Council of Ten
Soro was employed in Venice in 1506 by the Council of Ten as cipher breaker-in-chief. They were the first secret service specializing in codebreaking. Soro ran the cryptanalysis operation in secret as the cipher secretary. Soro's tasks included deciphering secret messages captured from the messenger spies of Venice's rivals. At the time, Venice was plagued by espionage and subterfuge. The Council of Ten had its own ciphers changed often so as to impede competitors such as François Viète, a French mathematician (father of modern algebraic notation).