Auctioning Off the Key to Kryptos

At the CIA headquarters in Langley, you will find Kryptos, a large curved copper panel that holds the letters to four encrypted messages. The first three messages- K1, K2, and K3- were solved in the nineties, but K4 continued to mystify cryptographers for decades. That is until Jim Sanborn, the artist who created Kryptos, decided to auction off the plain text and the coding charts that can crack the very code to K4. This week, guest host Flora Warshaw sits down to talk with Bobby Livingston, the auctioneer who recently sold Jim Sanborn's private Kryptos archive for a staggering amount.

You can listen to Auctioning Off the Key to Kryptos online on Radio and Podcast. Open the player on this page to stream the available audio.

Auctioning Off the Key to Kryptos is an episode from SpyCast by SpyCast.

This episode is 27:37 long.

This episode was published on Dec 9, 2025.

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