Difference between revisions of "Enigma"
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Decryption required an understanding of how Enigma functioned, the wiring of the rotors and the daily settings (both rotors and plugboard). | Decryption required an understanding of how Enigma functioned, the wiring of the rotors and the daily settings (both rotors and plugboard). | ||
| − | Nazi Germany used the Enigma before and during World War II to send messages about its military maneuvers. But in 1932 a 27-year-old Polish mathematician (cryptologist) named Marian Rejewski had used advanced mathematics (permutation theory with some group theory) to secretly break ("crack") the Enigma codes. He then helped design working "doubles" of the Enigmas that could find the keys necessary for decryption. By 1938 the Poles were decrypting most of the German messages, | + | Nazi Germany used the Enigma before and during World War II to send messages about its military maneuvers. But in 1932 a 27-year-old Polish mathematician (cryptologist) named Marian Rejewski had used advanced mathematics (permutation theory with some group theory) to secretly break ("crack") the Enigma codes. He then helped design working "doubles" of the Enigmas that could find the keys necessary for decryption. By 1938 the Poles were decrypting most of the German messages. However, the Poles were forced to share their codebreaking techniques with Great Britain and France after the Germans brought in a new variant on Enigma that made it haredr to decipher. |
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| + | Following the German invasion of Poland work on breaking the Enigma codes moved to France and Great Britain. French efforts were ended by the Fall of France in 1940, but in Great Britain Enigma was finally cryptographically broken thanks to the work done by code-breaking experts in the secret Bletchley Park facility, where some of the earliest and crudest computers were built to work on the millions of code combinations used by Enigma. | ||
The breakthrough enabled the Allies to anticipate German military maneuvers, although sometimes the Allies would allow an attack to occur successfully in order to avoid signaling to the Germans that their code had been broken. The [[Allied]] code-breaking effort was known as "Ultra", as in "ultra-secret". | The breakthrough enabled the Allies to anticipate German military maneuvers, although sometimes the Allies would allow an attack to occur successfully in order to avoid signaling to the Germans that their code had been broken. The [[Allied]] code-breaking effort was known as "Ultra", as in "ultra-secret". | ||
Revision as of 14:07, February 11, 2008
The Enigma was a portable cipher machine, roughly the size of a typewriter, which could encrypt and decrypt secret messages. It used electro-mechanical rotors to convert a message to a secret code, and then another machine could decode that same message and print out the original message. This machine was commercially available beginning in the early 1920s. The Nazi German military version generated codes widely thought to be unbreakable.
The Enigma machine was an electromechanical device, equipped with a 26-letter keyboard, with one light per letter of the alphabet. Inside the machine was a set of wired drums for scrambling the input. To encipher or encrypt a letter, the operator pushed the relevant key and observed which of the lights lit. The communication between two operators required that each had an Enigma machine set up in the same way as each other. The large number of possibilities for setting the rotors (and a plugboard that could swap letters) made for an astronomical number of possible configurations, each producing a different cipher. The Germans changed the settings daily, such that the machine had to be rebroken each day in order to decrypt the messages.
Decryption required an understanding of how Enigma functioned, the wiring of the rotors and the daily settings (both rotors and plugboard).
Nazi Germany used the Enigma before and during World War II to send messages about its military maneuvers. But in 1932 a 27-year-old Polish mathematician (cryptologist) named Marian Rejewski had used advanced mathematics (permutation theory with some group theory) to secretly break ("crack") the Enigma codes. He then helped design working "doubles" of the Enigmas that could find the keys necessary for decryption. By 1938 the Poles were decrypting most of the German messages. However, the Poles were forced to share their codebreaking techniques with Great Britain and France after the Germans brought in a new variant on Enigma that made it haredr to decipher.
Following the German invasion of Poland work on breaking the Enigma codes moved to France and Great Britain. French efforts were ended by the Fall of France in 1940, but in Great Britain Enigma was finally cryptographically broken thanks to the work done by code-breaking experts in the secret Bletchley Park facility, where some of the earliest and crudest computers were built to work on the millions of code combinations used by Enigma.
The breakthrough enabled the Allies to anticipate German military maneuvers, although sometimes the Allies would allow an attack to occur successfully in order to avoid signaling to the Germans that their code had been broken. The Allied code-breaking effort was known as "Ultra", as in "ultra-secret".
At the end of the war, Allied General Dwight Eisenhower said that Ultra was "decisive" to the Allied victory over Germany. British Prime Minister Winston Churchill also declared, "It was thanks to Ultra that we won the war." The breaking of the German codes prevented it from completely blockading Britain with U-boats and enabled the Allied forces to make key strategic decisions throughout the war.