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Thread: Cracking Enigma in 2021

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    Default Cracking Enigma in 2021

    The Enigma was a marvelous machine, at a time when computers were basic and dumb, and required lots of manual work to get them to do anything at all.

    How does it look now from our point of view 'in the future'?


    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enigma_machine
    Quote The Enigma machine is a cipher device developed and used in the early- to mid-20th century to protect commercial, diplomatic, and military communication. It was employed extensively by Nazi Germany during World War II, in all branches of the German military. The Enigma machine was considered so secure that it was used to encipher the most top-secret messages.[1]

    The Enigma has an electromechanical rotor mechanism that scrambles the 26 letters of the alphabet. In typical use, one person enters text on the Enigma's keyboard and another person writes down which of the 26 lights above the keyboard illuminated at each key press. If plain text is entered, the illuminated letters are the encoded ciphertext. Entering ciphertext transforms it back into readable plaintext. The rotor mechanism changes the electrical connections between the keys and the lights with each keypress.

    The security of the system depends on machine settings that were generally changed daily, based on secret key lists distributed in advance, and on other settings that were changed for each message. The receiving station would have to know and use the exact settings employed by the transmitting station to successfully decrypt a message.

    While Nazi Germany introduced a series of improvements to the Enigma over the years, and these hampered decryption efforts, they did not prevent Poland from cracking the machine prior to the war, enabling the Allies to exploit Enigma-enciphered messages as a major source of intelligence.[2] Many commentators say the flow of Ultra communications intelligence from the decryption of Enigma, Lorenz, and other ciphers, shortened the war substantially, and might even have altered its outcome.[3]
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    Default Re: Cracking Enigma in 2021

    Here's the excellent 2014 film about the Enigma Machine, with Benedict Cumberbatch as Alan Turing. Highly recommended. It's a most remarkable story.

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