What better way to recruit potential code breakers than to advertise in cipher? That's what the NSA did Monday morning with this mysterious tweet:
tpfccdlfdtte pcaccplircdt dklpcfrp?qeiq lhpqlipqeodf gpwafopwprti izxndkiqpkii krirrifcapnc dxkdciqcafmd vkfpcadf. #MissionMonday #NSA #news
— NSA (@NSACareers) May 5, 2014According to The Washington Post, if you're good at breaking substitution ciphers, this is what you'd come up with:
"want to know what it takes to work at nsa? check back each monday as we explore careers essential to protecting your nation."
At first, some people who saw the tweet thought the NSA might just be drunk — or perhaps someone had inadvertently sent a butt tweet. But, it turns out that the coded tweet was the first of several in a monthlong campaign to "explore careers essential to protecting our nation," NSA spokeswoman Marci Green Miller told The Daily Dot.
"NSA is known as the code makers and code breakers," Miller told the website in an email. "As part of our recruitment efforts to attract the best and the brightest, we will post mission related coded Tweets on Mondays in the month of May."
The Daily Dot says:
"While posting coded messages on Twitter is a new recruitment strategy for the agency, NSA officials have been known to attend hacker conferences in attempt to cajole new talent."
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