sale ran from October 16 to November 20, 2025. The Kryptos archive sold for $962,500.
In September 2025, journalists Jarett Kobek and Richard Byrne found documents in archives donated by Jim Sanborn to the Smithsonian. These documents, when combined, appeared to contain the full solution to passage 4. Sanborn confirmed the accuracy of the text and explained he had mistakenly included the documents during cancer treatment. He then asked the Smithsonian to keep the files sealed until 2075.
After consulting with the auction house, Sanborn requested Kobek and Byrne to sign non-disclosure agreements, which they refused. Kobek and Byrne also claimed lawyers from the auction house threatened them with legal action if they shared the solution publicly. Kobek mentioned conflicting reports about when the documents were donated to the Smithsonian, ranging from 2010 to February 2024. The current record shows the donation date as 2023.
Kobek and Byrne noted they reviewed other works by Sanborn in the archives before finding the K4 solution. In a 2005 interview, Sanborn said studying his other works could help cryptographers understand Kryptos better. Kobek also mentioned that in March 2019, some attendees of a "Kryptos Dinner" asked Sanborn directly about solving K4, and he said he "did not care" what method was used.
In August 2025, Sanborn confirmed the existence of K5, which will be revealed after K4 is solved.
Related sculptures
After creating Kryptos, Sanborn's first sculpture with codes, he made other sculptures that also include coded messages. These include an "Untitled Kryptos Piece" and Cyrillic Projector, which have encrypted text written in Russian Cyrillic letters. This text includes a part from a secret KGB document. On one side of Sanborn's 1997 sculpture called Antipodes, the cipher repeats some of the text from Kryptos, but with small changes.
In popular culture
The dust jacket of the US version of Dan Brown's 2003 novel The Da Vinci Code includes two references to Kryptos. One is on the back cover, where coordinates printed in light red on dark red are placed vertically next to the blurbs. These coordinates are similar to those mentioned in the text of passage 2, but one digit in the degree is incorrect. When asked about this difference, both Dan Brown and his publisher stated, "The discrepancy is intentional." These coordinates were part of the first clue in the second The Da Vinci Code WebQuests, with the first answer being "Kryptos." The other reference is hidden in the brown "tear" artwork on the jacket. The upside-down text "Only WW knows" is another reference to the second message on Kryptos. Kryptos was also included in Dan Brown's 2009 novel The Lost Symbol.
A small version of Kryptos appears in the season 5 episode of Alias titled "S.O.S." In this episode, Marshall Flinkman claims he solved the code by simply looking at it during a tour of the CIA office. His description of the solution matches the solution to the first two parts of Kryptos. The term "Kryptos Donuts" was also used in the sixth episode of The Recruit Season 1, titled "I.N.A.S.I.A.L."