For 15 years, a sculpture known as Kryptos has stood in a courtyard inside the heavily guarded Central Intelligence Agency headquarters in Langley, Virginia.

Its coded message, made up of thousands of letters on a copper scroll, has stumped code breakers for 15 years. And although it's been seven years since anyone has made any progress cracking it, there's been an explosion of renewed interest in Kryptos since writer Dan Brown hid references to it on the jacket of The Da Vinci Code -- one of the hottest books in North America.

And that has made life interesting for Kryptos' creator, James Sanborn. Kryptos -- Greek for "hidden" -- seems to have attracted its fare share of fanatics.

"I've had to remove anything associated with Kryptos from my studio and home and I've considered (getting) an unlisted number," Sanborn told CTV's Joy Malbon at Washington's Hirshorn museum, where a miniature version of Kryptos is on display.

"Like Dorothy and Toto I've been sucked into the wizard of spies."

Though it's installed in an area only CIA agents and cryptographers are allowed to roam, code-breakers can work at solving the mystery on transcripts posted on the CIA's website.

Three-quarters of the Kryptos code has been broken, but it's remaining 97 letters have the best of the best code breakers stumped.

Code cracker Jim Gillogly is one of two men who were able to crack three of the messages, which contain: a reference to the discovery of King Tut's tomb; a poem; and a reference to something buried on CIA grounds.

"I was so excited I was bouncing off the walls. It was difficult for my wife to reel me down after I got the first part cracked," Gillogly told CTV News.

"Here's this puzzle sitting like a thumb in the eye of the intelligence agency, saying if you're so smart, what's this say?"

Sanborn worked for months with a retired CIA cryptographer to devise the codes used in Kryptos.

Based on a report by CTV's Washington Bureau Chief, Joy Malbon