Million Dollar Portfolio

You may not know this, but I like puzzles and games a lot. I also like challenges and although I’m not a cryptographer or cryptanalyst myself, I have always been fascinated by it. One of the more famous public encrypted sculptures sits at the CIA headquarters in Langley, Va.

Kryptos is now world famous mainly because the 4th “section” of it has yet to be solved. Supposedly the whole thing can be figured out with pencil and paper if you know what you are doing, and if of course you know the encryption techniques used to encrypt in the first place.

What I thought would be fun is to throw out a challenge to my readers in homage to Kryptos. Below I have an encrypted block of text. I’m not going to tell you how I did it though. That’s for you to figure out. It shouldn’t be too complicated and I’ll even give you the location of a site you can use to try and decrypt it.

Here’s the puzzle in two parts. Decipher the first part to figure out the next part:

.. -. -- --- -.. . .-. -. - .. -- . ... .. -. ..-. --- .-. -- .- - .. --- -. ... .--. .-. . .- -.. ... .-- .. - .... --- ..- - ..-. .- ... - . .-. - .... .- -. .-- . -.-. .- -. -.- . . .--. ..- .--. .-- .. - .... .. - - .... . ... . .--. . --- .--. .-.. . -... -.-- .- -. -.. .-.. .- .-. --. . .- .-. . .-. . ... .--. --- -. ... .. -... .-.. . ..-. --- .-. - .... . -.. .. ... ... . -- .. -. .- - .. --- -. --- ..-. -. . .-- ... .. - ... . .-.. ..-.

FZRPORWREBXHBQMZVCSTRCHJRRGBOMZPOZVI
YAKHZMWKSDJPBIWANPQNRMQBKXHMRLZAYFBV
OQNDKANASZLWFYTCZQAIZDPTIACSYKLSJKBO
SIRWGPLFYZEGKVDKANZHSUOEKANOQMPEOUBE
TNCRMLXMTLMYGFLIDJPHAXNHJIQKTDSYQRPD
GYBDQUNILTTKYRIIJIXBUJAODXFBVKWYGUW.

I know you are looking at this and thinking, what? What the heck is this and what does it have to do with blogging or making money? I guess you will have to figure it out to find out. So, the first one to figure out what the plain text is should comment on this blog. The first person with the right answer will win a $25 Visa Gift Card.

Both of these encryptions can be solved using the tools here:

http://members.aol.com/scirealm/CodeSystems.html

The contest ends February 29th and the winner (if there is one) will be announced March 1st. Good Luck and have fun!

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