Slashdot Mirror
Man Pleads Guilty to Stealing Enigma Machine
Adler writes: "A man has pleaded guilty to to 'handling' the stolen Enigma machine in the UK. Its a short piece, but says that some vital parts of the machine are still missing. A longer BBC News piece is here." You may remember when this was first stolen, then held for ransom, then recovered -- this is the mopping up part.
If only he had wrapped it in a better conundrum ...
...he could've stolen U-571 before the audiences were forced to watch that crap.
;)
I'd have to give him a medal if he did that.
-- MarkusQ
As the US government now demands that a backdoor be put into this World War II relic ... it WAS considered 'strong' encryption in World War II anyway ...
Dont they have a bunch of rotors but no enigma somewhere? Of the many enigmas made wouldn't there be some rotors left over?
I know it's not the same as the entire recovered machine that was captured and used to defeat the natzi germany forces but like the crown jewels on display, noone will know they are fake or not the real ones.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Certainly.
The Engima story is quite interesting and complex; volumes can and have been written about it and it's beyond the scope of a Slashdot post to relay the full history. But I've provided some links if you're curious.
It should be noted that Bletchley Park's work in deciphering the Enigma codes - used by the Germans to direct operations including U-boat attacks on Allied convoys - proved vital to the outcome of the WWII.
Bletchley Park, code-named Station X, employed teams of mathematicians, linguists and chess champions during the war.
By the end of 1945, 10,000 people worked there.
With the help of decoding machines, the army of experts were able to crack the German code Enigma, which Berlin believed to be unbreakable.
The work carried out at the top-secret centre is believed to have shortened the war by several years and was kept secret until 1967.
The stolen device, an Abwehr Enigma G312, is a rare four-rotor version, one of only three still known to be in existence.
If you have a problem with my views, REPLY, don't moderate!
Let's get it straight that Poland cracked Enigma and built working devices from scratch, long before Turing automated the the decryption process at Bletchley, or Matthew McConaughey recovered the secret Death Star plans from R2-D571.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Is the enigma machine still a useful method of encryption? If not, wouldn't it fit better into some section about crime & punishment, antiques, historical objects, etc.?
My basic question is, can you actually use the enigma for secure communications still?
-Kasreyn
Kasreyn: Cheerfully playing the part of Devil's Advocate to hairtrigger
.sig
There is a movie about Enigma out now in the UK. Unfortunately the movie is all fiction and gets many of the facts horribly wrong. One of the movies misrepresentations is "forgetting" that it was Polish scientists who first broke the Enigma encription and not the British. The other (which is quite disturbing) portrays one Polish guy as a traitor who tries to tell the Germans about the success of breaking Enigma. The movie caused a small scandal in Poland and will almost certainly hurt those remaining Poles who fought in the battle of Britain who still live in the UK and are now being portrayed in such ways. Bad Brittons! Bad!
Your pizza just the way you ought to have it.
There are links to many downloadable simulations here, including an Abwehr Enigma sim for Windows. There even appears to be one written for Palm Pilot.
You're using her as bait, Master!
Puhleeez, Slashdot, dramatic headlines are great, but when they come at the expense of truth, it gets to be a drag.
... to handling a stolen Enigma encoding machine". That's quite a bit different than admitting he stole them. It may well be a crime to handle stolen goods after the fact, and there's possibly a good story here also. But this guy didn't plead guilty to stealing it so the more interesting story of how/why it was stolen and by whom is still out there. Consider saving this headline for a later day...
Your headline reads: Man Pleads Guilty to Stealing Enigma Machine
The story itself states clearly several times in the first few sentences: that he "admitted handling stolen goods" and that he "pleaded guilty
...the country of Poland is being charged under the DMCA for creating a device capable of circumventing copyright. What they did was clear disrespect for the Nazi's intellectual property rights.
"First they tell you you're wrong and they can prove it; then they tell you you're right but it isn't important; then they tell you it's important but they knew it all along." -Charles Kettering
"a hell hole full of inbreds who havent left this twon for 6 generations."
Apparently. Your post proves it quite eloquently.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
In the recent trend to link everything to Osama Bin Laden, many officals believe the Enigma was being used by Bin Laden as described before as his "High Tech Cryptography" that he switched to after he found out the US was monitoring his satellite phone conversations.
hey retard turing would have loved a backdoor in it.
iirc turing was killed because he was a homosexual. he was arrested and had his security clearance revoked. then someone poisoned him with cyanide. its very sad.
anyway if you care check out the alan turing homepage
"Tension is the great integrity" -- R. Buckminster Fuller
True. The Analytical Engine was never built, and so far as I know, no replica exists. An artist's impression of the AE graces the cover of the William Gibson/Bruce Sterling collaboration The Difference Engine, making it easy to conflate the two.
The link to John Walker's site, however, does contain software that emulates the AE. The colorado.edu link has a replica of a Difference Engine. So I suppose it's like showing a picture of an Intel 4004-based calculator to someone who wanted to see a picture of a computer. The raw materials (chips, PCB, keypad, display) are the same, so I guess it's a difference in degree, not kind. I guess.
Now you've got me confused.
All I can say is imagine a Beowulf ClustBZZZZT GAAAAAAHHHH!
k.
"In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart." - Anne Frank
Authentic WWII encryption machines like the German Enigma as well as the Japanese and other code machines should be considered national treasures and treated as such. Equivalent to priceless ancient relics, artworks and historic documents.
IMHO, During WWII there was a life-and-death race to cracking the codes that those type of machines created. Hence, the essential need of stronger computational power to break Enigma. Turing, et al worked creating techniques against Enigma and thus our computer science was born. The world would be a vastly different place today if it were not for breaking of Enigma and the like. Think about it.
They are priceless examples of history and should be displayed with proper security.
=bcc