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U.S. Army Guide to Code Breaking
sebFlyte writes "From the introduction of this document, the U.S. Army's field manual guide to Cryptanalysis: 'This manual presents the basic principles and techniques of cryptanalysts and their relation to cryptography. Cryptanalytics is the art and science of solving unknown codes and ciphers.'"
they found the cryptonomicon
turn up the jukebox and tell me a lie
...you know what they say about "military intelligence".
Private
Sergeant
Trolling is a art,
A sneak peek at chapter 7:
Solution of polygraphic substitution systems polyalphabetic substitution systems
and that's just the title. Pack a lunch for this one...
"As the intrepid kobold companion continues his journey, he begins to wonder... if priests raises dead, why anybody die?
Let's set them loose on Bill Gate's Doodle. It's worth an $800,000 Pentagon contract, init?
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Step 1. Build a quantum factoring computer
ok that was in jest. But seriously, how much good is a field manual going to do you when its possible for handheld computers to encrypt data to such a strong degree that it's theoretically impossible to decrypt with any likelihood of success that's indistinguishable from zero in the lifetime of the universe?
I mean even if the guys at the NSA use different theories from the rest of us, I can only imagine that the methods they use still require vast amounts of hardware...
I am disrespectful to dirt! Can you see that I am serious?!
If it moves, shoot it.
If it doesn't move, pick it up.
If you can't pick it up, paint it.
Unknown host pong.
You should take a look at tracking down The Codebreakers which is a fasinating read.
"I use a Mac because I'm just better than you are."
It's an interesting book from an academic standpoint. I'm not sure how practical it is, though. It's all about cryptanalysis the old fashioned way (i.e. before computers). Still, I suppose it is good to acknowledge that the enemy may surprise us by taking a low-tech approach.
"B22 z1vs cb64 S c4m1o7 3 vt!!!"
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
Above and beyond that is gravy - if some soldier who's MOS is not codebreaking wants to try when he isn't doing his MOS, great.
www.eFax.com are spammers
This field manual (no. 34.40.2) seems to have a Distribution Restriction placed on it as of March 5, 1990. The index page of the manual features a prominent warning about its restricted nature and a banner at the bottom of the page reads, "For Official Use Only".
Is this document classified or are these just standard warnings with no teeth? Is our dissemination of this 15-yr-old document criminal?
speaking from experiance of a military individual.. Army Cryptographers don't even read this manual ;)
The problem that I have is the fact that this manual appears to be publicly available.
It's an amusing conceit the many Americans have that the rest of the world is utterly incapable of figuring anything out on their own and must steal it from the USA.
It's simple: I demand prosecution for torture.
so people that find the ASVAB challenging are supposed to read and understand this? I sure hope there are some civilians in the mix somewhere.
grape - the GNU free, open source rape
Nf! Ufhs h8g3j fkd Ud6gjf k fg45gf fski w0ot!
What you do instead is keylog. Don't break the message, tap the recipient of the message and read it when they decrypt it.
Depending on the situation, you could also throw lots of bogus messages (ie: undecryptable) messages into the mix, leading the users to believe the system buggy (and thus ditch it).
That's more social engineering than crypto, but the point is to break the message. If they stop using the channel, then you hopefully have moved them to a weaker channel.
One-dimensional thinking is good, but it'll only get you from point A.
DISTRIBUTION: Active Army, USAR, and ARNG: To be distributed in accordance with DA Form 12-11E, requirements for FM 34-40-2, Basic Cryptanalysts, (Qty rqr block no. 4607) and FM 34-3, Intelligence Analysis (Qty rqr block no, 1119).
I'm not sure if an army manual can be distributed openly like this. What exactly does DA Form 12-11E say about distribution of such manuals, can someone from the Army who knows the details explain the legal aspect?
In the COC (Combat Operations Center, center of confusion, or simply Circle of Cocksuckers), we had many little toys, ranging from Toshiba toughbooks to proxima projectors, etc. We used microwave relay to keep in touch with group and make sure our batallion commander was seeing the same operational picture that 1st FSSG was seeing.
That was all done via an electronically encrypted network. Which is fine and dandy when you have:
For forward units and combat units in the field the only thing they have that comes close is the field radio. While the encryption on these things is very advanced, the radio's are bullet, shock and explosion proof. Yes, the guy carrying your map, and perhaps a list of checkpoints might not be around forever. That is why field and forward units still have to employ non-electronic means of deciet and encryption. Even if it's as simple as one guy having the map, and the other guy having a clear piece of plastic with lines drawn on it.
If U.S. Marines and soldiers are still using "old fasioned" techniqies such as this, one could surmise that our enemies are doing the same.
Therefore, that old manual may have some relevance.
Be Safe! Sleep with a Marine. Semper Fi!
the title of the book is encrypted anyways. Don't expect that the military intelligence will be able to break _that_
Wait... Military intelligence?!?
Your head a splode
For all you crossword-puzzlers and wordgames enthusiasts, Chapter 13 is a great tool to have, and an interesting study in and of itself.
The enryption techniques described in this manual are outdated.
It is 15 years old.
Most of what is described is encryption/decryption that can be done by hand.
It's a FIELD manual.
Jason Lotito
The table of contents doesn't mention linear or differential cryptanalysis of a substitutation permutation network, and even if it did nobody is going to decrypt DES or AES on paper.
But in a place like Iraq, where power is unreliable and an endless supply of batteries for handhelds is not available, the enemy will have to rely on non-electronic cipher equipment.
Of course the problem in Iraq is that they don't use the English alphabet or language. The frequency analysis we depend on for the shift cipher or Vigenere cipher doesn't work for Arabic.
And even if they did, I really don't want to try and crack a Vigenere cipher without a computer!
A couple of hot hookers and a lot of booze.
In GOD we trust, all others we monitor.
hey, I didn't know Taco was Welsh!
m-
You catch enchiladas by picking them up behind the head and holding them underwater until they don't kick anymore -VeGas
This is the manual I used when I trained as a 98C (Signals Intelligence Analyst = SigInt) some 10 years ago. This is *still used* now.
:).
FOUO classification means it shouldn't have been published at all. Just because it's common knowledge does NOT declassify a document. The document can only be declassified by the originating authority (the people who wrote it, and classified it to begin with). You'll see "DECL:OADR" on these docs a lot - "Declassify on Originating Authority Directive".
This FM is meant to teach the basics of cryptology to ASVAB-passing recruits. We run through the whole thing. Some very smart people go into Intel. Some pretty dumb ones do too
Everyone is expected to pass the final after this is taught, which consists of 4 days worth of simulated "traffic" being passed between target stations. We've reference books for traffic pattern types, run locational analysis, crack subsitution ciphers - it's romping good fun.
The encryption methods taught are still used in the field, though less and less thanks to the Internet, crypto-secured frequency-hopping radios, and whatnot, mostly for Meteo and Logistics.
Brings back some nostalgia, reading though this. I hope they don't get into too much trouble for posting it.
-AutoNiN
If it moves, fuck it or kill it.
If it doesn't move, it's not your problem. Let the army deal with it...
If you use a ROT-13 bookmarklet (google for it, maybe at E2), you will find that the parent is correct.
;-)
Does anyone else find it funny that the army includes a table of the probability of english letters, i.e. di-and trigraphs in the document? What are they planning on, war with the British
I'm still trying to figure out what people mean by 'social skills' here.
I've read several comments here about removing this from the /. site because it's secret, but in reality it's anything but. I teach cryptography in college, and the ciphers explained in the document and the codebreaking techniques are strictly old school. Nobody even uses these anymore. Old-style ciphers like Playfair, Hill, and even Vigniere have been crackable by computer in a ridiculously small time for the past 20 years.
The areas of interest for codebreakers are in advanced symmetric ciphers and public-key crypto. For instance, cracking modified Feistel ciphers like 3DES, AES, and Blowfish. To date, nobody has made any advances of note in cracking Blowfish, but you never hear anyone talking about what a good algorithm it is. DES has been cracked for a while now thanks to the 56-bit key problem, but the algorithm is solid and AES (a.k.a. Rijndahl) is based off of the same basic concept, but with a bigger key.
The other area of note is in public-key crypto, such as exponential ciphers (RSA) and elliptic-curve crypto, which uses discrete logarithms to make cracking the code akin to solving an almost impossible math problem.
So don't worry that we just gave the enemy the technology to crack our codes -- the stuff in this document was old in World War I.