Famous Unsolved Codes and Ciphers

This is an unofficial list of well-known unsolved codes and ciphers. A couple of

the better-known unsolved ancient historical scripts are also thrown in, since
they tend to come up during any discussion of unsolved codes. There has also bee
n an attempt to sort this list by "fame", as defined by a loose formula involvin
g the number of times that a particular cipher has been written about, and/or ho
w many hits it pulls up on a moderately-sorted web search.
If you would like to discuss the details or placement of any item on the list, p
lease contact the webmistress.

Beale Ciphers - In 1885, a small pamphlet was published in Virginia containing a
story and three encrypted messages. According to the pamphlet, around 1820 a ma
n named Beale buried two wagons-full of treasure at a secret location in Bedford
County, Virginia. He then left a small locked box with a local innkeeper, and l
eft town, never to be seen again. The pamphlet went on to state that the innkeep
er, after having not heard from Beale for many years, opened the box and discove
red encrypted messages. Never able to read them, he eventually passed them along
to a young friend shortly before the innkeeper's death in 1863. According to th
e pamphlet, the friend spent the next 20 years trying to decrypt the messages, s
olving only one which detailed the tons of gold, silver and jewels that were bur
ied, along with a general location. The still unsolved messages supposedly give
exact directions, and a list of who the treasure belongs to. According to the st
ory, the friend finally decided to walk away from the quest, and publish everyth
ing they knew about the situation in the (anonymous) pamphlet, which was suppose
dly published by another friend of the innkeeper. There have been many exhaustiv
e searches for the treasure, and much effort spent on decoding the other message
s, without (confirmed) success. There are many claimed solutions, usually banner
ed in combination with a book that someone is trying to sell, but no one has eve
r been able to produce a duplicatable decryption method. There have also been so
me pretty compelling arguments that the entire original story was a hoax. There
are several inconsistencies in the pamphlet's text, and even speculation that th
e story was a parable related to Masonic rituals. More information can be found
here.
Voynich Manuscript - At least 400 years old, this is a 232-page illuminated manu
script entirely written in a secret script. It is filled with copious drawings o
f unidentified plants, herbal recipes of some sort, astrological diagrams, and m
any small human figures in strange plumbing-like contraptions. The script is unl
ike anything else in existence, but is written in a confident style, seemingly b
y someone who was very comfortable with it. In 2004 there were some compelling a
rguments which described a technique that would seemingly prove that the manuscr
ipt was a hoax, but to date, none of the described techniques have been able to
replicate a single section of the Manuscript, so speculations continue. More inf
ormation about the hoax possibility is here and more information about the Manus
cript can be found at voynich.net and crystalinks.com.
Dorabella Cipher - In 1897, the well-known composer Edward Elgar (of "Pomp and C
ircumstance" fame) sent an encrypted message to a 23-year-old friend, Miss Dora
Penny. To this day, it still has not been solved.
Zodiac Killer ciphers - From 1966 to 1974, the Zodiac serial killer sent more th
an 20 written communications to police officials. Most of these messages have be
en cracked, but there are still some that remain unsolved. The killer was never
caught.
Kryptos - In 1990, a sculpture was installed at CIA Headquarters in Langley Virg
inia, as a challenge to the employees at the Agency. Its thousands of characters
contain encrypted messages, of which three have been solved, but there is still
a fourth section at the bottom consisting of 97 or 98 characters which remains
uncracked. The sculpture was created and encoded by Washington DC sculptor Jim S
anborn, using encryption systems designed by the Chairman of the CIA's Cryptogra
phic Center, Ed Scheidt.
D'Agapeyeff - Alexander d'Agapeyeff wrote an elementary book on cryptography in
1939, entitled "Codes and Ciphers." In the first edition, he included a challeng
e cipher. Nobody's solved it, and he embarrassedly admitted later that he no lon
ger knew how he'd encrypted it. It was left out of the second and later editions
. Some think it was botched, and many think it could still be solved despite tha
t. It has lots of "phenomena" noted, but nothing close to a crack.
Linear A - In 1900, a large number of clay tablets dating back to 1800 BC were d
iscovered in Crete. The tablets appear to use two different types of scripts, wh
ich were named "Linear A" and "Linear B." Linear B was finally deciphered in the
1950s. Linear A remains unsolved.
The Phaistos Disk - A circular clay tablet about six inches across, discovered i
n Crete in the early 1900s, and believed to date back to 1800 BC. With an "alpha
bet" of 45 different symbols, 241 signs are stamped into both sides in spiral pa
tterns. There has been much speculation about its meaning, with wildly variant c
laimed solutions so far. It's also been suggested that the disk might turn out t
o be a Rosetta Stone to help decipher Linear A, since it was discovered near a f
ragment of a Linear A tablet. More information here.
Chaocipher - In 1918, J.F. Byrne created a machine-based cryptographic system. I
n 1953, he used it to create a code challenge as part of his autobiography "Sile
nt Years". There are at least three people who know how the system works: his so
n, and two editors of Cryptologia who were let in on the secret in 1990. There's
a lot of known plaintext available, as well as some hints, but no break yet. Th
e mechanism used to generate it fits in a cigar box. More information can be fou
nd here.
Chinese "Gold Bar" ciphers - In 1933, seven gold bars were allegedly issued to a
General Wang in Shanghai, China. These gold bars appear to represent metal cert
ificates related to a bank deposit with a U.S. Bank. The gold bars themselves ha
ve pictures, Chinese writing, some form of script writing, and cryptograms in la
tin letters.
RSA Challenges - There are a number of modern computer-based challenges, includi
ng several factoring challenges from RSA Labs that have implications for the str
ength of public-key systems, and some equivalently difficult elliptic curve chal
lenges, also relating to public-key cracking (check here for Bruce Schneier's hi
gh-math analysis of the RSA/Elliptic Curve debate). As of this writing, the most
recently-cracked RSA Challenge was in November 2005, when RSA-640, a 193-digit
number, was successfully factored (which won a $20,000 prize). There are several
more on the list, with prizes up to $200,000, which have not yet been cracked.
Many fly-by-night snake-oil crypto companies also put out challenges that are ar
guably famous because the media sometimes pick up the challenge uncritically, bu
t they are usually not worth mentioning on this list.
Indus Script - The Indus Valley civilization flourished around 2600 to 1800 BC o
n the Indian sub-continent, leaving behind thousands of objects inscribed with a
pictographic script that seems to have been composed of about 400 signs. A grea
t deal of work has been done on analyzing the messages that are available, but t
o this date the script still has not been deciphered.
Richard Feynman's Challenge Ciphers - In 1987, someone posted a message to an in
ternet cryptology list, saying that Caltech Physics Professor Richard Feynman wa
s given three samples of code by a fellow scientist at Los Alamos. Only one of t
he three was ever solved.
Unsolved World War II Systems - Though the Enigma encryption system was cracked,
and the Bletchley Park crypto project is quite famous, there are still some sca
ttered unsolved Enigma messages from World War II. There are also various other
WWII encryption systems that were never solved, but they have not been included
on this list because the focus is more on specific famous messages or entire wel
l-known systems that have not yet been cracked. If you know of a particular mess
age or system that you think is worthy of inclusion, please contact the webmistr
ess.
Rongorongo Script of Easter Island - In 1868, Europeans first reported seeing wo
oden tablets on the incredibly remote Easter Island in the south Pacific. The ta
blets were covered with an unknown hieroglyphic script. Only 20 or so tablets ar
e thought to be in existence, with little progress in determining what it is tha
t they say.
Other Uncracked Ancient Ciphers - There are several other ancient writing system
s that are still undeciphered, such as the 13,000 Etruscan inscriptions, Proto-E
lamite, Meroitic, and various other obscure glyphs. More information about some
of these can be found in a review of Andrew Robinson's book Lost Languages

Famous Unsolved Codes That Have Since Been Solved
Poe's Cryptographic Challenge - In 1839, Edgar Allan Poe published two cryptogra
phic challenges which remained unsolved for over 150 years. The first one was fi
nally solved in 1992, and the second one in October 2000
Cyrillic Projector Cipher - Washington DC sculptor Jim Sanborn, famous for the C
IA's Kryptos sculpture, also created some related sculptures which included both
the text from Kryptos, and some encrypted Russian text about KGB operations. Th
e best example was the Cyrillic Projector, which was created in the early 1990s
and then installed permanently at the University of North Carolina, Charlotte in
1997. It was cracked in September 2003 by an international team involving the K
ryptos Group.
Oak Island Money Pit Cipher Stone (solved, though alleged treasure still unrecov
ered) - In 1795, a teenager discovered a deep pit on Oak Island in Nova Scotia,
along with hints that there was a great treasure at the bottom. Over the next tw
o hundred years, multiple well-financed attempts have been made to learn what is
hidden, but have been repeatedly foiled due to the unstable nature of the surro
unding land, and the tendency for deep tunnels to suddenly flood with water. Som
ething is obviously there, because various tantalizing artifacts from 300 years
ago have been obtained, such as a pair of scissors, an encrypted stone tablet, b
arriers of oak logs, and other man-made objects deep below the ground. In 1976,
a camera lowered into a subterranean chamber allegedly recorded images of wooden
chests, tools, and a body, before the unstable land again collapsed the explora
tion tunnel. And in 2002, a report was supposedly produced by the Woods Hole Oce
anographic Institute with more recent information. In any case, along with large
amounts of money which have been sunk into this quest, multiple lives have also
been lost attempting to solve the mystery.
Smithy Code. In April 2006, as part of the trial ruling of a plagiarism trial ab
out the book ''The Da Vinci Code'', the judge in the case, Justice Peter Smith e
mbedded his own secret code in the 71-page trial ruling (pdf). Once the code was
discovered by a London legal analyst, it sparked off a worldwide race to see wh
o could crack the code first. According to The Guardian, it was solved by Dan Te
nch, the legal analyst who first discovered the code, after he received a series
of email hints from the judge. For more information, check here for an explanat
ion of the code by the Kryptos Group (who solved it, but were not the first to d
o so), and check here for The Smithy code page at Wikipedia.
If you know of a solution to one of the above codes or mysteries, or would like
to suggest any changes or additions to this list, please contact the webmistress
.