REVEALED: Here's The Solution To That Encoded NSA Puzzle Tweet
This morning, the NSA Careers Twitter account posted what looked like a series of nonsense letters:
tpfccdlfdtte pcaccplircdt dklpcfrp?qeiq lhpqlipqeodf gpwafopwprti izxndkiqpkii krirrifcapnc dxkdciqcafmd vkfpcadf. #MissionMonday #NSA #news
- NSA (@NSACareers) May 5, 2014
We looked at this tweet, and thought it looked suspciously like a coded message.
It turns out that it was. A couple of our commenters on our earlier post came up with the deciphered message: "Want to know what it takes to work at NSA? Check back each Monday in May as we explore careers essential to protecting our nation."
While some of us were hoping that it would be instructions to secret agents, it's simply a notification of future tweets.
The message was encoded with a simple substitution cipher, one of the most basic ways to encrypt something. In a cipher of this type, the alphabet is scrambled, with each letter in the alphabet assigned to another letter.
For example, T in the encrypted message corresponds to W in the uncoded text, P corresponds to A, F corresponds to N, and C corresponds to T. That gives the first four letters of the encrypted message, "TPFC", turn into the first word of the decrypted message, "Want". Notice that spaces and punctuation don't matter in this code.
This is a very very basic type of encryption, and can be broken fairly easily. The big problem with substitution ciphers is that English letters have a distinct frequency distribution, as explained at Practical Cryptography:
So, to crack the code, the first step is to count up the letter frequencies in the encoded text, and put them into alignment with English letter frequencies. The most common letters in the coded message will probably be the letters assigned to common letters in normal English, like e, t, or a. Letters that are missing or rare in the coded text will probably be assigned to rare English letters like q, x, and z.
- Should you be worried about the potential side-effects of the Covishield vaccine?
- India T20 World Cup squad: KulCha back on menu, KL Rahul dropped
- Sales of homes priced over ₹4 crore rise 10% in Jan-Mar in top 7 cities: CBRE
- Gold prices fluctuate as geopolitical tensions ease; US Fed meeting, payroll data to affect prices this week
- Best beaches to visit in Goa in 2024
- Nothing Phone (2a) blue edition launched
- JNK India IPO allotment date
- JioCinema New Plans
- Realme Narzo 70 Launched
- Apple Let Loose event
- Elon Musk Apology
- RIL cash flows
- Charlie Munger
- Feedbank IPO allotment
- Tata IPO allotment
- Most generous retirement plans
- Broadcom lays off
- Cibil Score vs Cibil Report
- Birla and Bajaj in top Richest
- Nestle Sept 2023 report
- India Equity Market