NSA Seeks Codebreakers Via Cryptic Tweets

The NSA is trying to attract would-be codebreakers with coded tweets—but judging from the one it sent yesterday, it may need to set the bar a little higher, the Washington Post finds. The agency's mysterious tweet—"tpfccdlfdtte pcaccplircdt dklpcfrp?qeiq lhpqlipqeodf gpwafopwprti izxndkiqpkii krirrifcapnc dxkdciqcafmd vkfpcadf"—turned out to be a simple substitution cipher that could be cracked in seconds.

The message turned out to be "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," reports NBC, which notes it was solved in six seconds by this online app but it could been solved in around half an hour by someone using just pen and paper. The tweet was "part of recruitment efforts to attract the best and the brightest" and there will be more to come, an NSA spokesperson says. (More Twitter stories.)