The Enigma Machine was used during WWII by the German Army to get keep messages encrypted. It looks almost like a typewriter. There are 26 keys and 26 letters that can light up. These lights tell you how the keys will be scrambled up. The machine works like an electrical circuit. The rotors towards the back of the machine do most of the scrambling by mixing up the wiring. The plugboard in the front also another layer of encryption. Keyboard mechanism connects or disconnects the circuit to turn on a lightbulb. The path of the wire is difficult to follow so I recommend following it through in 3D! Each time a key is released - the rotors in the back will turn. This is done by the mechanism which includes the actuator bar, ratchet, pawl, and the index wheels.
Cracking the Enigma: How cryptography and social engineering helped win WWII
Wars, though terrible, can also catalyze new technologies. In fact, the ancestor of the computer you’re reading these words on right now was born in the crucible of World War II. That was when the Germans created a powerful machine to protect their secrets, forcing the Allies to create an even greater machine to unlock them.
In doing so, they helped to defeat one of the greatest evils the world has ever seen and created the precursor to the modern computer. But it’s not just history we’re after. Even almost a century later, there are lessons we can learn here about modern cybersecurity.
What follows is the fascinating story of how clever spies, daring commandos, brilliant mathematicians, and industrious engineers came together to crack Germany’s Enigma code machine…
Codes, codebreaking, and war
The element of surprise is crucial in war. Intercept an enemy’s message and you’ll know their moves before they do. World War II was no exception.
Radio waves enabled the nations of WWII to communicate with their troops over vast distances. However, it was easy for enemies to hear those messages as well. In a war where everyone can hear what you’re saying, you need to speak in codes to transmit secret information. This was why the German government developed the Enigma machine.
What is the Enigma machine?
The Enigma machine was a keyboard that scrambled messages in a way that could only be unscrambled by someone using an identical machine with identical settings somewhere else. It was initially created for commercial and diplomatic use before the war, but the government later began developing versions with more powerful encryption exclusively for the military.
The machine looked like a typewriter, but instead of typing out letters on a sheet of paper, it had a board of lights with one light for each letter of the alphabet. As the operator typed each letter of their message into the machine, a letter on the board would light up to produce, letter by letter, a scrambled message.
The German military used the Enigma to great effect during WWII. Their seemingly unbreakable encrypted messages would direct army movements, aircraft raids, and the deadly U-boat submarines that terrorized Allied military and civilian ships on both sides of the Atlantic.
Cracking the Enigma machine was key to gaining an advantage in WWII. But first, they had to figure out how it worked.
How did the Enigma machine work?
The key to its power lay in the clever way that the inside was wired. The wartime Enigma could create trillions and trillions of potential combinations – too many for any contemporary methods to crack. But we’ll get to that later. First, let’s see what you’d have to do to create and send an Enigma-encrypted message:
Steps you should take to create and send an Enigma-encrypted message
Check your settings
The Enigma only worked if both ends of the conversation were using the same settings. To this end, the German military would issue sheets of daily Enigma settings that would be replaced at various frequencies – usually once a month.
The Enigma was constantly updated throughout the war, so the exact types of settings varied. However, they usually included:
The rotors: The Enigma M1 had three rotors that the operator could choose from from a pool of 5, though this number was later increased to 8 (and a machine with 4 rotor slots was released toward the end of the war). You’d insert the correct rotors and then…
The rotor positions: Each rotor was a gear with 26 positions – one for each letter of the alphabet. The starting position for each rotor would change every day.
The “Stecker” pairs: At its strongest, the military Enigma machine had a switchboard that would allow the operator to create letter pairings. They were instructed to select 10 pairs each day, and when they did, those letters would be switched, further scrambling the message.
Every Enigma also had a reflector, but only a few of the versions could adjust their reflectors. We’ll get to the reflector later, as it introduced a flaw that was crucial to the Allies’ efforts to crack the Enigma.
The Enigma Machine was used during WWII by the German Army to get keep messages encrypted. It looks almost like a typewriter. There are 26 keys and 26 letters that can light up. These lights tell you how the keys will be scrambled up. The machine works like an electrical circuit. The rotors towards the back of the machine do most of the scrambling by mixing up the wiring. The plugboard in the front also another layer of encryption. Keyboard mechanism connects or disconnects the circuit to turn on a lightbulb. The path of the wire is difficult to follow so I recommend following it through in 3D! Each time a key is released - the rotors in the back will turn. This is done by the mechanism which includes the actuator bar, ratchet, pawl, and the index wheels.
Cracking the Enigma: How cryptography and social engineering helped win WWII
Wars, though terrible, can also catalyze new technologies. In fact, the ancestor of the computer you’re reading these words on right now was born in the crucible of World War II. That was when the Germans created a powerful machine to protect their secrets, forcing the Allies to create an even greater machine to unlock them.
In doing so, they helped to defeat one of the greatest evils the world has ever seen and created the precursor to the modern computer. But it’s not just history we’re after. Even almost a century later, there are lessons we can learn here about modern cybersecurity.
What follows is the fascinating story of how clever spies, daring commandos, brilliant mathematicians, and industrious engineers came together to crack Germany’s Enigma code machine…
Codes, codebreaking, and war
The element of surprise is crucial in war. Intercept an enemy’s message and you’ll know their moves before they do. World War II was no exception.
Radio waves enabled the nations of WWII to communicate with their troops over vast distances. However, it was easy for enemies to hear those messages as well. In a war where everyone can hear what you’re saying, you need to speak in codes to transmit secret information. This was why the German government developed the Enigma machine.
What is the Enigma machine?
The Enigma machine was a keyboard that scrambled messages in a way that could only be unscrambled by someone using an identical machine with identical settings somewhere else. It was initially created for commercial and diplomatic use before the war, but the government later began developing versions with more powerful encryption exclusively for the military.
The machine looked like a typewriter, but instead of typing out letters on a sheet of paper, it had a board of lights with one light for each letter of the alphabet. As the operator typed each letter of their message into the machine, a letter on the board would light up to produce, letter by letter, a scrambled message.
The German military used the Enigma to great effect during WWII. Their seemingly unbreakable encrypted messages would direct army movements, aircraft raids, and the deadly U-boat submarines that terrorized Allied military and civilian ships on both sides of the Atlantic.
Cracking the Enigma machine was key to gaining an advantage in WWII. But first, they had to figure out how it worked.
How did the Enigma machine work?
The key to its power lay in the clever way that the inside was wired. The wartime Enigma could create trillions and trillions of potential combinations – too many for any contemporary methods to crack. But we’ll get to that later. First, let’s see what you’d have to do to create and send an Enigma-encrypted message:
Steps you should take to create and send an Enigma-encrypted message
Check your settings
The Enigma only worked if both ends of the conversation were using the same settings. To this end, the German military would issue sheets of daily Enigma settings that would be replaced at various frequencies – usually once a month.
The Enigma was constantly updated throughout the war, so the exact types of settings varied. However, they usually included:
The rotors: The Enigma M1 had three rotors that the operator could choose from from a pool of 5, though this number was later increased to 8 (and a machine with 4 rotor slots was released toward the end of the war). You’d insert the correct rotors and then…
The rotor positions: Each rotor was a gear with 26 positions – one for each letter of the alphabet. The starting position for each rotor would change every day.
The “Stecker” pairs: At its strongest, the military Enigma machine had a switchboard that would allow the operator to create letter pairings. They were instructed to select 10 pairs each day, and when they did, those letters would be switched, further scrambling the message.
Every Enigma also had a reflector, but only a few of the versions could adjust their reflectors. We’ll get to the reflector later, as it introduced a flaw that was crucial to the Allies’ efforts to crack the Enigma.
No comments:
Post a Comment