In the Internet age, the spy catchers have been forced to go digital, democratic and, old-timers might say, outright pop. Their latest wheeze, causing a buzz on the Internet — and stirring a torrent of Web chat among people identifying themselves as hackers — is an online cryptographic puzzle that promises a fast track to recruitment as spies for those who solve it before the challenge expires on Dec. 11.
According to traffic on Twitter, Facebook and scores of other Web sites, at least 50 people have solved the puzzle since it was posted unobtrusively last month. To all but practiced cryptographers, it looks baffling: a rectangular display of 160 letters and numbers, grouped in twos in blue against a black background, under the overline, “Can you crack it?” Beneath it, a digital clock ticks down the seconds left until the competition closes.
The agency that posted the puzzle at www.canyoucrackit.co.uk is one of the oldest, and, espionage experts say, most successful eavesdropping organizations anywhere, Government Communications Headquarters, or GCHQ, located in a vast doughnut-shaped building surrounded by huge satellite dishes in parkland near Cheltenham, 120 miles west of London.
