The secret of the mystery of the undecoded cryptogram known as Kryptos K4 has been sold at an auction for nearly a million dollars (RR Auction).
Kryptos is a sculpture installed at the headquarters of the CIA in 1990. It features ciphertexts K1-K4, of which K4 (97 characters) remains unsolved despite attempts by crypto-enthusiasts around the world. The creator, Jim Sanborn, published hints on several occasions (Wikipedia), but it did not lead to a solution.
I have not paid much attention to this famous puzzle, but I occasionally wondered what it feels like to be the only person in the world to know the solution of the puzzle that is attracting world-wide attention. This was answered by an article that reported a scheduled auction to sell the secret. (I lost the article I read in Japanese, but I think its source was The Washington Post, 14 August 2025). Because of the fad, his residence had "unwanted guests" and some even threatened his life to get the secret. He had to equip his house with panic buttons, motion sensors, and cameras. The number of claimed solutions sent to him skyrocketed to tens of thousands due to submissions of "meaningless" AI-generated decryptions. So he began charging a $50 fee to decrease the number. After 35 years keeping the secret alone, Sanborn, then 79, said "I no longer have the physical, mental or financial resources" to maintain the code while he had other projects. So he decided to sell the secret in an auction on 20 November 2025.
What nobody expected was that the solution text was accessible to the public among Sanborn's papers in Smithsonian's Archives of American Art (AP 13 November 2025). In September 2025, writer and researcher Jaret Kobek and playwright and journalist Richard Byrne, hearing the news of the coming auction, hoped to find some hint to K4 but was unexpectedly stumbled upon Sanborn's original scrambled texts. They chose to call Sanborn, who decided to proceed with the auction because the encryption scheme was not revealed, though Kobek and Byrne did not agree to sign a nondisclosure agreement. The auction plan was changed to offer not only the secret of K4 but the entirety of his archive of related materials.
In the auction held at Boston, the materials were sold for $963,000 to an anonymous bidder (AP 22 November 2025). According to RR Auction, the winner will get a private meeting with Sanborn to be briefed about the purchased materials to receive not only the physical archive but also complete knowledge.
The purchaser's "long-term stewardship plan" is being developed." This appears to mean that the solution will not be revealed in near future, in line with Sanborn's wish. Kobek and Byrne do not plan to release the solution, either (The New York Times, 16 October 2025, quoted by RR Auction).
As I said above, I have not paid attention to Kryptos, but I did see a video released shortly before the auction by Richard Bean, whose email reminded me of the auction. Considering that Sanborn's hints have not allowed anybody to come up with a solution, he seems right in suspecting that K4 is "not a fair challenge" because of encryption errors.
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