One of the most glaring errors made by one of the spy defendants was leaving an imposing 27-character password written on a piece of paper that law enforcement officers found while searching a suspect’s home. They used the password to crack open a treasure trove of more than 100 text files containing covert messages used to further the investigation.

“[T]he paper said “alt,” “control” and set forth a string of 27 characters,” the court documents say. “Using these 27 characters as a password, technicians have been able successfully to access a software program (“Steganography Program”) stored on those copies of the Password-Protected Disks that were recovered…”