Captured Enigma machine helped break most codes
Three German ciphers unsolved since World War II are finally being cracked, helped by thousands of home computers. The codes resisted the best efforts of the celebrated Allied cryptographers based at Bletchley Park during the war. Now one has been solved by running code-breaking software on a “grid” of internet-linked home computers.
Mr Krah told the BBC News website that “basic human curiosity” had motivated him to crack the codes, but stressed the debt he owed to veteran codebreaking enthusiasts who have spent years researching Enigma.
He wrote a code-breaking program and publicised his project on internet newsgroups, attracting the interest of about 45 users, who all allowed their machines to be used for the project….There are now some 2,500 separate terminals contributing to the project, Mr Krah said.
Bravo!
An amazing bit of machinery is it not? Specifically with respect to Enigma, had the Germans done a few things differently we might never have cracked their codes.
Well it’s about time!
Now maybe I can understand the hidden messages in all my old Ludlum thrillers.
…and be speaking German.
From a science point of view, this is cool. Really cool. I hope there’s more effort put into breaking the remaining codes now that the first one was cracked.
From a social point of view, does anyone else feel a bit ‘odd’ when talking about the great scientific advances of World War 2 era Germany? Beyond the death camps and war, they did a number of terrible things in the name of ‘science’.
If you want to try playing with a sim of Enigma, try here:
http://www.xat.nl/enigma/
James,
The Germans also did many things that truly advanced science. Prior to WWII, Germany was the most advanced country in the world. The best scientists were in Germany. They had the highest quality manufacturing of anyone in the world. It wasn’t until well after the war that this changed. My Dad tells me a story (which I haven’t been able to verify) that during the 1930’s some Americans sent the smallest drill bits we made to Germany to find out what they think. They sent them back with their drill bit drilled through ours.
It is actually *because* of the atrocities they committed that it makes it that much more difficult (and that much more important) to understand how they ended up where they did at the end of the 1930’s. It truly illustrates that the price of freedom is constant vigilance.
This post takes me back to my childhood, reading Gaines’ Cryptanalysis (still available from Dover, in fact). Great fun, and educational too.
I’ve actually had the pleasure of trying one of these out. In a security course I was in, the instructor was able to convince the museum to open up the glass cage and let us try out the enigma machine.
Fairly simple, but highly effective. The downfalls came not from the technology, but from simple social engineering. They were able to recogonize that certian coders started the messages the same way and were able to recogonize them by their typing (or morse code) patterns.
What is really amazing is that this device was invented in the 40s. Got to love the Germans!
But still, there is one code that could never be broken. That is God’s Code.
Why can’t they just ask the Germans for the code?
ABCD,
Assuming you are not being facetious, I would think the answer to your question is obvious: no one has the rotor positions, peg board positions and encoding key needed to decipher the messages. It’s likely that they were destroyed during the war.
gquaglia,
Actually, the Enigma machine was developed during the 1920’s not the 1940’s. It was developed specifically in response to the fact that the Allies had broken the German codes during WWI.
David
Yeah. He/she/its code is so good we can’t even determine that there is a code or even an encoder.
Thats great now if they can find Bin laden we can all sleep tight at night!
Thomas,
Excellent reply: It gave me a new outlook on the topic.
Growing up, my next door neighboor was named “Fritz”. He was in the German army during WW2, and after the war someone in the American military saw fit to help him move to America. I never really understood exactly what he did, but he was some sort of forman or project manager on industrial projects. In any event, whatever he did, he must have been doing it a hell of a lot better than our GIs to get brought over here.