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Floppy Disk Black Ops Cold War: How to Decrypt for Operation Chaos

By Ralston Dacanay

"We recently acquired an encrypted floppy disk from one of his agents that we believe contains everything we need to know about his network."
"We recently acquired an encrypted floppy disk from one of his agents that we believe contains everything we need to know about his network." / Photo courtesy of Activision

In the Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War campaign, the "Operation Chaos" side mission tasks players with gathering three pieces of evidence in order to decrypt a floppy disk retrieved from enemy lines.

Unfortunately, the answers for the puzzles needed to figure out the passcode and passphrase for the floppy disk do indeed vary from player to player, so there isn't a one-size-fits-all solution to give out. What we can provide, however, is the method that players need to use to figure those things out. As such, for those looking to take down Perseus' spy ring, here is a breakdown of how to decrypt the floppy disk in Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War.

Floppy Disk Black Ops Cold War: How to Decrypt for Operation Chaos

First things first, players will need to make sure that they have found all three special pieces of evidence hidden in other missions of the campaign:

  1. A Coded Message: Received in "Nowhere Left to Run" by choosing not to throw Quasim over the edge at the end of the mission.
  2. Numbers Station Broadcast: Found in "Brick in the Wall." When given the optional objective "locate and silence or rescue the informant," leave the bar, head left, go inside the door down a small set of stairs, take out the three guards and pick up the audio reel on the table.
  3. Front Page of the Observer: Found in "Redlight, Greenlight." During the "live fire exercise," before hopping off of the ledge, head upstairs in the bar next to the Capital Savings building, and take a photo of the map on the wall.

Now, to make sense of the evidence, we'll first be working with the coded message. In the second-to-the-top row, there will be a line of red and blue numbers with two question marks. The goal here is to figure out those two numbers. Doing this is actually pretty straightforward, just use the numbers of the same color nearby to figure out the question mark. Take one color set at a time. In our example, the red numbers increased by a set amount (e.g. four), while the blue numbers increased by an ascending amount each time (e.g. two, four, six, eight). Ultimately, we got 67 for blue and 89 for red.

Next, head over to the Numbers Station Broadcast. Here, players will use their two double-digit numbers and simply see what location they match up with. Since our numbers were "8, 9, 6, 7," our location was Washington.

After that, go to the Front Page of the Observer. In the headline, several letters will glow red (e.g. n, w, e ,r, a, k). Take note of those letters and go back to the Numbers Station Broadcast. Use the letters from the newspaper to form one of the city names given in the Numbers Station Broadcast, and then take note of the numbers that that location matches up with. In our example, our city was Newark, and the numbers we got were "6, 2, 6, 6."

Lastly, head to the Disk with Spy Ring Information (aka the floppy disk). First, put in the code from the newspaper (e.g. 6266). Then, for the passphrase, put in the city name from the coded message (e.g. Washington).

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