The 2022 NSA Codebreaker Challenge is Underway

The annual NSA Codebreaker Challenge consists of a series of tasks that are worth a varying amount of points based on their difficulty. Schools will be ranked according to the total number of points accumulated by their students. Solutions may be submitted at any time for the duration of the Challenge, which will end early in January.

The initial tasks are divided into two sequences, A and B, which can be solved independently. Later tasks may rely on the results of earlier tasks. While not required, we recommend that you solve tasks in order since they flow with the storyline and may, in fact, be unsolvable without the information recovered from previous tasks.

Each task in this year’s challenge will require a range of skills. It starts with easy tasks but advances to harder ones, so it’s a great learning experience even if you are just learning about cybersecurity. To solve all of the tasks, you will need to call upon all of your technical expertise, your intuition, and your common sense.

Getting started is easy. Go to the challenge webpage, and create an account using your UMBC email address. After you’ve verified your email address, you will get an invitation to join the Discord server. Joining will earn you (and UMBC) your first point!