DY A HR Anomaly



Bild "Kryptos K4:DYAHR_Anomalie_Original_vs_Mini_k.jpg"
Original DYAHR versus Sanborn Miniature
Jim Sanborn: When showed the out-of-alignment letters, he said, "They're important". Sanborn asked Elonka if anything else had been figured out about them. (from Elonka Dunin's 2003 roadtrip)

Jim Sanborn about clues: "They are in plain sight." (CTV 2005)

He said: It’s not necessary to have a particular book to solve K4, just “to be able to read”. (Notes from the CNN documentary meeting)



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FOIA CIA
There is an old newspaper article in the documents from Elonka´s FOIA request, in which Jim Sanborn said: "Anyone who knows a coding system called the Vigenere Tableau, invented in 1586 by French diplomat Blaise de Vigenere, will be able to decipher one half of the phrase. The other half will be encoded in a modern system for the project by an expert cryptographer...". As we know today the "expert cryptographer" is Ed Scheidt.



The transposition cipher used in K3 is not a modern system, so we can assume, the system Jim Sanborn mentioned relates to K4. There are other indications too, that suggest a modern system, eg digital XOR (modulo 2 addition), the standard operation in modern cryptography:

  • Mr. Sanborn is familiar with digital/binary Systems: He did a lot of work with digital ASCII Code after KRYPTOS eg Binary Converter or Rippawam.
  • Maybe the Morse Code has to be read in this manner: “Your digital interpretation is your position” (On the Vigenere side of the Tableau)
  • DYAHR can be transformed to HYDRA by tranposition. This is the codename for the transatlantic intelligence traffic between Camp X (Canada) and Station X (UK – Bletley Park). A teletype based XOR Message exchange during World War 2 and after.
  • Binary XOR can be done by hand. Maybe K4 is so short because binary XOR is very time intensive.
  • The Kryptos text on jimsanborn.net mentions digital cipher systems: "Kryptos had deftly steered itself onto a parallel track with the advent of bank machine pass codes, personal pass codes, Internet secrecy and even national security."
  • On the website of Jim Sanborn, the artwork Rippowam is listed as Kryptos related art. This work of art consists among other things of binary ASCII code.
  • Sometimes it is highly interesting what people do not say or never mention! In this case: "DIGITAL". JS: “And I'm finding that it's increasingly difficult to keep that kind of information secret because the closer people get to cracking the last 97 characters, the more difficult it is to say absolutely nothing about what it does or does not say, and so it's tough.” (Wired News 2005)
  • Jim Sanborn said that he would give a hint every 10 years. Ten Years after Kryptos, he did a series of binary art. First clue?

What has this all to do with the DYAHR anomaly? Since it is certain that we are dealing with a 2-stage encryption, it can be assumed that the hints for both types of encryption are hidden in DYAHR. The correction Mr. Sanborn announced in 2006 can be read as: "Layer two : ID by rows." The Vigenere part of KRYPTOS has the ID´s A to Z in front of the alphabet rows. There are also some statements from Ed Scheidt that it is a 2-step encryption. At least, after the 1. Layer encryption, an operation on the ciphertext was made to make statistical analysis more difficult. We also know that almost certainly no transposition was used. The artist has made, according to several eyewitnesses, a direct one-to-one relationship between BERLIN and NYPVTT: "It was asked if N decodes to B, Y decodes to E, etc, etc. and Jim confirmed it does. Emphatically. Jim Sanborn rattled through the entire crib: N = B, Y = E, P = R, V = L, T = I, T = N ..." (Kryptos Notes From the ACA Convention)

Bild "ASCII Chart"
ASCII Chart
So let's assume we have to interpret DYAHR in 5 Bit binary ASCII-Code. DY A HR will be 01101 which corresponds to "M". This will be very important later. Why 5 Bit ASCII and not 8 Bit? Because we intend to do a binary XOR operation to the ciphertext. The first 3 Bits are the same at all capital ASCII letters, they will cancel out each other to 0. Furthermore the number 5 is very important in Sanborns art. By the way, the "Berlin Clock" uses a 5 based number system. We will come back to this later, when we talk about Layer 1.

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