John Schwartz in the New York Times:
The sculptor Jim Sanborn opened his email account one day last month expecting the usual messages from people claiming to have solved his famous, decades-old puzzle.
Mr. Sanborn’s best known artwork, Kryptos, sits in a courtyard at the C.I.A. headquarters in Virginia. A sculpture that evokes and incorporates secrets, Kryptos displays four encrypted messages in letters cut through its curving copper sheet. Since the agency dedicated it in 1990, cryptographers both professional and amateur had solved three of the passages, known as K1, K2 and K3.
But the fourth, K4, remained stubbornly uncracked.
Mr. Sanborn, who is 79, was in the final stages of auctioning off the puzzle’s solution. The auction house had estimated that the text of that passage, along with other papers and artifacts related to the sculpture, would bring between $300,000 and $500,000. He has said he intends to use the proceeds to help manage medical expenses for possible health crises, and to fund programs for people with disabilities.
But the email he received on Sept. 3 threatened that plan. Its subject line contained the first words of the final passage of K4. The body of the email showed the rest of the solved text.
More here.
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