Hi,

I see you have found the puzzle that the Science of Security team makes each year. I'm Adam, the Technical Lead of the Science of Security Program. This program is part of the Laboratory for Advance Cybersecurity Research at the National Security Agency. This whole website is about providing a public collaboration place for foundational cybersecurity research. The Science of Security program focus is increasing the scientific rigor of cybersecurity research so that we all can have confidence in our technologies.

Let me tell you bit about the NSA, which may or may not be useful to know especially in regards to the puzzle. The NSA is the US's code makers and code breakers. If you want to learn more about ciphers (making codes), check out this page on wikipedia. It has details on the basic types of ciphers. The most famous effort to break codes was the breaking of the enigma machine during WWII. This was before the founding of the NSA. It was a large scale effort to break encrypted messages sent by Germany using a device called an Enigma.

My advice for solving the puzzle is to think at all the details on the page and what the plaintext might be. Perhaps picture yourself doing the various jobs at NSA. We have careers in many fields like the ones listed on our career fields page.

Good luck at finding the hidden message.

Adam

And if you are looking for more SoS Puzzles, see the index page.