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Enigma Machine Stolen
bullgod writes "The BBC is reporting this story about the theft of one of the remaining three Enigma machines. Bummer! Presumably stolen to order -- I doubt you could fence one of these. Lets hope it's found & returned soon." You might also want to check out the Enigma displayed at the National Cryptologic Museum, run by the same folks who deny bringing you Echelon.
VAS IST DAS?!? EIN ENIGMA MACHINE HAST FALLEN INTO THE HANDS OF DER ALLIES!!! Schweinhunden!!! VE MUSHT GET IT BACK AT ONCE! IF HIMMLER HEARS OF ZIS VE ARE ALL DEAD MEN!!!!
Hang on...what year is it again?
Never mind. I just get these spells.
Obergruppenfuhrer Jones
This is among the worst types of theft: cultural theft.
Perhaps, but then the question becomes: whose culture? The machine was stolen from Britain, but the machine is German in origin. The machine was already stolen property when it was taken. Depending on who stole it, then your logic might even justify this theft as merely taking it back from the real thieves.
This is so because it is not theft from one or a few people, but from much of the world...
Point here. But that machine is still, I sumbit, more of a historical artifact than a cultural one.
similar to the American habit of destroying foreign culture and replacing it with our own (yes, I come from the USA and I say this).
OK, I want to hear a defense of this point. Are you traing to say that American culture has no right to exist? Or that it is somehow inferior to others? The way I see it, American culture has exactly as much a right to exist as any other culture; no more, true, but certainly no less either. If you're going to try and say which culture is superior and which isn't (and you certainly sound as though you are doing this), then I wonder where the hell you get off thinking you're in any position to do that. I know I'm not, and I very much doubt anyone here on Slashdot is, because guess what: no one is in that position. Least of all those who are so egotistical they actually think they are.
After all, there can be no serious attempt to justify a light sentence based on thieving to live or being unaware of committing a crime.
Strange; last I checked ignorance of the law is generally considered an extremely weak defense, and certainly wouldn't work in this case.
It's hooked up to one of the Distributed.net projects!
The code was broken because of two main reasons. First the coders tended to use the similar portions of the available additive numbers. Additionally, several words were repeated; for instance, numbers. Given enough intercept message traffic, patterns would then appear. For instance, hey look, the same number.
Eventually, some repeating key words (actually five digit numbers) were identified, as well as some of the additive sequence numbers. These numbers were relative values. For instance, all the code words could start at zero, while all the additive numbers started at 1000. Or all the code words started at 1000, while all the additive numbers started at zero.
The major breakthrough came when someone remembered that the Japanese had used an old four digit code that represented numbers in a know sequence. For instance, 0=0000, 1=0102, 2=0204 etc... Someone then realized that one deciphered code word was 13343, another was 13445, 13547, etc... Woops. As the article states, within a day, all numbers from 0-999 was known. Given this info, it made it easier to decipher the additive code.
The second important item that you may have noticed is that the coded numbers are all divisible by three. Checksum error. After that, all applicable additive sequence had to yield a series of code words (5 digit numbers) that were divisible by three.
BTW, the author of this article also found out (from the recently release classified docs) that JN-25 was not broken on Dec 7, 1941. Not even close. There was some indication that 10-15% of JN-25 transmissions were decoded. The problem was that this meant:
xx dude xx xx xx xx xx xx first xx xx xx xx xx xx xx post xx xx xx petrified xx xx xx xx xx xx Hemos.
Of course, the non-numerical coded number still had to be converted to their equivalent Japanese words.
From what I heard there were up to 10 electropnic computers operating at Bletchly park.... plus of course all the mechanical crckers.
So the eniac wasn't even in the first 10 computers....
Even better - it makes IBM's assertion that there was a worldwide market for at most 5 computers even more ludicrous since twice that many had already been built.
There are only three enigmas of the same type as the one that was stolen.
Here is a cool applet that simulates an enigma machine.
... and this is how it works.
I used to get into arguments with self-professed experts about this all the time, and seeing as i've read the biography of the man that put the whole project together, almost singlehandedly, i was inclined to believe i had my facts straight.
I haven't read the book for a long time, but A Man Called Intrepid is what it is, written by William Stevenson, about Sir William Stevenson, the master spy code-named Intrepid. Stevenson was a canadian, and served as Churchill's liason to the US during the US's neutrality and helped Bill Donovon, Roosevelt's main inteligence man, create the OSS (precursor to the CIA). Stevenson was behind everything the british did in the Secret War, trained all the spies, helped design most of their equipment. From Russia With Love actually gives some really good examples of this gear, and guess where Ian Flemming got all his inspiration? He was one of Intrepid's men.
But, back to the Enigma. The British built Collosus, the 1st computer (yes, it predates ENIAC) at Bletchley to crack the Enigma, but very few people know that in august, 1939 an Enigma was smuggled out of Poland. The Czechs attacked a convoy that was being escorted by Heydrich. Intrepid had his agents blow up a typewriter and scatter the parts so the germans thought that the machine was destroyed. The allies paid dearly for that however, since Heydrich went on a killing spree untill he was assasinated by Intrepid's ppl.
All transmissions that were intercepted by the Bletchly people were codename ULTRA. One of these ULTRA interceptions allowed the British to organize the evacuation at Dunkirk. Tonnes of equipment was lost on the beaches, but without that pre-warning, there's no way the British could have mobilized enough transport to get those men out. As it was, only the rear guard that were swarmed by the Germans were captured.
Through ULTRA, the US knew about the planned attack on Pearl Harbour. This is a sorely contentious issue, and many contend that the Japanese attacked sooner than expected. However, the official reasons for tho coverup were to not reveal the source (PURPLE was the code that the Japanese used, basically similare to ENIGMA), and to serve as a match to stir the US to war.
So, there you are, the real history of the ENIGMA. They remained secret until 1972, 10 years after the defection of Philby, a top BSC exec, and a deeply planted Russian spy. Philby was, ironically, in charge of anti-Soviet operations.
A naval Enigma was found as well. A U-boat got torpedoed, and the crew thought it was sinking, and the crew hopped ship, figuring it went down. but the british (or americans, don't remember which) got a crew of 3 on, found it wasn't sinking that fast, so they sent a prize crew on and got the Enigma, charts etc, while the German crew were shipped off to a POW camp.
I only take a drink on two occasions - when I'm thirsty and when I'm not.
I only take a drink on two occasions - when I'm thirsty and when I'm not.
Brendan Behan
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OFTC: By the community, for the community
But it's also sad, to me, when a culture is gone. Just disappears, killed or murdered or died. Like the passenger pigeon, extinct. There goes a bit of wisdom, as somebody wrote in "Ishmael," that we'll never have again. A system of knowing, a chunk of wisdom about how to live in this world. We can never get that particular wisdom back.
I'm Indian-American, and I KNOW that there is value in American culture and that there is value in Indian culture. I don't think Mohandas Gandhi was literal when he responded to the newspaperman --
"What do you think of Western civilization?"
Gandhi: "I think it would be a good idea."
No, both have value -- more or less, I don't want to judge. But the Westerners have, as my ex-PoliSci TA says of the British, "that nasty little conquering habit." There are drives in certain cultures that make it difficult for them to coexist peacefully with other cultures. Might that destructiveness lower that culture's value? Maybe.
Anyway, I think you misread the person's comment on the Western habit of destroying and replacing other cultures. Visit Bangalore, visit Paris, visit any city that has a proud history of its own. More people speak English, more people have "Western values" and dress and watch and listen and all that -- looking to the US. Or, at least, a global monoculture will be / is more influenced by Protestant individualism than by Hinduism. Maybe that's not so optimal for wisdom and balance.
That's all.
Ceterum censeo Microsoftam esse delendam.
This is just nuts. I saw at least three Enigmas when I was at the Bletchley Park museum of cryptography, and I read not too long ago of a cryptologist/collector here in California who has over twenty whole or partial Enigman machines. Who says there are only three???
Where can I download this Enigma thing?
-- "I can't tell the future, I just work there." -- The Doctor
It's suprising the Germans fielded such a mechanical turkey, especially since they also used the minature Hagelin C-52, a pocket-sized all-mechanical crypto machine with a printer. Due to a dumb advancing mechanism, that little machine had weak cypher strength, but it could have been smartened up.
The Enigma was only used for short-term tactical communications. The Army and Air Force version used 3 wheels, while the later naval versions used 4 wheels. All of the Enigma cryptosystems shared certain traits that made them especially amenable to a type of cryptanalysis known as the Index of Coincidence method (a letter could never be encrypted to its plaintext equivalent). There was never any real need to capture a naval Enigma, although if this occured, it would certainly have been a great help. Later German innovations, such as the plugboard and better keying techniques, made it more difficult for British cryptanalysts to break Enigma messages in useful durations of time. While there are indeed more than 3 extant Enigma machines, I believe that the article refers to 3 of a specific type and manufacture.
The details of the high-level encryption systems (such as the Lorentz cipher machines between German operational command and the leadership) have not ever been declassified yet, although it is known that they too were broken by the Allies. To this day, the details of how the Japanese PURPLE machine was broken are not known either. Rotor machines were used by the Allies as well during WWII, and by most nations until probably the late 1950s. It has additionally been rumored that codebreaking agencies had discovered astonishingly general techniques for breaking messages encrypted with rotor machines.