Scioly Assassination 134: Cyberstrike

[JoeyC]

I protect Killboe bcse of capital Killer.

[Assassinator]

The officers hold a meeting in the Machiavelli Division Common Room. linzhiyan turns on the TV, which just so happens to be broadcasting NBC Nightly News live.
“And our main story tonight, breaking news which has left the nation in shock: a young female cadet was assassinated at the Pentagon Spire. Known to most as Anomaly, she was found paralyzed from the neck down, rolling her eyes strangely, and unresponsive after the end of a routine training session involving a virtual simulation. She was sent to a local hospital, where she passed away 5 hours later. A copy of the virus was found inside her neural processor, but inspections into the crippling virus did not reveal much about the hackers. However, they did find a chilling message hidden in the decrypted code:

===BEGIN TRANSMISSION===
ACT 1, SCENE 1
For reference, dialogue is in normal text. Thoughts and actions are in italics.
Zombie: I assume that the target has been exterminated?
Phantom: Yes, of course. How could I fail?
Zombie: *Thinks* We are still far from done, but we're on the path to victory now. A victory is long over due. So many of our predecessors failed. We will be the first to succeed.
Phantom: It’s almost too easy. We could probably tell them who we’re targeting, and we would still be able to make the kill. I have half a mind to just nuke them, forget the subtlety.
Zombie: Do not overestimate our position. The officers may not trust in our informant may not be as concrete as you believe. Having an informant in the officer's inner circle is useful, but also quite risky. Do not fail me, Phantom.
===END TRANSMISSION===

linzhiyan drops the TV remote. Longivitis remains completely still, mouth still open in shock. JoeyC begins pacing to and fro in agitation. LittleMissNyan swallows nervously, face pale, looking to the left and right in fear (guilt?). Only the MysteriousMapMan seems totally calm, almost at ease.

The room suddenly fills with static. The static crescendos and reaches a climax, dying down. When the officers try to open the transmission up again, the screen fills with text:
bigijbihy

48 hours.

[Crimesolver]

hope one of you guys are in codebusters

[JoeyC]

So running bigijbihy through my handy dandy monoalphabetic cipher brute force program, it translates into: defenders, homophobe, robotron, colorcode, among other words.
Hitting it with brute force vigenere didn't seem to work too well.
EDIT: Actually, it's 9 letters long so I think it's targeting Linzhiyan, so I protect Linzhiyan accordingly.

[TheMysteriousMapMan]

If it's a vigenere, and if it decodes to linzhiyan, than the sassies must have meant it to be reverse engineered, because, if I did it right, the key starts qatj.

[linzhiyan]

Yay, thanks, JoeyC! The Phantom part reminds me of Name, as he was the Sassy during the Phantom of the Opera game and nuke strike me as TheChiScientist, whom some people call "TheChiSci"...? Which is also nine letters. I guess I'll protect TheChiScientist for those reasons.

EDIT: Someone definitely protect Name... Putting the weird text on the last line through a Caesar Cipher with a shift of 20, you get "homophone", which Name's username kinda is...?

EDIT 2: Lol, or nevermind...

[JoeyC]

Yeah, Lin is correct. It's a caesar cipher of TheChiSci with a key of "a". Now that's over, they said quite bluntly that one of them is participating in the game. Longivitis?

[TheMysteriousMapMan]

Yeah, Lin is correct. It's a caesar cipher of TheChiSci with a key of "a". Now that's over, they said quite bluntly that one of them is participating in the game. Longivitis?

They don't necessarily have to be an officer though. The whole informant thing is kinda similar to #120, when TheChiScientist was a "co-conspirator."

The officers may not trust in our informant may not be as concrete as you believe

This makes me think that one of the sassies is not an officer, but is participating.

[MadCow2357]

Yeah, Lin is correct. It's a caesar cipher of TheChiSci with a key of "a". Now that's over, they said quite bluntly that one of them is participating in the game. Longivitis?

Wait hold on someone explain Caesar cipher to me... I thought it was a number shift, not a letter key? I don't get it, but I guess Chi is a good protect.

I don't think it is Longivitis, because he's rather new? Probably someone else who has experience, I think. JoeyC and linzhiyan were sassies already recently, so suspect LMN and MapMan? Probably a bit early to be working on ID, but that's my worthless two cents lol.

[MadCow2357]

Yeah, Lin is correct. It's a caesar cipher of TheChiSci with a key of "a". Now that's over, they said quite bluntly that one of them is participating in the game. Longivitis?

They don't necessarily have to be an officer though. The whole informant thing is kinda similar to #120, when TheChiScientist was a "co-conspirator."

The officers may not trust in our informant may not be as concrete as you believe

This makes me think that one of the sassies is not an officer, but is participating.

The sassy said they had an informant in the sassy's inner circle, so that might not even mean that they're participating. Based on what they said, the "informant" might be the only participant on the sassy's side.