NSA Codebreaker 2026: Another One Bites The Dust
Eight tasks and another full NSA Codebreaker Challenge completed
On this page
The 2026 NSA Codebreaker Challenge was my second Codebreaker, and I completed all eight tasks as the 12th student to finish the full challenge. It gave me another opportunity to work across several areas of cybersecurity while building on what I learned from completing the 2025 challenge.
This year’s challenge is still active, so I am not publishing prompts, artifacts, findings, solutions, commands, screenshots, or writeups. Until the challenge ends and publication is permitted, this page contains only a high-level reflection alongside the official task titles and categories.
I’ve created a deliberately limited Codebreaker repository with the same restriction. This page serves as the starting point for the 2026 challenge, and the repository will remain free of challenge content while the competition is active.
Read the series
| Challenge | Focus |
|---|---|
| 1: Welcome to the Team | Forensics |
| 2: Something’s Not Right | Forensics |
| 3: Follow the Trail | Reverse Engineering |
| 4: Knock Knock | Network Analysis |
| 5: Who’s There? | Reverse Engineering |
| 6: Borrowed Tools | Vulnerability Research, Exploitation |
| 7: Cracking the Countdown | Cryptanalysis |
| 8: Operation Scissors Snip | Vulnerability Research, Exploitation |
The moment that stood out
Task 4 was the highlight again. It really forced me to be creative, question my assumptions, and think outside the box. I cannot discuss what the task involved while the challenge is active, but working through it was the most memorable part of this year’s competition.
Finishing the complete eight-task sequence was another major highlight. Becoming the 12th student to complete the challenge made the result especially meaningful and showed me how much I had developed since my first Codebreaker.
What I would do differently
The main lesson I carried forward from 2025 was to document my thinking as I worked. Keeping clearer notes helped me track what I had established, recognize when an approach had stalled, and return to earlier assumptions without repeating the same work.
I also became more comfortable stepping away from a problem briefly instead of forcing an unproductive line of thought. That habit made it easier to return with a clearer view and try a more creative direction.
From the challenge to my current work
Completing another Codebreaker reinforced how much I enjoy difficult security problems that require patience, adaptability, and careful reasoning across different technical areas.
I’m currently an Associate Security Consultant (Intern) at LRQA, contributing to mobile, web application, API, and infrastructure penetration tests while helping the team introduce AI into its workflows. The discipline of documenting evidence and testing assumptions continues to carry directly into that work.
The task pages linked above contain only their official titles and categories. Additional material will remain private until the challenge has ended and publication is allowed.