CyberChef and obfuscation

You’ve seen a few references to American government contributions to the cybersecurity landscape. Now, let’s take a look at a British contribution. CyberChef is one of the most critical tools that every single person working in a cybersecurity profession should have in their quick-access toolbox. It was created by the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) of the United Kingdom. The organization is considered one of three intelligence and security organizations responsible for providing Signals Intelligence (SIGINT) and information assurance to the UK government and armed forces. (The other two are MI5 and the famed MI6 from the James Bond and Mission Impossible pop culture – yes, the organizations are real.)

GCHQ developed CyberChef to function as an open source web application for a variety of data processing, transformation, and analysis tasks. It was always intended to cater to the needs of cybersecurity professionals, digital...