Updated for challenge 9
[cipher-tools.git] / 2019 / 3a.plaintext
1 Harry,
2
3 I wanted to be certain the lost Apollo Ten report really wasn’t an accident so I asked archives to search the mission papers in case the original report had been misfiled. They searched everything and couldn’t find it but then someone had a brainwave and checked the Apollo eleven files. To everyone’s relief they found it there and the archivist reckoned that someone got distracted. With the volume of mission papers they are handling this is not a surprise, but given the importance of these documents it is a bit alarming and doesn’t feel like the way NASA usually does things. Anyway, the find should have reassured me, and it would have if I hadn’t looked so carefully at the file. Everything looked fine except that the word Injection in the penultimate paragraph was spelt with an I. You may not be surprised, but if you look at the decrypt of the mangled version it is misspelt lnjection, with an l replacing the I.
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5 I wouldn’t have noticed but I had decrypted the original by hand and was surprised by the typo. It stuck in my mind so when I saw the filed version without it that rang alarm bells. Once we started investigating we locked up the computer files so I can only assume that the filed version was transcribed by someone who now has access to the printed version but who doesn’t have the clearance to access the original. The question is, why would they produce a new version? I can only think that they wanted to head off more investigation by giving us a reason to think it was all a mistake after all. If that was the plan then it hasn’t worked. It seems clear to me that someone really does have something to hide.
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7 I checked the security clearance list and there were two hundred and thirty-seven people with access to the archive room where we are storing the investigation files who do not also have current access to those computer files. Of those, one hundred and eighteen did have terminal access before we closed it down, so the suspect list is shrinking, which I suppose is something, but I would prefer to narrow it down a bit more. With the launch of Apollo Twelve coming up next month the mood is getting tense and I would really like to make sure our mischief maker doesn’t have any more surprises in store.
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9 To make matters worse I heard that the hawks at the Pentagon are getting restless. Could you get over there and find out what they are thinking? Given that our tormentor seems to have pretty high-level access, maybe you could crank up the security on our comms? Maybe a keyword cipher blocked as standard?
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11 Meg