The NSA's mysterious coded tweet

By Brandon Griggs, CNN

No, the NSA was not drunk when they sent this garbled tweet earlier this week.

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

(CNN) -- When the National Security Agency sent a tweet Monday filled with garbled nonwords like "tpfccdlfdtte," the Internet was confused, and intrigued.

Was the NSA drunk? Had a cat skittered across someone's keyboard?

Or maybe the spy agency, under fire for eavesdropping on Americans, had accidentally blurted a secret of its own -- a coded, classified message not meant for public eyes.

The truth proved to be less scandalous. Internet sleuths, armed with cryptogram-solving Web tools, solved the mystery in minutes. Turns out the nonsensical tweet was a coded recruiting pitch by the NSA, which is seeking code breakers to help decipher encrypted messages from potential terrorists.

The tweet was a basic "substitution cipher," a code in which each letter of the alphabet is replaced by another.

Translated, it read (SPOILER ALERT for all you wannabe codebreakers): "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."

When contacted by CNN, NSA spokeswoman Marci Green Miller said the Twitter account is run by the NSA recruitment office, which will post coded tweets each Monday for the rest of the month.

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The NSA's mysterious coded tweet