Operation Tinker Bell Anniversary

Can you solve the case?

Operation Tinker Bell is running exactly eight years. This cryptologic challenge is the ideal introduction to cryptography, crypto equipment and spy tradecraft.

 

All those years I noticed at the webstats how people worked through all messages, some in a few days and others took their time. Many e-mailed me with kind feedback and some dropped a note in our guestbook, but they could never show their achievements to others. I therefore decided to introduce a Wall of Honor to document the result of their hard work (see below).

What is Operation Tinker Bell about? You will learn to work with the TSEC/KL-7, a 1960's state-of-the-art crypto machine (sim available) and decrypt operational one-time pad messages, used for one-way voice links, commonly known as numbers stations. Once you're briefed, you start in the CIA communications center and its crypto room, the inner sanctum where the most sensitive information arrives.

Robert Novak needs your support!

You are immersed in a true Cold War espionage atmosphere and witness the modus operandi of your fellow CIA officers and their KGB counterparts. Experience spy tradecraft first hand, with CIA transmitter sites in West Germany, illegal border crossings, fake passports, safe houses, the dreaded East-German Stasi and Czech StB secret police.

British intelligence helps to arrange clandestine meetings, you receive SIGINT support from the U.S. Army Security Agency and some of the USMLM operations flirt with the rules of engagement. The Cold War at its best. It's all there, authentic details and as real as it gets!

Operation Tinker Bell starts in 1964, at the height of the Cold War. CIA case officer Robert Novak investigates the sudden disappearance of a CIA operative in Moscow. Operation Tinker Bell, the hunt for a KGB colonel starts and Novak travels across the Soviet Union.

Ausweis bitte! Keep calm when East German border guards check your forged papers!

For obvious security reasons, all communications between Langley, the CIA stations abroad and their agents behind the Iron Curtain are encrypted. It's your task as COMSEC officer to decrypt all that message traffic. This sounds harder than it actually is. All required crypto tools, keys and clear instructions are provided and used exactly as in real life. Make sure to carefully read the briefing!

Below the first names engraved in the new Wall of Honor. Get to work, assist your CIA colleagues that operate across the Eastern Bloc and get your name on that wall. Join Operation Tinker Bell.

 

Update June 21, 2024: Newest case officer, Eli Schwarz.

Did you completed the operation before the Wall of Honor?
Contact us!

We can neither confirm nor deny the existence of this operation, but, hypothetically, if such operation were to exist, the subject matter would be classified and could not be disclosed (NCND). 

Photo Updates! The details in operation Tinker Bell are quite realistic, and this includes all locations, some of which are known to participants. I recently received photos from Dietmar Sternad, who also completed the operation. He took the trouble to visit the hotel from file TB-0012 and the Stasi building from file TB-0018, and kindly sent me his photos. It's like visiting a favorite movie scene location, so I take it as a compliment. Thanks Dietmar!

The 1964 Hotel Continental in Czechoslovakia and Dietmar's 2021 photo.

The 1960s Stasi building "Runde Ecke" in Leipzig (GDR) and Dietmar's 2022 photo.