Sanborn wants the money for medical reasons so he needs to maintain a high sale price.
The two fans want to share the solution with the world.
Presumably the winner of the auction will be buying a severely depreciating asset: the right to know but not disclose the solution. There are at least four people who have the solution and as soon as one of them shares it, its value goes to zero.
Maybe the “solution” to this meta problem is simple: auction it off to the public with a go fund me. As soon as it reaches $500k, publish the solution. That way everyone wins.
The whole thing got more complicated with the addition of lawyers, not less. I don’t see how the two fans violated any contracts with the artist or auction house since they never signed one. But of course lawyers will charge a ton for you to find out.
I'm not a socialist and am broadly pro-capitalism, but for decades I've held a firm belief that healthcare should have a public option and people should have the ability to get high-quality medical care for $0, no matter how realistic that would be.
Actual decryption effort group didn't get to decrypt (a small but faithful community), the creator needed the money for medical procedures that he really believed was coming in. The solution feels like we all go cheated out of something. Lawyers are now involved and the value of the solution is rapidly plummeting.
No one's winning because of a small mistake.
just isn't realistic
Doesn't seem like that would fit here.
This seems like more of an ethical dilemma than a legal one.
Gift link https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/16/science/kryptos-cia-solut...
Victor Wong writes,
“If they don’t have the method,” she said, “it’s not solved,” she said.
That does raise a philosophical point to the craft of intelligence gathering. Speaking as a professional librarian, I do applaud the use of ATI (access to information) to find the appropriate data -- it's akin to a WW2 unit capturing an Enigma codebook.
Kobek may actually have pulled that off once before, by the way. I'm pretty sure that his Zodiac killer candidate, Paul A. Doerr, will turn out to have been correct.
> Upon being notified, the Smithsonian immediately sealed Sanborn's archives for 50 years to protect Sanborn's intellectual property rights.
Sanborn actually showed off some of his worksheets during a PBS interview years ago, which I assume are the same documents later given to the Smithsonian. At one point I looked into buying the B-roll footage to take a closer look at them, but I discovered enterprising Kryptos sleuths had already done so years before.
1. That is technically normal espionage practices, the CIA wouldn't be the CIA if they were only reliant on cryptography... (they'd be the NSA)
2. The solution to this puzzle would bring closure to at this point generations of curious people.
3. On the more technical side, it's been discussed that the potential method for decrypting K4 is more or less insolvable through normal patterns because Jim not being a cryptographer decided to use a multi stage encryption method which relies on knowing both (or multiple) keys with accuracy. The risk here with him not being a cryptographer is not realizing the how hard/impossible he might have made it.
4. I also like to believe as we culturally move through time the potential Keywords or transposition shift keys may dissolve away. For all we know he may have chosen a word that was colloquial to the 80's, CIA, Espionage...ect that has just dissolved with time.
I want to see the solution, I want to reiterate Jim was not a cryptographer and may have gone buck wild with his encryption.
Just throwing out some solution banter. I believe one layer of K4 is null cipher, but I think its screwed by a transposition of which I think the key is based off K0, or something to do with the lat-long coordinates.
Also when he says Berlin clock I think he means Kalendarplatz, this would make more sense as he is a sculpture artist who works with forces of nature.
My only other call out is he may have tied Kryptos into the north east area of the CIA, potentially linking it to the memorial gardens or the wall of the fallen officers.
And as someone else said, this is exactly the sort of solution the CIA would come up with. So it should be considered in bounds.
The secret code behind the CIA's Kryptos puzzle is up for sale - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44907366 - Aug 2025 (53 comments)
Shameful behavior.
https://zonamotel.substack.com/p/interview-kryptos-k4-uncove...
This essay is relevant to this situation because the threat model in James’ essay is almost the same way this cipher was decrypted.
Like, here - here's a code that no one will ever solve: ITIWKSMNDIWKD WJSIKWMWMSONQ
Turn that into a sculpture and put it outside the CIA.
B-E-S-U-R-E-T-O-D-R-I-N-K Y-O-U-R-O-V-A-L-T-I-N-E
