Help Break Original Enigma Messages

More than 3 are unbroken by Derling+Whirvish · 2006-02-25 18:56 · Score: 4, Informative

There are more than just those three message still unbroken. Those were just three that were selected for this project.

Re:More than 3 are unbroken by Crayon+Kid · 2006-02-26 05:59 · Score: 1

Besides, what is left to prove for this M4 project?

The original breakthrough was the deed of one brilliant mind, the Polish matematician Marian Rejewski, and he was helped (however little) by the fact that Hans-Thilo Schmidt sold the Enigma plans to the French secret services.

The English project was a joint effort of many more minds and succeeded because the Germans did all kinds of mistakes which reduced the scope of the searches. Even so, the encryptions used by the German Navy back then (which didn't make those mistakes) could not be broken after all, and the English had to resort to capturing the code-change schedules.

So what's the purpose of this modern reenacting of the breaking process? Just to prove that, given enough raw computing power, you can break any code? Gee, what a novel concept. It doesn't contribute anything new. It's just a brute force attack, no elegance to it, no particularly new approach, no subtlety. So I ask again, what's the point?

I'm thinking that there are a few distributed computing projects out there which could actually produce something useful instead of a telegram text which was already available anyway.

--
i ate crayons when i was a kid and now i have two braincells and the blue ones taste nicer
Re:More than 3 are unbroken by 0xdeadbeef · 2006-02-26 07:25 · Score: 1

Bite me, Nazi. We defeated you 70 years ago, and we're going to keep defeating you, until every last vestige of your existence is pwned!
Re:More than 3 are unbroken by Anonymous Coward · 2006-02-26 10:01 · Score: 0

hee hee loook! he maed a FUNNY!!1!
Re:More than 3 are unbroken by 0x20 · 2006-02-26 12:46 · Score: 1

Oh, I don't know, maybe the point lies in the historical significance of the encoded documents?
Re:More than 3 are unbroken by Crayon+Kid · 2006-02-26 23:36 · Score: 1

The first one they decoded was already available in plain text, they just didn't know which it was. Chances are that the others will be similar. Decades after the war, it's easier to just go the former enemy nation and ask to see their records.

--
i ate crayons when i was a kid and now i have two braincells and the blue ones taste nicer

Error by c0dedude · 2006-02-25 18:57 · Score: 3, Interesting

Are they sure they're not just bad data? Wouldn't it be a good idea to send crap through the lines every so often to throw people off the trail?

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Since when has this country used intellectual elite as a pejorative term?

Re:Error by DrEasy · 2006-02-25 19:15 · Score: 1

But then wouldn't that confuse the actual recipient as well?

--
"In our tactical decisions, we are operating contrary to our strategic interest."
Re:Error by Anonymous Coward · 2006-02-25 19:22 · Score: 5, Interesting

One of the main reasons the Enigma crypts were breakable with 1940's technology is that the Germans did _not_ do useful things like that. They re-used keys, left cribs in the messages, etc.
Basically, they put too much faith in the encryption technology, and didn't put enough effort into securing the rest of the process. It's not unusual, many of today's systems have similar issues.
The comments in Bruce Schneier's blog list some more things that went wrong in the Enigma process.
Re:Error by SySOvErRiDe · 2006-02-25 19:40 · Score: 1

The intended receiver would decode it and see that its garbage and just ignore it. I think crackers would have a hard time figuring out patterns if there's real information mixed with significant garbage data.
Re:Error by afidel · 2006-02-25 21:04 · Score: 1

Correct, a really good crypto system would be continuously transmitting a constant stream of jibberish and would have a preshared library of start and stop keywords to allow good data to be picked out by automatic means. This would allow a strong cryptographic system to also be resistant to traffic analysis. However the German enigma setup was anything but good.

--
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
Re:Error by jacken · 2006-02-25 21:14 · Score: 1

That would explain Brittney Spears on the radio...
Re:Error by massivefoot · 2006-02-25 21:24 · Score: 2, Interesting

The Germans were over-confident to the point of incompetence with their encryption. The British certainly didn't attempt to change this, and ULTRA was only declassified in 1974, and it's likely as not that the Germans still thought their ciphers invincible at the end of the war.
Re:Error by 91degrees · 2006-02-25 23:28 · Score: 1

They must have done occasionally. I remember hearing a story where Bletchley received a junk message which had no 'L's. Since the crib relied on the Enigma's inability to encode a letter to itself, the received message must have consisted entirely of the letter L.
Re:Error by eneville · 2006-02-25 23:35 · Score: 1

It's normal to tell the receiver when the next message will be likely to arrive, or even have a scheduled receive time every week.

--
Why UNIX?
Re:Error by masklinn · 2006-02-26 00:12 · Score: 1

Correct, a really good crypto system would be continuously transmitting a constant stream of jibberish and would have a preshared library of start and stop keywords to allow good data to be picked out by automatic means.

Kind of looks like Waste to me.

--
"The way we can tell it's C# instead of Haskell is because it's nine lines instead of two." -- wadler
Re:Error by jacksonj04 · 2006-02-26 00:17 · Score: 1

Not necessarily. It could just be that some letters happened to be encoded to things other than L.

--
How many people can read hex if only you and dead people can read hex?
Re:Error by 91degrees · 2006-02-26 01:47 · Score: 1

Well, they made the logical leap, assumed it was all L, and used that as their crib. Apparently it worked.
Re:Error by swillden · 2006-02-26 02:29 · Score: 4, Interesting

Since the crib relied on the Enigma's inability to encode a letter to itself, the received message must have consisted entirely of the letter L.
To be precise, the message was slightly more likely to have consisted entirely of the letter L. There's no mathematical guarantee that it would contain all Ls, but a sufficiently long ciphertext message with no Ls in the output would've indicated that, with high probability, there were an unusually large number of Ls in the input. Without knowing the actual story, I'd guess that the message probably wasn't all that long, and the math would probably predict only a few more Ls than normal... but that was enough of a hint that when combined with a knowledge of human behavior gave the cryptanalysts reason to assume it was all Ls and see if they could find key settings that would produce the ciphertext from that input.
Even at the height of Bletchley Park's codebreaking efficiency, nearly every day's break came down to some clever guess of that sort... "What if we tried this?". I imagine the "all Ls" scenario was one of the easier guesses. In order to make it more certain, the codebreakers even asked the front-line forces to do apparently bizarre things, just so they'd have a keyword they could look for in the subsequent reports.
Amazing stuff...

--
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
Re:Error by covertbadger · 2006-02-26 02:35 · Score: 2, Informative

"If I take a letter, lock it in a safe, hide the safe somewhere in New York, then tell you to read the letter, that's not security. Thats obscurity. On the other hand, if I take a letter and lock it in a safe, and give you the safe along with the design specifications of the safe and a hundred identical safes with their combinations so that you and the worlds best safecrackers can study the locking mechanism - and you still can't open the safe and read the letter - thats security." Applied Cryptography, Bruce Schneier.

A really good crypto system wouldn't need to be embedded in a stream of gibberish to interfere with traffic analysis, as it would be impervious to traffic analysis anyway.
Re:Error by HermanAB · 2006-02-26 02:57 · Score: 1

Modern military backhaul systems are always transmitting - they never stop. When they are not sending useful data, they send random data.

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Oh well, what the hell...
Re:Error by Graemee · 2006-02-26 04:25 · Score: 1

Enigma's major weakness, besides the operator's habits, was it's inability to encode the source letter with the same letter. Enigma was mechanically unable to encode a letter with the same letter. Pushing "A" will never ever get you an "A" on the output. This allowed them to check for strings, like ranks and names as the letters in the string will not appear in the encode.
Re:Error by Bloke+down+the+pub · 2006-02-26 04:43 · Score: 1

an unusually large number of Ls in the input.
Maybe the Germans were planning to invade Wales?

--
It's true I tell you, feller at work's next door neighbour read it in the paper.
Re:Error by TGK · 2006-02-26 05:07 · Score: 1

That's in large part because a big chunk of Europe also belived it -- and used Enigma machines to encrypt diplomatic traffic well into the 1960s.

We declasified the break because the machines went out of service.

--
Killfile(TGK)
No trees were killed in the creation of this post. However, many electrons were inconvenienced.
Re:Error by E8086 · 2006-02-26 05:08 · Score: 1

Who said it had to be intentional?
Maybe someone's cat walked across the keyboard or someone sat on the keyboard or the operator was drunk and forgot how to type or someone set it wrong and sent a useless message, shortly being transfered to the Russian front.
Well we won't know until these are cracked. What!? no Win2k version, D'oh, must use XP instructions.

--
F7 doesn't work, ignore spelling and grammar
Re:Error by aevans · 2006-02-26 06:04 · Score: 1

that's a guaranteed way to get cracked. It wouldn't take more than a cursory glance (or at best a bit of statistical analysis) to tell the difference between the gibberish and the cyphered text. A really bad crypto would improve itself with a moderate amount of gibberish (say 50-75%) so that if partially broken, it would resist guessing. But unless your crypto is being broken by hand already, or if it is entirely uncrackabl, interleaving gibberish with cyphertext is a sure way to weaken your encryption.
Re:Error by Esion+Modnar · 2006-02-26 06:06 · Score: 1

Are they sure they're not just bad data?
Reminds me of when somebody showed me what looked like a magic eye picture, but wasn't. I'm usually pretty good at getting my eyes focused just right to see the picture, but I was working on this one for 5 minutes before the joker started sniggering.
Scary thing, I was just about seeing something!

--

They say the first thing to go is your penis. Well, it's either that or your brain. I forget which...
Re:Error by Kadin2048 · 2006-02-26 06:41 · Score: 1

That's kind of a bold statement -- care to elaborate?

The design of an encryption system itself -- as in the algorithm or device used for encipherment -- doesn't make it more or less resistant to traffic analysis. You could be using one-time pads, essentially unbreakable encryption, and still be vunerable to traffic analysis if you were using it poorly.

--
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Re:Error by Geoffreyerffoeg · 2006-02-26 08:00 · Score: 1

I remember hearing a story where Bletchley received a junk message which had no 'L's.

No L? Must have been a Christmas greeting from the German forces.
Re:Error by mrogers · 2006-02-26 12:36 · Score: 1

Only if they made the elementary mistake of making the gibberish packets a different size from the data packets. We await silent Tristero's second protocol revision. ;-)
Re:Error by Anonymous Coward · 2006-02-26 15:17 · Score: 0

Indeed, it was quite common for cats to annoy submariners by walking on the engima machine, then convincing somebody to take the encoded gibberish and transmit it. Can't trust those cats.
Re:Error by covertbadger · 2006-02-26 21:41 · Score: 1

The design of an encryption system itself -- as in the algorithm or device used for encipherment -- doesn't make it more or less resistant to traffic analysis. You could be using one-time pads, essentially unbreakable encryption, and still be vunerable to traffic analysis if you were using it poorly.

Ah, well, with the disclaimer you've added at the end there, all bets are off :-) To continue Schneier's safe analogy, if I handed over the keys as well, then obviously you'd be able to read the letter.

A good crypto system would not involve the transmission of any information that might help decrypt the message. This being the case, embedding it in a stream of gibberish will not help, because there's nothing to hide, and traffic analysis would therefore be futile. Using it poorly, as you point out, is likely to lead to failure, but that isn't the fault of the crypto system. If I'm using a one-time pad correctly, keeping the keys utterly private, using each key once and only once, and destroying them after use, then you can analyse my messages as much as you want, and you won't get anywhere, regardless of whether I obscure my message with line noise.
Re:Error by bentcd · 2006-02-27 01:00 · Score: 1

If I monitor the communications of a military unit and suddenly find a spike in message traffic, that's a pretty good indicator that something is going on. Anticipating that this might indicate imminent maneuvers from that unit, I might step up alertness of my own forces in the area and send out more scouts than usual.
If the unit I monitor uses random noise to throw off traffic analysis, I will not have this information and so will be none the wiser.

--
sigs are hazardous to your health
Re:Error by covertbadger · 2006-02-27 02:45 · Score: 1

If I monitor the communications of a military unit and suddenly find a spike in message traffic, that's a pretty good indicator that something is going on. Anticipating that this might indicate imminent maneuvers from that unit, I might step up alertness of my own forces in the area and send out more scouts than usual. If the unit I monitor uses random noise to throw off traffic analysis, I will not have this information and so will be none the wiser.

Nice idea, but too easy to exploit by whoever's being monitored. If I was your enemy and believed you would react to a comms spike, I deliberately *wouldn't* swamp my messages in noise - I'd simply have another unrelated unit start sending me twenty weather reports a day instead of one, and while you were busy investigating this increase in activity I'd send a pigeon to notify the real unit to start manoeuvres. Trying to infer my plans by simple frequencies would just result in an impenetrable game of double-bluff, and all the while you'd be no closer to actually reading my messages.
Re:Error by bentcd · 2006-02-27 03:13 · Score: 1

Traffic analysis isn't about reading messages. It's about infering information without having to read messages.
While your suggested campaign of misinformation could certainly be useful, I expect it is too cumbersome and time consuming to be employed everywhere all the time. The enemy needs to get a large number of false positives before they outweigh the benefit of the one true positive. Far better then to just cut him out entirely with random noise.
Which is exactly what modern militaries are doing, by the way :-)

--
sigs are hazardous to your health
Re:Error by Zaiff+Urgulbunger · 2006-02-27 11:19 · Score: 1

In a parallel universe somewhere, there's a version of Wales with sensible place names! ;)

power of proper encryption by jnf · 2006-02-25 18:57 · Score: 1

This just goes to show the power of properly implemented encryption.

Re:power of proper encryption by neoform · 2006-02-25 19:00 · Score: 4, Funny

So what if it took 60 years to crack, those subs are sitting ducks now! Good encryption my ass..

--
MABASPLOOM!
Re:power of proper encryption by Anonymous Coward · 2006-02-25 19:42 · Score: 0

Which is why they should have posted the messages as an Anonymous Coward!
Re:power of proper encryption by MMaestro · 2006-02-25 20:00 · Score: 1

More likely, these (non-decoded) messages were simply marked as 'to be decoded', shelved and then ultimately were never decoded. Once the war ended, there was no need to decode old messages and all efforts were simply forgotten.
Re:power of proper encryption by massivefoot · 2006-02-25 21:42 · Score: 1

Please tell me you're joking? properly implemented encryption? It was terrible, most likely MMaestro is right, there was no simply pressing need to decrypt them. If you want to know why the encryption wasn't properly implemented, I'd recommend ULTRA, or The Code Book by Simon Singh.
Re:power of proper encryption by ipfwadm · 2006-02-26 05:55 · Score: 1

Please tell me you're joking? properly implemented encryption? It was terrible

Actually, the Germans' use of the Enigma was the most terrible part. Operators using their initials as keys, sending messages that were identical (or nearly so, such as form letters) using different keys, sending messages that consisted of nothing but the same letter, etc etc etc.

Enigma had its share of design problems, don't get me wrong. But I would hardly call it terrible, especially given the age of the technology. It would have been much more difficult, if not impossible, to break had the Germans used it properly.
Re:power of proper encryption by jnf · 2006-02-26 06:31 · Score: 1

It is in fact true that the number one flaw of the encryption was its implementation, but lets consider the one message that this project has decrypted. The post-1939 engima encryption, at its greatest strength had 23,276,989,683,567,292,244,023,724,793,447,227,628 ,130,289,261,173,376,992,586,381,072,041,865,764,8 82,821,864,156,921,211,571,619,366,980,734,115, 647,633,344,328,661,729,280,000,000,000,000,000 possible configurations, roughly 2×10^145. Which, you must consider that there is roughly 10^80 atoms estimated in the known universe, although in practice the complexity was 10^23.

Now lets take all of the available information at face value and presume everything everyone says about that message is correct, this is to say that it was transmitted in mid-1942, but shows up in war diaries for U-264 in 1930. This would leave one to assume that it was retransmited 12 years later for whatever reason.

As I understand it, all navel encryption between May 7, 1941 and June 1941 were decrypted, and post June 1941 'most' of the encryption was cracked using a banburismus machine, the banburismus had some limitations, one important one was that 200 messages had to be transmitted that day. Then consider that by 1945 we could crack 'most' engima encryption within a few days.

All things considered, we have few probable options, we can reasonably conclude that when the message was intercepted we either were not able to crack the encryption, or had such a backlog of messages to decrypt that it wasn't done, and because classified military information is only important so long as its relevant (i.e. decrypting a message that states when D-Day would occur, and where a month after the invasion is useless), its probable to think that we either couldnt or didnt crack the decryption in time for it to be useful, and therefore as stated the message was secure, in that the encryption lasted longer than the lifetime of the message.

The premise that the end of the war made it irrelevant is silly because that means we had a backlog of about 3 years. In addition, this message was transmitted in the middle of a transition in our decryption to something that was not 100%.

Coral Cache? by chill · 2006-02-25 18:58 · Score: 1

Okay, is this just one big conspiracy or not? I have *NEVER* had a Coral Cache link work. Not once.

I think you're all just messing with my head. /me reaches for tin foil hat

-Charles

--
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.

Re: Coral Cache? by whitehatlurker · 2006-02-25 19:06 · Score: 1

It has worked for me in the past, but it does seem sloooow today. So maybe they're turning against me too '-)

--
.. paranoid crackpot leftover from the days of Amiga.
Re: Coral Cache? by Anonymous Coward · 2006-02-25 19:08 · Score: 0

Perhaps a firewall or http proxy is the culprit? Coral links usu. not on port 80.

Your UID is so low, I am going to assume you've already thought of this, though...
Re: Coral Cache? by Yaztromo · 2006-02-25 19:28 · Score: 1

Okay, is this just one big conspiracy or not? I have *NEVER* had a Coral Cache link work. Not once.

You said it. I'm glad I'm not the only one.
It looks to me like Corel Cache can be Slashdotted as well. Indeed, the only time I ever find that Corel Cache helps me to read a story that /. links to is when someone submits the Corel Cache link, and I can then go to the original story that is supposed to be cached, because the rest of /. is hammering Corel Cache instead.
Corel Cache doesn't have a special "Bandwidth of the Infinite" spell it can cast when the /. hordes descend upon a site.
Yaz.
Re: Coral Cache? by antime · 2006-02-25 22:15 · Score: 1

Me neither. Meanwhile, the original link is working just fine.
Re: Coral Cache? by idonthack · 2006-02-26 07:30 · Score: 1

I know it's Sunday, but if you're browsing from work or school you need to keep in mind that some places don't allow you to make any connections to port 8090.

--
Why is it that when you believe something it's an opinion, but when I believe something it's a manifesto?

Build your own Enigma Machine by Derling+Whirvish · 2006-02-25 18:59 · Score: 4, Interesting

Here's a site where you can order a parts kit to build you own Enigma Machine.

Re:Build your own Enigma Machine by realbadjuju · 2006-02-25 20:48 · Score: 2, Informative

And here's a paper 3-rotor version... Print out and play.

Java Enigma Simulator by Derling+Whirvish · 2006-02-25 19:02 · Score: 4, Interesting

Here's a Java Enigma Simulator.

Re:Java Enigma Simulator by fireman+sam · 2006-02-25 23:10 · Score: 4, Funny

A Java enima stimulator, simply add it to your coffee and run.

Sorry

--
it is only after a long journey that you know the strength of the horse.
Re:Java Enigma Simulator by eneville · 2006-02-25 23:39 · Score: 1

Someone mod the parent funny, I've already posted and cannot mod.

--
Why UNIX?
Re:Java Enigma Simulator by speculatrix · 2006-02-26 06:25 · Score: 1

A Java enima stimulator

I hope you meant enigma and not enema... a java enema would probably give you a hell of a caffeine hit, but it'd probably be a tad unpleasant cleaning the espresso machine afterwards!
Re:Java Enigma Simulator by Anonymous Coward · 2006-02-26 13:04 · Score: 0

It's an enema simulator. You still drink it like real coffee, but the end result is similiar to an enema.

Wasn't the enigma cracked? by chanrobi · 2006-02-25 19:03 · Score: 2, Interesting

Why are there still these 3 messages that are unbroken? None of TFA seems to talk about this. Even though it is interesting to note that it's estimated to take 1-10 days of 100 celerons 24/7 to crack a ciphertext of 180 letters long. And that's with computers that are 60 years ahead of the technology that the enigma was made from.

Re:Wasn't the enigma cracked? by ZigiSamblak · 2006-02-25 19:12 · Score: 3, Interesting

If it wasn't for the Enigma machine it is unlikely computers would be as advanced as they are today since cracking the enigma code was THE reason computer development really got started with the Mark I in WWII.
Re:Wasn't the enigma cracked? by Lord+Kano · 2006-02-25 19:39 · Score: 2, Informative

Enigma wasn't cracked because of weaknesses in the algorithm(although those do exist), it was broken because of the German's sloppy cryptography practices and the fact that the allies found out what process they were using to determine their keys.

If a cop is wearing body armor, it doesn't mean that he can walk out into a torrent of incoming bullets. Chances are that one of those bullets will find a weakness in his armor, or simply strike him in a place where he's not protected. Similar principle here.

LK

--
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Re:Wasn't the enigma cracked? by Loconut1389 · 2006-02-25 19:49 · Score: 1

NSA could throw a whopper cluster/machine at it and crack that in seconds one would think. Why haven't they?
Re:Wasn't the enigma cracked? by Anonymous Coward · 2006-02-25 19:54 · Score: 0

who says they haven't? :)
Re:Wasn't the enigma cracked? by Jaysyn · 2006-02-25 20:22 · Score: 3, Funny

Too busy reading your email :D

Jaysyn

--
There is a war going on for your mind.
Re:Wasn't the enigma cracked? by RedWizzard · 2006-02-25 21:45 · Score: 2, Interesting

If it wasn't for the Enigma machine it is unlikely computers would be as advanced as they are today since cracking the enigma code was THE reason computer development really got started with the Mark I in WWII.
This is just not true. Enigma was broken using "bombes" which were not computers by any reasonable definition of the term. A bombe was simply an electromechanical device that tested each possible rotor setting. Colossus, OTOH, considered by some to be the first programmable digital computer, was developed at Bletchley to break the Lorenz ciphers. So if you want to credit Nazi ciphers with advancing the state of computing, that's the one to choose. However Colossus was destroyed at the end of the war and no information about it was made public until the late 1970's. So it's hard to claim it had much impact on the development of the computer (this is why ENIAC was considered to be the first computer for so long).
The fact is that the ground work for the modern digital computer was laid before the war by Turing and others. The work that was done at places like Bletchey during WWII was essentially lost due to the secrecy surrounding such places (which extended decades after the war ended). That work was recreated independently in any case.
Re:Wasn't the enigma cracked? by igb · 2006-02-25 22:55 · Score: 3, Informative

Although Colossus was classified, a lot of the people who worked on it went on to become the initial wave of computer builders in UK universities after the war. It's also reputed that at least one Colossus survived at Cheltenham into the 1970s, presumably working on multi-wheel stream ciphers.
ian
Re:Wasn't the enigma cracked? by Anonymous Coward · 2006-02-25 23:15 · Score: 0

However Colossus was destroyed at the end of the war

There were more than one Colossus. Most of them were destroyed, but two of them were moved to GCHQ. There are rumours that parts of an original Colossus may still exist somewhere within intelligence system, but apparently no serious effort has ever been put into investigating that.
Re:Wasn't the enigma cracked? by Anonymous Coward · 2006-02-26 00:39 · Score: 0

Don't forget Konrad Zuse.
Re:Wasn't the enigma cracked? by Anonymous Coward · 2006-02-26 03:41 · Score: 1, Funny

Because WWII is over. You'll be pleased to know that we won.
Re:Wasn't the enigma cracked? by Anonymous Coward · 2006-02-26 04:19 · Score: 0

Dude I can hand write a cipher right now that the best computers on this planet with the best Crypto people on it can not break using a pad of paper and a pencil.

If there were rotors that only certian pairs existed that is the same in Enigma as having a 1 time pad. Not hard to keep the best Crypto people at bay.

Imaginge this. Standard enigma machine. I sit down and write out a random list of letters that equals the length of my message. then each letter the rotos are change to my letter designation. Yes I would have had to pre-share my one time pad, but it will make it 100% unbreakable with current expers and technology.

It's simple to defeat current tech.
Re:Wasn't the enigma cracked? by Bloke+down+the+pub · 2006-02-26 05:00 · Score: 1

Ich bin ein German, du insensitiv Klodd!

--
It's true I tell you, feller at work's next door neighbour read it in the paper.
Re:Wasn't the enigma cracked? by aevans · 2006-02-26 06:16 · Score: 1

Funny how all the top-secret technological advances by the Americans, Germans, Russians, Japanese, and Lichtensteinians all saw the light of day eventually, but somehow British technology was so secret that all traces of it have disappeared. Maybe it's because the British were so much smarter than the rest of us that that's why they were able to keep it secret. Or maybe it's just a silly myth designed to stroke the ego of a declining empire.
Re:Wasn't the enigma cracked? by RedWizzard · 2006-02-26 07:41 · Score: 1

Funny how all the top-secret technological advances by the Americans, Germans, Russians, Japanese, and Lichtensteinians all saw the light of day eventually, but somehow British technology was so secret that all traces of it have disappeared. Maybe it's because the British were so much smarter than the rest of us that that's why they were able to keep it secret. Or maybe it's just a silly myth designed to stroke the ego of a declining empire.
The British advances have become public knowledge over time. For example, the fact that they invented public key cryptography before anyone else was exposed in 1997.
Re:Wasn't the enigma cracked? by Kadin2048 · 2006-02-26 08:31 · Score: 1

While I agree with you in fact regarding the Colossus, I don't think it gets the mark for being first, either.

Konrad Zuse was first, by a number of years, with the Z3. Fully programmable, Turing-complete -- a computer by practically any definition of the term. Unfortunately he wasn't recognized until recently (when the machine was rebuilt) since it was destroyed during an Allied aerial bombardment of Berlin. It's actually arguable whether this distinction ought not go to his earlier prototype (the Z1) in 1938/39, which embodied many of the same principles, but didn't work too well due to the method of construction. (It was electromechanical.)

It's also worth pointing out that it wasn't created for any cryptographic purpose. It was built as a general-purpose machine, my understanding is that Zuse's background was in logistics and the Post Office. The Nazis were apparently underwhelmed and didn't support the project particularly well; if they had, computing history (and all modern history) might be quite different.

More references:
http://www.epemag.com/zuse/part4a.htm Article written by Konrad Zuse's son.
http://ei.cs.vt.edu/~history/Zuse.html Bio and C.V. of Konrad Zuse, and writings on information theory.

--
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Re:Wasn't the enigma cracked? by Anonymous Coward · 2006-02-26 09:26 · Score: 0

"Why haven't they?"

How would you know they haven't.
Likely they don't want to make known the power they have available.
Better (in their opinion) to keep people guessing.
Re:Wasn't the enigma cracked? by Anonymous Coward · 2006-02-26 09:42 · Score: 0

Which makes the efforts of the team at Bletchley Park even more amazing.
Re:Wasn't the enigma cracked? by Thing+1 · 2006-02-26 17:25 · Score: 1

Colossus, OTOH, considered by some to be the first programmable digital computer, was developed at Bletchley to break the Lorenz ciphers.

Is that the same Lorenz that Einstein mentioned in his theory of relativity? (Lorenz transforms.)

--
I feel fantastic, and I'm still alive.
Re:Wasn't the enigma cracked? by drwho · 2006-02-26 23:43 · Score: 1

Nein, du bist ein Berliner!
Re:Wasn't the enigma cracked? by clap_hands · 2006-02-27 00:08 · Score: 1

> Is that the same Lorenz that Einstein mentioned in his theory of relativity? (Lorenz transforms.)

No, that was Hendrik Lorentz, a Dutch physicist. The company which made the Lorenz teleprinter cipher machine was founded by a Carl Lorenz in Berlin.
Re:Wasn't the enigma cracked? by hpa · 2006-03-05 10:44 · Score: 1

The British advances have become public knowledge over time. For example, the fact that they invented public key cryptography before anyone else was exposed in 1997.

Clifford Cocks of GCHQ did indeed invent public-key cryptography in 1973. However, as far as we know it never was actually used.
Unfortunately Diffie and Hellman came up with their own in 1976, only a few years after Cocks. Then the Cocks method was reinvented in 1977 by Rivest, Shamir and Adleman, and it's known today as the RSA cipher.
So they were only a few years ahead of the civilian cryptographic community, and failed to capitalize on that advantage. Of course, maybe 30 years from now we'll know more, but that's as far as we can tell today.

and the message is . . . by rev_sanchez · 2006-02-25 19:14 · Score: 3, Funny

Be sure to drink your Ovaltine.

--
If you didn't come to party don't bother knocking on my door. Prince '1999'

Re:and the message is . . . by deadlinegrunt · 2006-02-25 19:37 · Score: 2, Funny

Ovaltine? A crummy commercial? Son of a bitch!

--
BSD is designed. Linux is grown. C++ libs
Re:and the message is . . . by Anonymous Coward · 2006-02-26 03:32 · Score: 0

Why do they call it Ovaltine? The mug is round. The jar is round. They should call it Roundtine!
Re:and the message is . . . by Anonymous Coward · 2006-02-26 11:13 · Score: 0

Final message is:

"Everything is dark. You are likely to be eaten by a Grue."
Re:and the message is . . . by giantsfan89 · 2006-02-26 13:01 · Score: 1

For those who didn't know, that was the secret message decoded from A Christmas Story.

--
Don't ping my cheese with your bandwidth!

Godwin's Law by Sartak · 2006-02-25 19:29 · Score: 1

Geez, someone better tell these submarine folk that it doesn't count if you specifically invoke Godwin's Law.

OUTGOING by Anonymous Coward · 2006-02-25 19:33 · Score: 0, Interesting

HELLO WORLD 42555 42555 HELLO WORLD 09214 09214 37240 37240 79854 79854 16149 16149 57728 57728 91668 91668 06160 06160 54078 54078 86936 86936 45482 45482 94556 94556 56024 56024 45578 45578 70434 70434 73211 73211 15708 15708 47553 47553 54103 54103 57436 57436 62440 62440 09824 09824 27002 27002 95378 95378 91983 91983 39808 39808 86851 86851 13314 13314 38277 38277 19941 19941 53182 53182 83117 83117 69904 69904 19904 19904 74653 74653 31668 31668 72572 72572 75690 75690 85767 85767 12327 12327 05104 05104 67592 67592 39784 39784 66557 66557 71706 71706 22765 22765 60094 60094 55947 55947 28823 28823 00718 00718 10778 10778 K-BYE

Re:OUTGOING by Anonymous Coward · 2006-02-25 21:20 · Score: 0

This is anything but offtopic!

Source code? by ASaidi · 2006-02-25 19:33 · Score: 1

The posted source code doesn't match the posted sha1sums and aren't valid gzip archives.

Re:Source code? by Pathwalker · 2006-02-25 19:43 · Score: 1

The copy I downloaded matched the sha1sum.
I've put a copy on my own server if you want to download it from me: enigma-suite-0.73.1.tar.gz.
Re:Source code? by Fjornir · 2006-02-26 14:16 · Score: 1

...additionally the Windows client, at least, leaves a backdoor on your system.

--
I want a new world. I think this one is broken.

Why? by PatTheGreat · 2006-02-25 19:36 · Score: 1

So why exactly are they doing this? Did someone just want to see if they could pull off a distributed computing project, or what?

--
Google: "All your data are belong to us."

Re:Why? by kasperd · 2006-02-25 20:20 · Score: 1

If you look on this just as an IT story, it is just yet another distributed computing project. But if you are interested in history, it may be different. The messages themselves may be of historical interest, we can't know for sure before they have been decrypted.

--

Do you care about the security of your wireless mouse?
Re:Why? by Fjornir · 2006-02-26 14:14 · Score: 1

Actually from the "newsworthy" aspect of things their project is going to have more impact than you might have thought. It's not just another distributed computing project, their client is a trojan that opens a backdoor on your system. Watch for the update / followup story...

--
I want a new world. I think this one is broken.

Do I have to? by Quiet_Desperation · 2006-02-25 19:43 · Score: 2, Funny

Can't I just buy war bonds or something?

Future Global Conflict by im_thatoneguy · 2006-02-25 19:43 · Score: 1

Assuming we don't annihilate each other in the first 10 minutes of the next global conflict... I wonder if national distributed computing might become something of the norm. Obviously all of the processes would have to be encrypted and redundantly checked by various sources, but I'm curious if the government isn't looking into some sort of national emergency processing procedure.

In the last world war the united states was able to out defeat the enemy in a large part by our incredible industrial efforts, perhaps in the next we'll be able to wield the largest data processing center.

Re:Future Global Conflict by Chapter80 · 2006-02-26 00:05 · Score: 1

I suspect this was a troll, or a comment from a person very ignorant of history.
Some of the best troll comments simply weave in a comment like that just to watch people's blood boil. Don't feel obligated to reply! (I'm sure someone else will!)
Re:Future Global Conflict by Anonymous Coward · 2006-02-26 00:22 · Score: 0

"the united states was able to out defeat the enemy"
out defeat? so the united states got defeated better than the enemy did.. ???
Re:Future Global Conflict by Anonymous Coward · 2006-02-26 02:02 · Score: 0

Er, what was the objectionable or incorrect in the original post/troll? Are you arguing that the United States did win the war alone, or that Hollywood doesn't sometimes suggest that they did?

I'd agree that it's fairly offtopic, though. (But please do reply to this anyway: as I'm not a troll, if I'm not misunderstanding you, I must be "very ignorant of history", and I look forward to your shedding some light on the subject.)

(Or are you using "last world war" to refer to the Cold War here? If so, I'd agree that the United States won that one mostly by their own efforts, but I find this to be confusing terminology.)
Re:Future Global Conflict by TheRaven64 · 2006-02-26 05:35 · Score: 1

If a distributed computing system were to be the most efficient way of doing things, then the person with the biggest botnet would win. And since you can buy nodes in a botnet for about 5, I doubt it would be very difficult for anyone to assemble a large grid. As it happens, dedicated hardware can be a good order of magnitude or two faster than general purpose computers at cryptanalysis, so it seems likely that the NSA would have a significant advantage over someone relying on unpatched Windows boxes.

--
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Re:Future Global Conflict by Kadin2048 · 2006-02-26 08:43 · Score: 1

This assumes that the first act in a future global conflict wouldn't be to shut down the Internet along national borders, slash undersea cables, and "de-orbit" each others' communications satellites. Much the same way that physical borders were shut down in past wars between belligerent nations, I expect that the shutdown of informational borders would be the most telling sign of an impending war in the future.

--
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Re:Future Global Conflict by Anonymous Coward · 2006-02-26 09:55 · Score: 0

" Assuming we don't annihilate each other in the first 10 minutes of the next global conflict..."

I don't think there's much danger of that. While it is true that submarine-based forces could reach their target in as little as 10 minutes, the most powerful and numerous weapons are land-based, which can take as long as 30 minutes to reach their target. Factoring in reaction time and escalation (presumably neither side will decide to launch immediately upon hearing of imminent conflict) I'd give humanity about an hour to survive after the beginning of said conflict.
Re:Future Global Conflict by im_thatoneguy · 2006-02-26 10:06 · Score: 1

I suspect you're reading far far too deep into an offhand comment. Ok happy: "The Allied forces were able to defeat their enemies through their incredible industrial efforts." But let me ask you a question... while we're on the subject. Did America lose the last world war? If we didn't lose then logic tells us, we either didn't participate, or we won. It is an accurate phrase to say "America defeated germany." It is also an accurate statement to say "The UK defeated germany." Hell it's an accurate statement to say "Singapore defeated Japan". If this was a troll comment it would have read: "The amazing super power of the united states of america who kicks all ass in all places because God watches over their shoulder and speaks to their leaders brought forth the only industrial reaction in world war 2, and out produced everybody especially those stupid lazy canadians who eat funny foods like bread. On the front lines, Americans fired every gun, and shot every cannon and at the end of the day took every hill. Hail America the great!" If you read the paragraph as a thought process it says. "Last time we won (as opposed to the germans and japanese winning) by doing more of X, maybe next time Y will be the "x" that wins the war." Has it ever crossed your mind that sometimes people just refer to their home country because it's the first name that pops into their head? I'm sure I wouldn't be geting this sort of shit if I had said "Britain had defeated..." even though in many areas germany out produced Britain. I think you could live a much happier life by not looking for conspiracies where they don't exist.
Re:Future Global Conflict by im_thatoneguy · 2006-02-26 10:08 · Score: 1

Hehe, no conspiracy in forgetting to select "Plain Text", sorry about the big text block of death.
Re:Future Global Conflict by Anonymous Coward · 2006-02-26 16:21 · Score: 0

I think he was replying to you; that is, his comment wasn't outing you as a troll, but the author of the original post. Make sense?
Re:Future Global Conflict by Anonymous Coward · 2006-02-27 06:22 · Score: 0

Ah, that does make sense. Sorry for the misunderstanding.

(Oh, and I'm not the original AC, just a curious third party.)

So where did these messages come from ? by Anonymous Coward · 2006-02-25 19:49 · Score: 0

From what I understand at the end of WWII the Brit's destroyed most of what was held at Blechley Park - they wanted people to believe that the Enigma code was secure and that the machines could be used by the nations that captured them (sneaky poms).

So did anyone actually keep the original intercepts ?

Did anyone keep the rotor settings, etc used to decode them ?

These messages (if they still exist) would be a very interesting source of information on what was happening during WWII.

Re:So where did these messages come from ? by Elad+Alon · 2006-02-25 21:42 · Score: 1

Why would they destory everything in there? Couldn't they just, you know, go on keeping it secret?

--
News for merdes. Shit that matters.
Ask me about my sig.

I've got it! by Anonymous Coward · 2006-02-25 19:49 · Score: 0

Those aren't encryptions! Those are well-formed Perl programs!

Excuse me... by __aaclcg7560 · 2006-02-25 19:51 · Score: 1

Isn't it a bit late to be helping the war effort? It's been about 60 years since the war was over.

Re:Excuse me... by MichaelSmith · 2006-02-25 21:59 · Score: 2, Funny

Isn't it a bit late to be helping the war effort?
You'd think they could just ask the Germans for the cleartext.

--
http://michaelsmith.id.au
Re:Excuse me... by Bloke+down+the+pub · 2006-02-26 05:23 · Score: 1

You'd think they could just ask the Germans for the cleartext.
You think they'll still have them? You might have a point if the Germans were a procedure-obsessed bunch of unthinking bureaucrats who keep copies of everything in triplicate.

--
It's true I tell you, feller at work's next door neighbour read it in the paper.

Re:PeeWee Hermann, Go ring the bell! by ross.w · 2006-02-25 19:51 · Score: 1

FOr KDE, it's known as the Kracked Kraut Kode

--
If my call is important, why am I talking to a recording?

Sorry I thought this was hilarious by [cx] · 2006-02-25 19:54 · Score: 2

"The Enigma Machine was cracked in Poland in 1932,"

I read that and burst out laughing immediately thinking of three Polish soldiers running with the Enigma machine backwards and falling over and cracking the case.

"oh no we have cracked ze case"

"lets get out of here"

Re:Sorry I thought this was hilarious by Vlad_the_Inhaler · 2006-02-25 21:00 · Score: 1

Actually it was 1942 - a rather important typo. Hell, the Nazis had not even come to power in 1932.

--
Mielipiteet omiani - Opinions personal, facts suspect.
Re:Sorry I thought this was hilarious by Anonymous Coward · 2006-02-25 21:12 · Score: 0

Actually, one of the earlier Enigma machines used by the German Army was cracked by Poland in December 1932, so 1932 is correct.
Re:Sorry I thought this was hilarious by kiwi77 · 2006-02-25 21:21 · Score: 5, Informative

Actualy, if the Poles hadn't been REALLY proactive about truing to break the German Enigma we (the Allies) would have been really fucked. The French had access to Enigma plans but felt that it was impopssible to crack Enigma so they handed all their data to the Poleish intelligence service (Burio Szyfrow)and siad good luck.. Marian Rejewski of the Burio developed an attack on Enigma (absolutely brilliant!!) that actually suceeded in cracking the cipher. The Poles were decrypting German messages on a daily basis until 1938, when the Germans increased the number of scramblers to 5 so that any 3 were available for encryption and also added new plugboards. When Poland was attacked by the Germans the Poles called in the British and gave them spare Enigma replicas they had built, blueprints, and cracking strategies. They were sent to England in diplomatic pouches via Paris. smuggled across the Channel by a French playwrite and his actress wife, so as not to be detected by Geman spies at the Channel ports. Laugh all you want to, but the Poles made it possible to win World War II.
Re:Sorry I thought this was hilarious by Vlad_the_Inhaler · 2006-02-25 21:22 · Score: 1

yup - I replied before having read the entire article :-(

--
Mielipiteet omiani - Opinions personal, facts suspect.
Re:Sorry I thought this was hilarious by kiwi77 · 2006-02-25 21:28 · Score: 1

Sorry about the spelling errors. It's late and I should be in bed.
Re:Sorry I thought this was hilarious by Anonymous Coward · 2006-02-25 23:03 · Score: 0

Your ignorance and stupidity shows.
Re:Sorry I thought this was hilarious by TheLink · 2006-02-25 23:52 · Score: 1

Well, I think the fact that the Germans attacked Russia/Soviet Union, instead of just going on and taking over Britain made it a lot more likely for them to lose WWII...

Even though they had a chance of winning, the cost was very high.

If they had done it the other way round, they'd have much of western Europe, and there'll be just USA, Germany, USSR in the North Atlantic.
--
- Too many replies beneath your current threshold
Re:Sorry I thought this was hilarious by RabidMonkey · 2006-02-26 01:58 · Score: 1

hey, you forgot Canada!

most people only forget Poland, but Canada?

--
We emerge from our mother's womb an unformatted diskette; our culture formats us. - Douglas Coupland
Re:Sorry I thought this was hilarious by Anonymous Coward · 2006-02-26 02:17 · Score: 0

Oh, he remembered Canadia... If you'll look once more, you'll see USA there. :P
Re:Sorry I thought this was hilarious by TheLink · 2006-02-26 03:14 · Score: 1

Isn't Canada the northernmost state of the USA? Just like Australia is the southernmost? ;)

Anyway my point was it would have been much easier for Germany to take all/most(switzerland?) of western europe if they didn't expend so much trying to take the Russians.

Fighting a war on more than one front is difficult. The Russians weren't going to attack them in the first place. So they should have just gone and taken west europe (including britain and ireland) and that would make it a lot harder for the USA to try to get into Europe.

Only after regrouping and rebuilding their forces, should they have tried for Poland, Russia etc, if at all...
--
- Too many replies beneath your current threshold
Re:Sorry I thought this was hilarious by aevans · 2006-02-26 06:40 · Score: 1

If the Germans had gone west into Britain, the Russians would damn sure have attacked them. Unless you forgot, Stalin signed that non-agression pact too, not just Ribbentrop. That means that Russia had something to get out of it, and they didn't need the paperwork to take half of Poland. They got that very nicely on their own, militarily. Stalin wanted to build up his forces and wait for Germany to be entangled with the west before he struck, so Hitler *had* to beat him to the punch. If you thought Stalingrad was ugly, you wouldn't believe what the battle of Britain would have been. At the very least, Stalingrad plus D-Day, plus the Battle of Britain, plus an unlikely capability of supressing the popular insurgency, an all out American attack (we'd've retreated to the 48 in the Pacific and concentrated on eliminating Germany.
Re:Sorry I thought this was hilarious by RedWizzard · 2006-02-26 07:52 · Score: 1

Laugh all you want to, but the Poles made it possible to win World War II.
You're making a lot of unwarranted assumptions. You're assuming that Britian or the US wouldn't have broken Enigma by themselves, which seems likely given how many other difficult ciphers they broke (e.g. Lorenz, Purple). You are also assuming that without breaking Enigma the Allies would have lost the war. That's extremely contentious.
Re:Sorry I thought this was hilarious by Anonymous Coward · 2006-02-26 08:13 · Score: 0

you were correct, that was hilarious
Re:Sorry I thought this was hilarious by citizenr · 2006-02-26 08:54 · Score: 0

"oh no we have cracked ze case"

ze case? German person would say with such accent
It would be more like "oh nou, wi hew krakd di kejs" :)

--
Who logs in to gdm? Not I, said the duck.
Re:Sorry I thought this was hilarious by Anonymous Coward · 2006-02-26 11:49 · Score: 0

you are a fucking retard
Re:Sorry I thought this was hilarious by loraksus · 2006-02-27 00:50 · Score: 1

Perhaps just a small nitpick, but Burio Szyfrow translates as "Office of Cyphers". No doubt it was part of the intelligence service, but...

--
1q2w3e4r5t6y7u8i9o0pqawsedrftgthyjukilo;p'azsxdcfv gbhnjmk,l.;/

Enigma is fairly close to a OTP by jd · 2006-02-25 19:58 · Score: 4, Interesting

The Enigma code was broken only in the trivial sense that it was possible to brute-force decrypt the messages, once the algorithm, prng and seed value were known. It was not "broken" in the purist sense of the term, in that there is no shorter method of cracking the messages other than by brute-force.

The full Enigma code is extremely difficult to break. The machine used by Alan Turing (Colossus) was massively parallel and highly optimized for the task - so much so that it is actually able to compute something like ten times as many keys per second as a modern Pentium 4 using the same algorithm. Not bad, for a machine of that era.

The Enigma suffered from numerous weaknesses - almost all of them operator error. The encryption mechanism itself was damn good and, if used correctly each time, every time, it would have been horribly difficult for the Bletchley Park team to break.

The one event that turned Enigma transparent was the re-transmission of a message without the cogs being randomized first. Because a machine had already been recovered, Turing knew what the cogs were, just not where they should be in relation to each other. By having the same message sent twice without change and without a prior reset, it was possible to overlay the two messages and thereby infer virtually everything else.

This only allows you to crack messages which use the same prng for initialization and identical cogs. Since the cogs were designed to be swappable, non-standard configurations would have been possible. These would not have been crackable - and would likely not be crackable today, if non-standard enough. (The number of arrangements you would need to test increases with the factorial of the number of ways the cogs could be designed, as well as the factorial of the number of ways the cogs could be inserted into the machine.)

The possibility exists that certain units may have used non-standard Enigma codes, but if that is the case, those codes will NOT be broken by this effort. The groups that spirited high-ranking Germans to South America and other "secure" locations must have had a communication system that the Allies had not yet deciphered, as they must have been able to operate over extremely large distances very quickly, making the use of radio a certainty.

It is also likely that some units within the German military adopted their own "extra secure" practices when using the Enigma system internally. These may or may not be crackable, depending on how paranoid the commanders were.

--
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)

Re:Enigma is fairly close to a OTP by AWeishaupt · 2006-02-25 20:10 · Score: 2, Interesting

Colossus had nothing to do with cryptanalysis of any Engima variant. The Colossus machines were used to help break the more advanced Baudot code teleprinter systems used for communications between German command posts - particularly the system known to the Allies as 'TUNNY'
Re:Enigma is fairly close to a OTP by Johnno74 · 2006-02-25 21:45 · Score: 1

Have you got a reference for that "10 times faster than a p4" quote? I saw that and was impressed, but I looked colossus up on wikipedia and apparently colossus used 1500 valves.
A valve does the same thing as a transistor, and I find it extremely hard to believe that 1500 transistors, no matter how cunninly arranged to execute a single algorithm, could outperform 55 million transistors.

And I also doubt if they were switching several thousand million times a second.
Yes, I know, many of those transistors are cache memory, but still...
Re:Enigma is fairly close to a OTP by Xilman · 2006-02-25 22:27 · Score: 1

AFAIK, the source for this quote is Tony Sale, the guy who lead the Colossus-rebuild project at BP. He certainly claimed in my presence that Colossus was about ten times faster than the program he'd written for Pentium PC (not P4). This would be in summer 1998, when Colossus was just about functional again.
The rebuilt Colossus is an interesting machine, BTW, and well worth going to see. If you get chance to get up real close, don't go poking fingers in it. There's 400V DC on uninsulated conductors.
Paul

--
Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate
Re:Enigma is fairly close to a OTP by igb · 2006-02-25 23:00 · Score: 1

You're confusing Colossus (with against Baudot codes) with Bombes (used against Enigma) and, indeed, the Baudot Codes (Tunny, Sturgeon) with Engima. It's difficult to unpick your confusions, but I assume that the massively parallel devie you allude to is Turing's Bombe, fitted with Welchman's diagonal board. [[ Before someone comes in with more mis-information, Turing's bombe attacked conjectured plaintext, using the non-clashing property caused by the reflector wheel, while the Polish bomba attacked the pre-1940 indicator system. The use of similar names was a shocking piece of poor security, but also a tribute to the groundwork of the Polish effort. However, the machines attack very different problems. ]]
ian
Re:Enigma is fairly close to a OTP by clap_hands · 2006-02-26 00:13 · Score: 1

> The Enigma code was broken ...

Lots of errors in your post: All of the methods used in World War II were short-cut algorithms. For example, bombes would search systematically over all starting positions and orderings of the rotors, but not over the billions of plugboard settings. Colossus wasn't used for Enigma. It would seem Alan Turing never used Colossus. Colossus was not faster than a P4 (unless you program in Javascript, as Tony Sale does). Sometimes operators did not randomize their rotors between messages, but this would not lead to a message in depth (overlayed messages).
Re:Enigma is fairly close to a OTP by clap_hands · 2006-02-26 00:17 · Score: 1

This could well be because Tony Sale's simulators are written in JavaScript...
Re:Enigma is fairly close to a OTP by citizenr · 2006-02-26 08:46 · Score: 0

"The one event that turned Enigma transparent was the re-transmission of a message without the cogs being randomized first. Because a machine had already been recovered, Turing knew what the cogs were, just not where they should be in relation to each other. By having the same message sent twice without change and without a prior reset, it was possible to overlay the two messages and thereby infer virtually everything else."

very interesting, considering Turing did NOT crack Enigma!
"Since the Polish intelligence got an Enigma machine, Rejewski could develop the scheme of encryption from the mathematical point of view."

http://www.armyradio.com/publish/Articles/The_Enig ma_Code_Breach/The_Enigma_Code_Breach.htm

England _exploited_ Polish work and took all the fame and glory for it :(. Turing merely implemented Rejewski algorythms. Nothing more.

--
Who logs in to gdm? Not I, said the duck.
Re:Enigma is fairly close to a OTP by clap_hands · 2006-02-26 23:37 · Score: 1

> Turing did NOT crack Enigma!
> England _exploited_ Polish work and took all the fame and glory for it :(. Turing merely implemented Rejewski algorythms.

There's two errors you can make when discussing history of Enigma codebreaking. The first is to fail to mention the early Polish work. This happened a lot in the 1970s and 1980s, and was chiefly a result of ignorance, rather than a deliberate attempt to swipe the glory. Happily this oversight occurs less often now.

The second error, which is becoming more common, is to say what you're saying: that the British simply copied Polish work. It's presumably an overreaction to the first error. The truth is that there's plenty of credit to go around, as the British and Polish *both* cracked Enigma using remarkably innovative and clever -- yet for the most part different -- techniques.

After May 1940, the Germans changed their procedures and the Polish techniques no longer worked. The British had to come up with their own ideas, the most significant was the Turing-Welchman Bombe (completely different to the Polish bomba).
Re:Enigma is fairly close to a OTP by Steve+Hosgood · 2006-02-27 01:57 · Score: 1

> England _exploited_ Polish work and took all the fame and glory for it :(. Turing merely implemented Rejewski algorythms.

OI! Unfair to Turing!

Also, unfair to the British involvement. The Poles (all credit to them) *gave* their knowledge (and at least one clone of the military enigma machine) freely to Britain when it became obvious that Poland was going to be invaded. The best of Poland's cryptographic team bunked off to continue the fight, first to France, later to Britain. Not all of them made it.

Post 1940, Britain was on its own, cryptographically speaking, until the involvement of the Americans starting at least a year later. Of course, it was massively helpful to Britain to be already in a position of breaking Enigma messages with their updated Polish methods in May 1940 as the procedures changed.

The first Turing/Welchman bombes came into service in the latter part of 1940, after the change.

Also, Britain was the first to break into German Navy Enigma - see the entry for "Banburismus" on wikipedia. Banburismus was based on an idea of Turing's, though the procedures used in the end were the product of many people's contributions.

To get the client by dlichterman · 2006-02-25 20:08 · Score: 1

You must remove the coral cache part to download the client.....

Isn't this against US law? by lostngone · 2006-02-25 20:13 · Score: 0

Isn't it against U.S. to break this kind of encryption?

Re:Isn't this against US law? by mrjb · 2006-02-25 21:28 · Score: 1

Perhaps to export it FROM the US, yes. Only thing is - it wasn't invented in the US. Or maybe you are referring to the DMCA? In that case, let's see how well the Germans are protected by US law.

--
Visit http://ringbreak.dnd.utwente.nl/~mrjb/growingbettersoftware to download your free copy of the book
Re:Isn't this against US law? by AC-x · 2006-02-26 01:42 · Score: 1

Right, so, if for example Sony were the sole inventor of the BluRay DVD encryption scheme, then because they're based in Japan it wouldn't be covered by the DMCA in the US? I think not!

Us...... by MrEcho.net · 2006-02-25 20:24 · Score: 1

Im sure if 1/10th of the /. people where to run this we could crack it in a day or two.

Re:Us...... by florisje · 2006-02-25 23:41 · Score: 1

i guess that's sort of happening right now.
at this time 230 chunks are returned every hour.
yesterday around this time that was only 75, and there was a big speedup yesterday, so /. wasn't the first to discover it, i think.
if i'm calculating correctly it should be finished in 13 days at current speed but the speedup is skyrocketing.

i wonder if he's keeping an eye on it today or how he will react when he enters office tomorrow morning and sees it's finished :)

CIA "Kryptos" Code by nonXero · 2006-02-25 20:37 · Score: 1

I'm curious if distributed computing could be used to crack the CIA "Kryptos" code designed by James Sandborn. In 1988, the CIA selected Sanborn's entry called "Kryptos" (meaning "hidden" in greek) to design the monument at CIA headquarters. Mr. Sandborn worked with retired CIA cryptographer to devise codes used in the sculpture. Mr. Sandborn wrote the text to coded in collaboration with a prominent fiction writer. James Sanborn is noted for saying "They will be able to read what I wrote, but what I wrote is a mystery itself." Only two people have been able to crack 3/4's of the kryptos code - A computer scientist. The other, a physicist. The remaining message is still unknown. http://cia.gov/cia/information/tour/krypt.html

--
"Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one." - Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

Re:CIA "Kryptos" Code by m50d · 2006-02-26 03:57 · Score: 1

There's speculation that the last one is just random letters left to fuck with us. If so I think that's pretty neat, but it of course renders such efforts useless.

--
I am trolling

Enigma is fundamentally flawed. by Convergence · 2006-02-25 20:53 · Score: 5, Interesting

Enigma has a fatal flaw: No letter could be encyphered to itself. This is an artifact of the 'reflector disc' at the end this means that a known plaintext, or crib, can be ruled out for a particular offset, if any letter of it matches a letter in the cyphertext. This, combined with message statistics, allows for powerful cryptographic techniques to be used. These techniques were unavailable in WW2, but they exploit fundamental weaknesses in the design.

Of course, in WW2, it was the misuse of enigma that made it particularily easy to break --- It might only take one weather report to learn the daily subkey. Had Enigma been properly used, it would probably have been nearly unbreakable with WW2 era technology.

Re:Enigma is fundamentally flawed. by mlush · 2006-02-25 23:28 · Score: 3, Interesting

Of course, in WW2, it was the misuse of enigma that made it particularily easy to break --- It might only take one weather report to learn the daily subkey. Had Enigma been properly used, it would probably have been nearly unbreakable with WW2 era technology.
One tactic they used was 'Gardening' where they sent out bombers to mine a particular sea area, then sit back and wait for standard message reporting the new minefield
Re:Enigma is fundamentally flawed. by Peter+H.S. · 2006-02-26 02:15 · Score: 3, Insightful

While it is true what you say, I will point out that "enigma" messages originated from a lot of different networks, all with their own codebooks, eg. Luftwaffe (airforce), Abwher (intelligence), and Hehr (army) messages etc, where all encoded with different keys. These different networks where further segmented into theater of operations, meaning that breaking Hehr enigma messages from North Africa, would not yield the key for reading Hehr messages originating from France. Further more, all keys would changed daily, meaning that the British would have to start all over every day.

So getting the daily subkey from a bungled weather report, would only help the British to read messages from a particular branch, in a limited area, for a period of just 24 hours.

--
Regards
Peter H.S.
Re:Enigma is fundamentally flawed. by aevans · 2006-02-26 06:23 · Score: 1

But capturing Enigma machines and code books is what really helped them along.
Re:Enigma is fundamentally flawed. by joew · 2006-02-26 10:53 · Score: 1

Sadly the never searched there own patent office (that would have really helped them along much sooner). It seems there was a 1928 patent filed for what would become the enigma machine.

http://portal.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml= /news/2001/04/20/ncyph20.xml
Re:Enigma is fundamentally flawed. by Peter+H.S. · 2006-02-26 12:54 · Score: 1

But capturing Enigma machines and code books is what really helped them along.
Nah. A captured codebook from a eg. a weathership would IMHO only yield a maximum of 30 days of keys, in a a particular theater of war, like the North Sea. Of course, from a British perspective, 30 days of enigma keys in October 1943, would be of much more value than 90 days of keys in the spring of 1945, so the timing of the cracks played a role. Likewise, the capture of actual Enigma machines (especially M4 variants) helped the British in speeding up the cracking of several Enigma Networks, especially the crucial Kriegsmarine (Navy) networks, but, again IMHO, not so important events as some movies would like to portray. Note how the perhaps much more important SZ40/42 /Lorenz cipher was cracked without the British ever seeing an actual copy of the machine.

--
Regards
Peter H.S.
Re:Enigma is fundamentally flawed. by 10Ghz · 2006-02-26 19:39 · Score: 1

"Heer", not "Hehr"

--
Lesbian Nazi Hookers Abducted by UFOs and Forced Into Weight Loss Programs - -all next week on Town Talk.

Cryptonomicon! by MikeFM · 2006-02-25 21:15 · Score: 1

Cool, I'm re-reading Cryptonomicon and this goes right along with that. I like how Neal Stephenson's books merge so well into real science and history. The only trick is in remembering which is true and which is fiction. :)

--
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.

Re:Cryptonomicon! by MichaelSmith · 2006-02-25 22:05 · Score: 1

Turing could have accomplished a hell of a lot in the following years. Who knows? We might have seen genuine early advances in AI, since he was showing an interest in it.

--
http://michaelsmith.id.au
Re:Cryptonomicon! by kyhwana · 2006-02-26 00:24 · Score: 1

I think in this there is a lesson, which has something to do with gay people, and no persecuting them.
Something the US (and Iran!) still hasn't learnt yet. Ah well.

--
My email addy? should be easy enough.
Re:Cryptonomicon! by MikeFM · 2006-02-26 08:12 · Score: 1

I don't think there is much in the way of gay persecution in most areas of the US anymore. With the exception of midwest and southern rural areas which are highly conservative Christian rednecks.

When I turn on tv I see gay people or at least people who are close enough to the gay cliche that they might or might not be gay. There is no need to 'be gay' if you're gay or to play it straight.

Nobody I know, where everyone is mostly straight, has anything against gay people and many of us spend time in gay bars and things like that. Probably the worst thing we do is make little jokes by pretending to be gay ourselves (telling the other guys they look cute today etc) but it's never done in a mean way. Gay people are a large part of our customer base and we recognize that they are largely smart and well off.

--
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.

Only one problem... by Lazbien · 2006-02-25 21:20 · Score: 1

No spraken da deutche...

Re:Only one problem... by WillerZ · 2006-02-25 21:57 · Score: 1

Sie konnen nicht Deutsch sprechen? Was fu ein lamer...

--
I guess today is a passable day to die.
Re:Only one problem... by Lazbien · 2006-02-26 06:11 · Score: 1

no no no... I don't speak German... I just said that...
Re:Only one problem... by WillerZ · 2006-02-28 04:12 · Score: 1

No funny points for either of us.

Mods can be so cruel....

--
I guess today is a passable day to die.

on-demand bombing by Jerry+Smith · 2006-02-25 21:29 · Score: 1

One way to speed up the decryption: when decryption of a certain message took too long, they would request the RAF a bombardment of a harbor or city. Odds were fairly high that after the bombardment the next messages would contain the name of the city or harbor, probably as well as the word 'bombardment'. Also weather forecasts were often included.
Once they knew that, encryption was sped up fast.

And no, despite the Hollywood-movie suggests: it were the Brittons that captured the Enigma.

--
All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die.

Re:on-demand bombing by _Shad0w_ · 2006-02-25 22:38 · Score: 1

That depends on how you're defining "The Enigma".

We captured a machine from U110 in 1941, but I think that was one of the older, non-M4, models. The British also captured the naval codebooks from U559, which enabled us to work out how the M4 worked.

A copy of the original 3 rotor Enigma was given to us, and the French, by the Polish in 1939. The Polish had been breaking German signals for sometime before the invasion of Poland, iirc.

The film "U-571" is actually a combination of various seperate events, some of them carried out by the British and some by the Americans. It's just a shame they only felt the need to mention Britain's part in the text at the end. As I recall, that boat was actually sunk by the Australians.

--
Yeah, I had a sig once; I got bored of it.
Re:on-demand bombing by Anonymous Coward · 2006-02-26 02:42 · Score: 0

Captured? Nobody needed to capture the Enigma because it was patented (in Denmark, I think). Anybody could get the plans for one. What they needed to capture were the code wheels and the list of daily keys.

dom
Re:on-demand bombing by Jerry+Smith · 2006-02-26 03:40 · Score: 1

By Enigma I mean the 4-wheeled version, used by the Germans since early 1942. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0141926/trivia mentions the efforts by the Americans whose forces captured no German Naval Enigma material until 1944. (ouch, nasty copy&paste)
And from the Imperial War Museum Londonhttp://www.iwm.org.uk/upload/package/10/enig ma/enigma12.htm:
"The British sailors climbed into the conning tower and began a search of the deserted submarine. The bookshelves still contained books of every description - navigation manuals, seamanship manuals, code books and signal books. The Bulldog's telegraphist pointed to an interesting piece of equipment that looked like a typewriter. This, along with all the books from the shelves, was transferred with utmost care to HMS Bulldog. It was important that everything was kept dry as the code books and signal books were printed in ink that disappeared if they were dropped in seawater.
On Bulldog's arrival back in Britain they were met by a representative from Bletchley Park, who photographed every page of every book. The 'interesting piece of equipment' turned out to be an Enigma machine, and the books contained the Enigma codes being used by the German navy."

--
All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die.
Re:on-demand bombing by Mister+Transistor · 2006-02-26 04:32 · Score: 1

I know we got at least one - I've seen it. The U505 was captured with Enigma and codebooks intact despite the crew's best efforts to scuttle the sub. It now resides, as I do, in a museum in Chicago :) This was a large part of the story from the movie.

Chicago's Museum of Science and Industry has a beautifully re-vamped exhibit there, they built it it's own underground "pen" to live in. You walk in 3 stories above the bottom of the "drydock" at standing on deck level, then go around a huge spiral ramp outside the craft until you get to the bottom were all the artifacts are.

They have the Enigma there on loan from the NSA, and no, I don't work there.

--
-- You are in a maze of little, twisty passages, all different... --
Re:on-demand bombing by citizenr · 2006-02-26 09:01 · Score: 0

"And no, despite the Hollywood-movie suggests: it were the Brittons that captured the Enigma"

umm NO, despite British Government propaganda, it was POLES who cracked enigma, who captured first Enigmas, and who deciphered Enigma codes by HAND on a daily basis until Germany invaded us :(

http://www.armyradio.com/publish/Articles/The_Enig ma_Code_Breach/The_Enigma_Code_Breach.htm

--
Who logs in to gdm? Not I, said the duck.
Re:on-demand bombing by IvyKing · 2006-02-26 10:29 · Score: 1

umm NO, despite British Government propaganda, it was POLES who cracked enigma, who captured first Enigmas, and who deciphered Enigma codes by HAND on a daily basis until Germany invaded us :(

And the Poles did a darn good job of it. One minor correction - Poland was invaded by both Germany and the Soviet Union.
Perhaps the best work of pre-war cryptanalysis was Friedman's breaking of the Japanese diplomatic cipher (AKA the Purple Code) - without any idea of what the machine looked like.
Re:on-demand bombing by clap_hands · 2006-02-27 00:31 · Score: 1

> umm NO, despite British Government propaganda, it was POLES who cracked enigma, who captured first Enigmas, and who
> deciphered Enigma codes by HAND on a daily basis until Germany invaded us :(

Please avoid SHOUTING, particularly when don't know what you're talking about.

The Poles, like the British and Americans, did indeed crack Enigma messages. However, I don't believe the Poles ever performed a naval or other military capture of an Enigma, nor did they ever get hold of the standard "Wehrmacht" Enigma. (Apparently, they managed to have a peek at a commercial Enigma over a weekend at some point before 1930, and they built their own Enigma copies, of course, after Rejewski solved the rotor wiring in December 1932.)

Far from using only "HAND" methods, the Poles used machinery (bomby and cyclometer) and deciphering aids (perforated sheets) aplenty in their work.

I cracked one of them by Anonymous Coward · 2006-02-25 21:36 · Score: 1, Funny

It says: "How hard is it to get Argentinian citizenship? Over."

It's not the message, but THE message that matters by layer3switch · 2006-02-25 21:45 · Score: 1

Anything and everything is breakable. Something that is done can be undone. In a game of cat (crypto) and mouse (cracker), if you throw in enough mouse, cat will loose.

It's not the quest to hide driving us to progress, it's the quest to find the answer. Yes, the universe is one big encrypted answer to all our quests. One day, if we throw in enough theories, we just might find that answer to that very question we have been pondering since the dawn of the ages...

"God, A/S/L?"

--
"Don't let fools fool you. They are the clever ones."

The 2nd message is by dtfinch · 2006-02-25 21:56 · Score: 1

asdfasdfahdfhrlfslfdjfjjhsjdgsfduyghsudighsdhgshgs dkghksfdgkjsfgklsdhfglkshglsghgkjldhlkjdhhahahahai rule

Re:The 2nd message is by leenks · 2006-02-26 11:55 · Score: 1

Haha!

Not.

Break this code by DJ+Manning · 2006-02-25 21:59 · Score: 1

A hint to the M4 project team, in code seeing as how they like to waste there time decoding enigma messages.
HUKFTHWERGGGIGNZZHEXRYEYEYEXVOHLQUJZJTQJN

I'll even give a few hints, the plugboard settings are AB - ER - HT - IX - LZ - OU, the rotor types are 3 - 4 - 1 and the rotor starting positions are 21 - 9 - ?.
Find out what the ? is and you'll be able to read the message.

Note, use Russell Schwager's "The Enigma Machine" as previously noted by Derling Whirvish in his post

Decoded message by void+bear(void) · 2006-02-25 22:09 · Score: 1

"All your uboat belong to us"

Why don't we just ask them? by fromme · 2006-02-25 22:15 · Score: 1

I'm sure the Germans will tell if they're asked nicely

Re:Why don't we just ask them? by Zaatxe · 2006-02-26 06:39 · Score: 1

And where would be the fun in this?

--
So say we all

I have cracked the other two by Yeechang+Lee · 2006-02-25 22:16 · Score: 4, Funny

After putting a Beowulf cluster to work, I've deciphered the remaining two unsolved Enigma messages. It turns out that one is a reply to the other. Of course, one can never be sure whether a decryption is correct, but the perfect German in the messages convinces me that I've got them right, as you can see:

"Sieg Heil! Zis is U-571. Ze Amerikan destroyer is pwning us! After zat last depth charge, all our blinkenlights are flashing crazily! What do we do?"

"Achtung! Achtung! Brest here. Unfortunately, ze RAF Bomber Command pwn3d us last night and ze submarine pens are kaput, so you cannot return from your tour early. Remember, Kapitan, what happens to schweinhunds zat are cowards; zhey get sent to the Russian Front! Follow the example of your Luftwaffe friend Colonel Klink and watch out, or you will be given ze boot from Das Boot!"

Re:I have cracked the other two by westlake · 2006-02-26 03:41 · Score: 1

I've deciphered the remaining two unsolved Enigma messages.
a fun post, and not far from the truth, I suspect.
Re:I have cracked the other two by Anonymous Coward · 2006-02-26 04:28 · Score: 0

You forgot

"Launch all Zig !!!"
Re:I have cracked the other two by Anonymous Coward · 2006-02-26 11:46 · Score: 0

Except that it is based on the truth of a film rather than what actually happened....
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unterseeboot_571
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U-571_(film)
Re:I have cracked the other two by tokul · 2006-02-26 21:23 · Score: 1

RAF pwn3d Brest only in 1944. :)

Re:Hey knobjockey by Xilman · 2006-02-25 22:16 · Score: 3, Interesting

The parent poster is correct: a properly used Enigma machine is effectively unbreakable with the technology of the day and, for that matter, the technology of the next few decades too.

The majority of the users of the Enigma machine were not using it properly and so left cracks for BP to exploit. All this is well documented by people who do know a great deal about cryptographic systems. Some of them worked for BP and have in-depth first hand knowledge of what they write about.

Even today's technology, that in the open literature anyway, still has real difficulties breaking Naval Enigma without the weaknesses introduced by the German users of the system. Read the site carefully and you will discover that important amounts of key material are already known, thereby greatly reducing the amount of computation required to find the rest of the key. And even with this assistance, approximately a cpu year is needed to break the encryption.

All this strongly suggests that Naval Enigma isn't a bad cryptosystem and certainly a good one for the day. There have been many much worse ones fielded in recent years.

Paul

--
Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate

Questionable Legality by baudbarf · 2006-02-25 22:17 · Score: 4, Interesting

Doesn't the DMCA make it illegal to make tools for breaking encryption or even to discuss how encryption may be broken? Aren't those among us who are americans all conspiring to break federal law by attempting or discussing the possibility of attempting to break these enigma messages?

You're all terrorists. Off to Guantanamo with you.

--
You can run but you can't hide, except, apparently, along the Afghan-Pakistani border.

Re:Questionable Legality by afaik_ianal · 2006-02-25 23:27 · Score: 1

You may want to read up on the DMCA, which makes it illegal to make or distribute technology that may be used to circumvent copy protection. I know making irrelevant references to DMCA has been flavour de jour on Slashdot for the past 5 years, but it doesn't have much at all to do with encryption in gerenal (only certain kinds/uses of encryption).

Since it is unlikely that anyone would consider using Enigma for any kind of copy protection or DRM, breaking Enigma would not be a problem for DMCA. Even if someone were crazy enough to use Enigma for some form of copy protection, it probably wouldn't make a difference. Most distributed projects to crack encryption schemes (which are generally used for copy-protection) are fine, because they only crack the key for a limited set of messages, so cannot directly be used to break copy-protection.

Further to that, we already know how Enigma worked. They just don't know the "key" for these particular messages. This is an effort to crack those 3 messages, not to perform a cryptographic attack on Enigma.
Re:Questionable Legality by Anonymous Coward · 2006-02-26 01:00 · Score: 0

Whew, that's a relief. I have an Enigma-encoded phonograph record of the Horst Wessel Lied I've ripped to my iPod, and I was worried about those jackbooted thugs at the RIAA hitting me for infringement.
Re:Questionable Legality by The+MAZZTer · 2006-02-26 03:24 · Score: 1

Then my school is in violation of it, as I took a Cryptography class this January and have been breaking codes all month.
Re:Questionable Legality by hey! · 2006-02-26 03:54 · Score: 1

Most distributed projects to crack encryption schemes (which are generally used for copy-protection) are fine, because they only crack the key for a limited set of messages, so cannot directly be used to break copy-protection.

Well -- I think you may be overstating the case. Notice that you've left out the possiblity that DMCA, while allowing brute force attacks to recover specific plaintexts, makes it illegal to study the cryptographic weaknesses of various algorithms, which so far as I know it does not.

The thing is, cracking most DRM schemes is not IIRC all that interesting from a scientific standpoint. We have a situation where we have countless messages encrypted with the same key, and countless, untrusted people with access to plaintext -- otherwise known as the content they paid for. Even I, a non-specialist, know you try to avoid encrypting anything twice with the same key, much less a gazillion times.

In other words, with DRM we have a situation tailor made for recovering the key. Which is why we "need" a law to make it illegal. If it were as hard as cracking an algorithm like AES, you wouldn't need a law preventing it, any more than you need a law that says you can't walk off with somebody's house in your pocket. It's a cousin to laws that protect other forms of trade secrets; trade secrets need protection because they're easy to publish.

Now with respect to research into an algorithm's weaknesses -- which could possibly lead to breaking DRM schems without recovering the key -- that'd be hard to do without running afoul of the first amendment here in the US. Getting close to that limit as possible is tricky, and involves ridiculously fine distinctions, such software on disk being a "burglar tool" but the source code printed in book form being protected speech. But the law, given the current state of DRM technology, doesn't really need to go that far.

Why make a law against hot wiring a car when for practical purposes everyone has to leave their keys in the ignition?

--
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Re:Questionable Legality by naoursla · 2006-02-26 04:42 · Score: 1

The people cracking these messages didn't write them and since they were written in the 1940's the original copyrights haven't expired. The coded messages were obtained, copied and distributed against the wishes of the original author. Certainly the messages were encrypted as a form of rights management and protection. I think breaking the code migt very well violate the DMCA.
Re:Questionable Legality by Overzeetop · 2006-02-26 06:17 · Score: 1

Of course you're not. You had permission to break those messages and copy them from your professor. These are copyright by the Nazi government, who's permission I think you'll be hard pressed to get in writing. Once created, its copyrighted, and copyrights last for a billion years (well maybe not quite that long...yet). Unless you have your SS permission slip, best not distribute the code which is intended to break the messages.

(Yes this is humor, but I think it acutally does contain the DMCA requisites: you don't own/haven't licensed the copyright, the material is encrypted, a pre-made code is being distributed to break the encryption. Since you're simply downloading the code to help break the encryption, you're writing the code from scratch - hence the crack is being distributed)

--
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Re:Questionable Legality by Geoffreyerffoeg · 2006-02-26 08:03 · Score: 2, Informative

Doesn't the DMCA make it illegal to make tools for breaking encryption or even to discuss how encryption may be broken?

No. You're letting them control you because they always use the acronym.

It is the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. It is first, foremost, and only a copyright act.

The Enigma messages aren't copyrighted in any real sense (copyrights that belonged to the Nazi Party went to interesting places - at one point they were public-domained by an Allied government as "spoils of war"), and moreover the encryption doesn't enforce copy protection. The messages were secured from reading for confidentiality, not from distributing for licensing content.
Re:Questionable Legality by leenks · 2006-02-26 11:58 · Score: 1

And the messages were written by US citizens using US developed encryption? Damn, knew there was a flaw there somewhere.
Re:Questionable Legality by Chandon+Seldon · 2006-02-26 14:43 · Score: 1

Actually, it's entirely possible to build an encryption based DRM system that has the expected security properties. The CSS copy protection system was designed very poorly.
The problem is, even if the cryptographic design of the copy protection system is perfect, that still doesn't result in a secure copy protection system. A key recovery attack on the ciphertext may be impossible, but that doesn't change the fact that the key needs to be distributed to the player device - which means that the problem reduces to the much more difficult "make 100% tamperproof hardware".
The real problem is that even if all the copy protection and DRM works perfectly, with 100% tamper resistant hardware from the media to the speakers/display, that still isn't good enough. It's always possible for a user to re-record digital content at the exact quality that they're seeing and hearing it.

--
-- The act of censorship is always worse than whatever is being censored. Always.

Historical information ! by droopycom · 2006-02-25 22:20 · Score: 4, Funny

I've heard from an anonymous source in the US intelligence community that British Intelligence has informed the White House that the newly decrypted enigma messages contains information regarding Irak WMD locations, and clear indication of the Saddam-Osama link...

Re:It's not the message, but THE message that matt by Trurl's+Machine · 2006-02-25 22:25 · Score: 1

Anything and everything is breakable. Something that is done can be undone. In a game of cat (crypto) and mouse (cracker), if you throw in enough mouse, cat will loose.

People say it so frequently that it has became a cliche - but it's not true. A simple example of uncrackable encryption is the one-time pad cipher. Its absolute security is mathematically proven. However, in real life all the ciphers are applied by human beings and therefore they are vulnerable to the residual error margin. In real usage, safety of the used encription algorithm rarely is the weakest link in your chain of vulnerabilities. The weakest point are the people who apply the cipher - they will reuse their one-time pad, leave a briefcase in a taxi, keep their password on a sticky note attached to the monitor, defect, sell their secrets to the highest bidder etc., just because inevitably some of them will became bored, frustrated, drunk, corrupted or just plain stupid. While it's just not true, that what can be done, can be undone (it's very easy to name a few counterexamples - like death etc.), it's true that as soon as your cipher is no longer a mathematical curiosity but is being passed to flesh and blood human beigns - it's no longer safe no matter what mathematical genius was behind its creation.

Enigma simulations by Dirk+DefCom · 2006-02-25 22:39 · Score: 2, Informative

I you would like to use an Enigma machine yourself, just go to this website: http://users.telenet.be/d.rijmenants/index.htm There's an awardwinning Enigma simulation. This program is an exact simulation of the 3-rotor Wehrmacht and the famous 4-rotor Kriegmarine M4 model of the German Enigma cipher machine, used during World War II from 1939 until 1945. You can select between the two models, actually choose different rotors or 'Walzen', preset the rotor wiring positions or 'Ringstellung' and switch letters by using plugs or 'Stecker'. The internal wiring of all rotors is identical to those used by the Wehrmacht, Luftwaffe and Kriegsmarine. Fully compatible with the real Enigma-machine, and you can decode original messages and make your own encoded text!

Second Message Now Cracked by Linker3000 · 2006-02-25 22:40 · Score: 3, Funny

The second message has now been cracked and it contained three interesting bits of 'technology history'...

It warned other units that a local garage mechanic had offered to 'improve' their Enigma machine to make it run faster, but after he left they discovered he'd inserted a small additional module which meant that whatever was transmitted, there was an extra last line which read "Come to Fritz's autos for a great deal on used Volkswagens". The cracked message told all other users only to visit trusted garages and not accept any offers of performance upgrades because such offers were the work of 'trojan enemy conspirators that operated like an unwanted virus in the body of our glorious Fatherland'.

There were also complaints of many false messages being received that decoded into offers to supply the German solders with 'processed meat rations' captured from allied troops - the cracked message warned Enigma users to ignore the flood of 'unwanted messages about spam that deflect focus from our vital war efforts' and not to reply as this only confirmed that the messages were being received, which guaranteed even more 'spam messages'.

The final bit of the decoded message related to trials with a new rotor wiring system produced by a local engineer. Apparently, the system promised to make the Enigma machines easier to use, but the coloured insulation on the wiring was rubbing away, (presumably an interaction between the synthetic dyes being used with early, less stable plastics), exposing the conductors and causing the whole machine to short circuit and stop working ('die' as the message coldly put it). The cracked message warned other users to check their rotors to see whether they had any of the 'brightly coloured experimental wiring' and if so, to stop using them and return the rotors to 'Wilhelm Gatz' if they identified the so-called 'blue screening of death'.

--
AT&ROFLMAO

Re:Second Message Now Cracked by yukonbob · 2006-02-26 09:19 · Score: 1

"Come to Fritz's autos for a great deal on used Volkswagens". The cracked message told all other users only to visit trusted garages and not accept any offers of performance upgrades because such offers were the work of 'trojan enemy conspirators that operated like an unwanted virus in the body of our glorious Fatherland'.

That message still holds true today. Many people know that VW owners are a close-knit group of people (waving to each other on the road, helping each other when necessary).

I happened to be driving along in my beetle one day, when I noticed another VW beetle pulled over on the side of the road, and the driver looking distressed. I asked her what the problem was. She said she'd just had some work done on her car, but now it wasn't running properly.

We popped the front hood, but the whole compartment was empty! It was obvious what had happened: some unauthorized mechanic had taken her whole engine out and forgot to put it back. Luckily, I had a spare engine in the back of my car.

Let this be a warning to anybody else taking their VW to non-authorized service centers.

-yb

Another message broken! by Anonymous Coward · 2006-02-25 23:40 · Score: 0

They've broken another of the messages, it seems. It's a rather lengthy one, and begins with ""Greetings sir/madam! I am the dictator and military ruler of a large Central European country. My predecessors hid our national budget in offshore banks, and I need your help in withdrawing them..."

Why does it need such a lot of work? by 91degrees · 2006-02-25 23:42 · Score: 1

4 out of 6 rotors, 26 setting each, gives us 164,511,360 possible combinations. It can't require that much processing power to emulate the machine since we're just doing table lookups.

Presumably we just need to Decode the message with each of these settings, and look for the ones with irregular character distribution. With a modern computer, we can't be looking at an implausible amount of time. Might take a few minutes to go through that keyspace, but I can't imagine it would take more than an hour.

Re:Why does it need such a lot of work? by Dirk+DefCom · 2006-02-26 00:01 · Score: 1

Not mutch work??? There are 107,458,687,327,250,619,360,000 possible combinations! Better read first the technical details about the machine: http://users.telenet.be/d.rijmenants/en/enigmatech .htm check out the mathematical description of Enigma here: http://www.nsa.gov/publications/publi00004.cfm
Re:Why does it need such a lot of work? by 91degrees · 2006-02-26 01:42 · Score: 1

There aren't anywhere near that number for practical purposes. The plugboard is just a substitution cypher. It can be ignored since we're looking for irregular distribution of decoded symbols. We don't care what the symbols are. That can be worked out later.

I did forget abut the notched rings, but for these many of the 676 combinations will be the same since the second rotor will not tick under most conditions.
Re:Why does it need such a lot of work? by clap_hands · 2006-02-26 01:59 · Score: 1

You underestimate the complication added by the plugboard; there's no simplistic way it can be ignored. Remeber the path of the current: it passes first through the plugboard, forward and back through the rotor stack, then out via the plugboard again. Your attack would only work if the current didn't pass through the plugboard a second time.
Re:Why does it need such a lot of work? by Dirk+DefCom · 2006-02-26 04:03 · Score: 1

If you examine the Enigma wiring diagram, you can see that we cannot speak about a simple substitution for the plugboard. De signal is swapped by cables through the plugboard, then passes the rotors and returns via the reflector back through the rotors. And NOW comes the clue: the signal goes via a DIFFERENT path, back through the plugboard. And it gets worse: if the rotors have advanced, the return path through the plugboard has changes. With each turn of the rotors, the result of the plugboard is different. This is all but a simple substitution!

Possible Enigma keys by Dirk+DefCom · 2006-02-26 00:11 · Score: 2, Informative

Who says breaking Enigma doesn't take much time???? 4 out of 8 possible naval rotors, 26 positions, each have also 26 internal ringsetting, two different reflectors, you also need the startposition and the plugs, up to 10 pairs of 26 (only the plugboards gives us already 7,905,853,580,625 combinations). Even today, going through all possible keys is a mission impossible. That's why Stefan used the Hill Climbing Algorithm to break those messages. Pure Brute force would take far to much time. More on the Enigma key settings on NSA's http://www.nsa.gov/publications/publi00004.cfm. For more technical details on Enigma, read this one: http://users.telenet.be/d.rijmenants/en/enigmatech .htm

Re:It's not the message, but THE message that matt by layer3switch · 2006-02-26 00:15 · Score: 1

A simple example of uncrackable encryption is the one-time pad cipher.
I'm sure there are few or many ways to encrypt at greater probability to the limit of randomness itself. But what is the point of encrypting something that does not carry equal amount of security with integrity of the encrypted data once unecrypted? Is it perfect encryption or is it just reaching the least probable breaking point?

The weakest point are the people who apply the cipher
Not true. The weakest point is the method used without taking human as the 'unknown' factor. Matter of fact, humans are more unpredictable than a machine, and by that definition, randomness, similarity conincides with the least probability with pattern. Perhaps, "stupidity" is the word you are looking for, which is prominent "feature" among human species, as I am not a stranger to one; for instance, turn on the "stupid" mode during meetings. And as we all know, stupidity has been always the weakest link.

it's very easy to name a few counterexamples - like death etc.
Death can be reversed. We see it happen all the time in ER. You may argue that we cannot revive 100 year old dead corpse from a grave. True. However I may argue, "Just not yet."

as soon as your cipher is no longer a mathematical curiosity but is being passed to flesh and blood human beigns - it's no longer safe no matter what mathematical genius was behind its creation.
Do you believe in DNA encryption? The information will be encrypted based on our genome one day, carrying data exceding the current capacity of our hardware counter part and computational power exceding anything we have seen so far. The cipher strength won't be measured by mathmatical scheme, but by natural selection or aka transposons.

--
"Don't let fools fool you. They are the clever ones."

Another Message Decoded and Translated by fdiskne1 · 2006-02-26 00:50 · Score: 5, Funny

Dear Sir,

RESPECTFULLY REQUESTING YOUR ASSISTANCE IN EXTREME CONFIDENCE

I am certain this message comes as a suprise to you since you do not know me. I have obtained your name from French Resistance fighters as one that can be trusted with my confidence.

Two months ago, my father was kidnapped and murdered by the Nazi SS. I have need to transfer the sum of US$25,000,000 (twenty-five million) from an account in Credit Lyonnais in France to an account outside of German territory, of which your payment shall be 30% if you agree to our proposal...

--
But why is the rum gone?

Re:Another Message Decoded and Translated by failedlogic · 2006-02-26 04:01 · Score: 1

Strange, I received a similar e-mail yesterday. From a Hotmail account. Guess it took some 50 years to deliver ... no surprise!

No Boinc? by fdiskne1 · 2006-02-26 00:59 · Score: 1

I'd like to contribute to the project but it doesn't have a Boinc client? Other than the original project page, all I could find is this and it doesn't say anything about Boinc. Too bad. You'd think they'd try to take advantage of the large install base rather than require people to install an additional client.

--
But why is the rum gone?

Get Google / NSA to help (is there a difference?) by utki · 2006-02-26 01:44 · Score: 1

Can't someone at Google load up the client software on the thousands of CPU's of the distributed Googleplex? Or Akamai? Shouldn't take long to crack the with all that firepower brought to bear on it.

Or just say its a message from Osama Bin Laden and the NSA will get it done for you in a millisecond.

But of course the NSA probably broke these messages 60 years ago.

In which case just put in a Freedom of Information request for de-crypted result!

Well by Anonymous Coward · 2006-02-26 02:23 · Score: 0

Since it is unlikely that anyone would consider using Enigma for any kind of copy protection or DRM, breaking Enigma would not be a problem for DMCA.

I just wrote such a program, so now it is illegal. Problem solved.

Re:Well by afaik_ianal · 2006-02-26 03:09 · Score: 1

You wrote an Enigma-based copy protection system, but couldn't even be bothered reading my whole post?
Re:Well by hey! · 2006-02-26 03:28 · Score: 2, Funny

You wrote an Enigma-based copy protection system, but couldn't even be bothered reading my whole post?

Well, makes sense to me. Which activity is more interesting?

--
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.

Source Code... by Aladrin · 2006-02-26 03:32 · Score: 1

The cached version of the source code appears to be corrupt. It's too large by a byte or so. Go to the original site and it'll extract properly.

I've already installed it and I'm running it. I think this is a neat project and i don't mind using my excess CPU on my server for this for a while.

I had been using it for SETI@Home until I found out they had gone through all the results and were just re-hashing old ones. That's just too much of a waste for me. They should have paused the project and started it back up when they had new results to check.

--
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM

Re:Source Code... by tqft · 2006-02-26 18:41 · Score: 1

Try seventeenorbust.com - x86 only though and the source code for the main part is assembler

--
The Singularity is closer than you think
Quant

Jefferson Davis (Confed Pres.) was family... by Anonymous Coward · 2006-02-26 03:37 · Score: 0

My Great-Grand-Uncle as a matter of fact. The rules and laws made up by his enemies don't really mean shit to me.

Location of the sub in google maps by armyturtle · 2006-02-26 03:37 · Score: 2, Interesting

I plotted the approximate location of the german sub at the time they transmitted the message & were following the "enemy." (Based on information from the translated original enigma text.) http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&q=51.33+N,+4 1.35+W&ll=51.289406,-41.308594&spn=52.133005,175.7 8125 Kind of neat to look at.

--
Wherever you go, there you are. :D

Re:Location of the sub in google maps by Anonymous Coward · 2006-02-26 05:51 · Score: 0

Interesting. Here's the fate of that particular boat, BTW:

http://uboat.net/boats/u264.htm
Re:Location of the sub in google maps by Anonymous Coward · 2006-02-26 08:47 · Score: 0

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&q=51.33+N,+4 1.35+W&ll=51.289406,-41.308594&spn=52.133005,175.7 8125 Kind of neat to look at.

Cool; you can even get driving directions there...

"Turn right into Atlantic Ocean, 500M"

Blub blub

The first message says ... by Anonymous Coward · 2006-02-26 03:42 · Score: 0

Sie vergassen Polen, Herr General!

Mark I wasn't about Enigma by udittmer · 2006-02-26 03:43 · Score: 1

... and neither was Eniac (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eniac), although Eniac was built for military purposes: the calculation of trajectory tables for ballistic artillery.

Got one! by IcePop456 · 2006-02-26 03:45 · Score: 1

"All your base are belong to us"

Re:Got one! by Anonymous Coward · 2006-02-26 10:04 · Score: 0

Wow!

You're the first one to think of that joke!

Broken download by drwho · 2006-02-26 03:58 · Score: 1

As usual, site slashdotted. But I get a download, eventually - and it's corrupted. Or is it encrypted ? ;)

Why can't people just use bittorrent for this sort of thing? Isn't it obvious that coral cache doesn't work?

Wow by McGiraf · 2006-02-26 04:03 · Score: 1

This could change the course of the war! ...errr

All the rest are this year's Grammy winner by Anonymous Coward · 2006-02-26 04:33 · Score: 0

Brokeback Mountain of Code

Re:It's not the message, but THE message that matt by Anonymous Coward · 2006-02-26 04:36 · Score: 0

Fuck! loose is what your mother is, lose is what you do everyday! You lose at life, you lose at work, you lose! Loose - not rigidly fastened or securely attached. Lose - to bring to destruction, to miss from one's possession,to suffer deprivation of.

Not exactly... by deft · 2006-02-26 05:17 · Score: 1

I wouldn't say that, considering one of the uncracked codes could read:

"hoax successful... I'm not really dead... several discovery channel specials prepared to skew and obscure my whereabouts... love hitler" :)

--

There's nothing Intelligent about Intelligent Design.

Step by step code breaking? by caluml · 2006-02-26 05:19 · Score: 1

First, nice to see them using nyud.net. Secondly, does anyone know of a good writeup about how a human cryptographer would go about breaking an Enigma code? After reading http://www.bytereef.org.nyud.net:8080/m4-project-f irst-break.html, it's left me wondering how the humans did it.

--
Get your own free personal location tracker

Re:Step by step code breaking? by Dirk+DefCom · 2006-02-26 05:25 · Score: 1

Hi, for some detailled info on how they broke Enigma, you should visit Tony Sale's website http://www.codesandciphers.org.uk/ Tony is walking computer and Wartime history! There a nice section on how to break enigma: http://www.codesandciphers.org.uk/anoraks/index.ht m . You also get a crash course enigma and cryptology. more links related to Enigma can be foud here: http://users.telenet.be/d.rijmenants/en/links.htm

Cost/Benefit of donor computation by nroose · 2006-02-26 05:24 · Score: 1

I realize that the cheapest (in terms of money) way to do compute-intensive processing is to write a program and convince lots of people to donate time on their computer.

However, I think it is something we should avoid doing. People should shut down their computers when the are not using them, not donate the computing power. Leaving them on is a huge waste of electricity. It is a very energy inefficient way to do computing.

In addition to that, if everyone got into the habit of having their computers off when they are not using them, then zombies would become a thing of the past, and we would have less spam and fewer malicious code attacks.

Re:Cost/Benefit of donor computation by Anonymous Coward · 2006-02-26 07:54 · Score: 0

How about right now when all I'm doing is browsing /. on the only machine in the house which happens to be a P4? Would it be alright to run the project right now and "waste" a few watts?
Re:Cost/Benefit of donor computation by Anonymous Coward · 2006-02-27 04:27 · Score: 0

> People should shut down their computers
> when the are not using them

They are being used.

> not donate the computing power.

Why not?

> Leaving them on is a huge waste of electricity.

They were designed to do computing. Since they'll be obsolete soon anyway, make them work for *something*. Besides, you can do both: run the project in the background and when you're done with your other stuff turn it off (I don't).

But what coding did the Allies use? by kwandar · 2006-02-26 05:49 · Score: 1

There has been lots of history around the Enigma machine, but little surrounding the Allies use of codes? Is that because the Allies didn't use sophisticated coding, or its still classified, or it just isn't as interesting? I'm curious!

Re:But what coding did the Allies use? by Animats · 2006-02-26 06:08 · Score: 1

There's plenty of material about Allied codes. Look harder. Read "Between Silk and Cyanide". Look up SIGSALY. See "Windtalkers".
Re:But what coding did the Allies use? by Vellmont · 2006-02-26 16:49 · Score: 1

The allies used a variety of codes, but the one I find most interesting was used for high level communications, and called sigsaly. It was a one time pad voice encryption system that digitized voice in realtime. It was quite bulky,expensive, and cumbersome to operate so it was only used for high level communications between Churchill and Rosevelt, high level generals, etc. It was never broken by the Germans, and is in fact mathematically unbreakable.

--
AccountKiller
Re:But what coding did the Allies use? by mfrank · 2006-02-27 10:09 · Score: 1

Holy cow. They used that in "Cryptonomicon", but I thought the author just made it up.

About allied encryption by Dirk+DefCom · 2006-02-26 06:06 · Score: 2, Informative

There were several different systems, used by the Allies. For high level traffic, the US used the very secure SIGABA (never reported to be broken, back then). SIGABA was also a rotor machine, but with three different banks of rotors, each performing their special task. In the field, the US Amry used mostly the M-209 Convertor. This was the US version of the Hagelin C-38. It was a so called pin-and-lug machine. You can try out the M-209 on this website: http://users.telenet.be/d.rijmenants/en/m209sim.ht m

Re:About allied encryption by Dirk+DefCom · 2006-02-26 06:17 · Score: 1

By the way, the Russian had their own version of the Enigma, but far more sophisticated. Got into service in the Cold Ware and remained top secret until the late 90's. More to read here: http://www.rijmenants.blogspot.com/

no no no ....Re:and the message is . . . by onepoint · 2006-02-26 06:07 · Score: 1

No No No, the first message is :

"All your bases belong to us"

the second message is :

"where is the rendezvous point for the free beer"

the third message is :

"don't forget the chips"

--
if you see me, smile and say hello.

Re:no no no ....Re:and the message is . . . by eclectro · 2006-02-26 10:04 · Score: 1

No No...

The first message is sure to be "Netcraft confirms it....BSD is dying."

--
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
Re:no no no ....Re:and the message is . . . by Jedi+Alec · 2006-02-26 10:57 · Score: 1

oh come on, you all fail it. Obviously the very first message could only be fr1st p0st!

--

People replying to my sig annoy me. That's why I change it all the time.

One was an odd transcript by noidentity · 2006-02-26 07:38 · Score: 1

Apparently one of the recently decoded messages was an odd transcript between an anonymous captain and a group called "CATS". This is all they could decipher:

Captain : What happen?
Mechanic: Someone set up us the bomb.
Operator: We get signal.
Captain : What !
Operator: Main screen turn on.
Captain : It's you !!
CATS : How are you gentlemen !!
CATS : All your base are belong to us.
CATS : You are on the way to destruction.
Captain : What you say !!
CATS : You have no chance to survive make your time.
CATS : Ha Ha Ha Ha ....
Operator: Captain !!
Captain : Take off every 'Zig' !!
Captain : You know what you doing.
Captain : Move 'Zig'.
Captain : For great justice.

Screw This! by Forezt · 2006-02-26 08:17 · Score: 0

I'll take Waterhouse's masturbation algorithm instead!

Oh, what the wonders of mathematics can do...

Text of the Encoded Message by Ambuoroko · 2006-02-26 08:18 · Score: 1

After a great deal of work, we have managed to decipher the message. However, our translators have been unable to work on it as they keep dying off whenever they read it.

The original German is as follows:

"Wenn ist das Nunstrück git und Slotermeyer? Ja! ... Beiherhund das Oder die Flipperwaldt gersput!"

Re:Text of the Encoded Message by CoderJoe · 2006-02-26 20:05 · Score: 1

I, for one, am SHOCKED that apparently nobody got this reference...

Just nitpicking, but: by Kadin2048 · 2006-02-26 08:45 · Score: 1

...ballistic artillery.

As opposed to what other kind of artillery, exactly?

--
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."

Re:Just nitpicking, but: by Anonymous Coward · 2006-02-26 10:19 · Score: 0

Self-propelled?
Re:Just nitpicking, but: by ccmay · 2006-02-27 06:06 · Score: 1

"Ballistic" implies unguided artillery, the only kind that existed until 50 years ago or so. It means missiles (in the broadest sense, including rocks, bullets, cannonballs, howitzer shells, rockets, etc.) that follow a trajectory determined only by basic Newtonian mechanics: momentum, gravity, air friction, etc. Calculating such trajectories, for given inputs of pounds of gunpowder, wind speed and direction, and angles of elevation, was a major impetus to the development of electronic computers.
Guided missiles are non-ballistic, as they are subject to control inputs from airfoil surfaces or maneuvering rockets that change the path of the missile. An ICBM, or "intercontinental ballistic missile" is a rocket that is under such guidance from launch until a certain point in space, at which time the guidance ceases, the warhead(s) separate, and the subsequent trajectory is determined only by Newtonian mechanics.
The military uses the term "going ballistic" to describe this transition, and hence the common use of the term to indicate someone going out of control. It's not a very good metaphor, as an ICBM is guided quite precisely right up to the point at which it goes ballistic, and thereafter is guaranteed to hit extremely close to the point of aim.
-ccm

--
Too much Law; not enough Order.

Highly Recommended. by OmniGeek · 2006-02-26 09:15 · Score: 1

I built the E-Enigma, and it has been a great deal of fun. (The experience of typing in the first encrypted test message and reading out the plaintext, "Der Fuehrer ist tot..." was nothing short of spooky.) I recommend replacing the display LEDs with high-brightness white LEDs, as several builders have done.

--

"My strength is as the strength of ten men, for I am wired to the eyeballs on espresso."

Not so clearcut by infolib · 2006-02-26 10:02 · Score: 1

There's reason to believe Stalin would have attacked Hitler at some point, so he'd have the war no matter what. Attacking first allowed him to choose the timing and take the destruction to enemy territory.

A really big German mistake: (from Wikipedia)
Following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Germany declared war on the United States on 11 December 1941, even though it was not obliged to do so under the Tripartite Pact of 1940. Hitler made the declaration in the hopes that Japan would support him by attacking the Soviet Union. Japan did not oblige him, and this diplomatic move proved a catastrophic blunder which gave President Franklin D. Roosevelt the pretext needed for the United States joining the fight in Europe with full commitment and with no meaningful opposition from Congress.

--
Any sufficiently advanced libertarian utopia is indistinguishable from government.

Re:Not so clearcut by 10Ghz · 2006-02-26 19:33 · Score: 1

And by the time US was REALLY involved in the war in Europe, Germany was already busy being defeated. Their defeat was all but certain full 18 months before D-Day and 6 months before invasion of Sicily.

--
Lesbian Nazi Hookers Abducted by UFOs and Forced Into Weight Loss Programs - -all next week on Town Talk.
Re:Not so clearcut by Galvatron · 2006-02-27 14:50 · Score: 1

According to whom? The Soviets were stretched damn thin as it was, and without American shipping, the Soviets would have been desperately short on materiel. That's to say nothing of the number of troops Germany had to keep in the west to forestall invasion, troops which could have been sent to the Eastern Front if America were not a factor. If Stalin thought he could have won without a Second Front, he wouldn't have badgered Churchill and FDR about it. Stalin would have been perfectly happy to win the war himself and move the Iron Curtain that much further to the west, were it feasible.

--
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
Re:Not so clearcut by 10Ghz · 2006-02-27 20:06 · Score: 1

According to whom?

Just about all historians. In Stalingrad Germany lost about one third of their manpower in the eastern front. That is absolutely huge, and after that they had no hope of defeating USSR. Had they been lucky, they might have forced a draw after Stalingrad (even that was very unlikely). But victory was out of their reach.

The Soviets were stretched damn thin as it was, and without American shipping, the Soviets would have been desperately short on materiel.

Overwhelming majority of their material was manufactured by themselves.

That's to say nothing of the number of troops Germany had to keep in the west to forestall invasion

Even AFTER the D-Day, something like 70-80% of German troops were in the Eastern front. The amount of troops before the invasion was even smaller.

If Stalin thought he could have won without a Second Front, he wouldn't have badgered Churchill and FDR about it.

That's the stupidest argument I have ever heard! Of course he wanted the Western Allies to carry some of the weight of the war! That would mean less casualties for the Russians. If he had a choice of defeating Germany alone and sustaining X amount of casualties, as opposed to defeating Germany with Western Allied, and sustaining X - 30% casualties (I pulled that number from thin air), while Western Allied would also suffer casualties, he would choose the latter option. I bet that USA is more than capable of handling invasion of Iraq alone, then why did USA beg for other countries to send troops as well?

If Stalin decided to carry out the fighting alone, with West doing practically nothing, he knew that after the war he would have an army that had been battered in war, and a nation that had sustaines tens of million casualties, while their western opponents would be practically unharmed. That was an disadvantege he was not willing to have.

Stalin would have been perfectly happy to win the war himself and move the Iron Curtain that much further to the west, were it feasible.

Had he tried to do that, he would have faced fresh English and American troops in France, while his forces had been bleeding all through the war. And their plan was that rest of Europe would fall in to their hands through revolutions and popular uprisings. Luckily their plan failed.

--
Lesbian Nazi Hookers Abducted by UFOs and Forced Into Weight Loss Programs - -all next week on Town Talk.

the messages actually are... by cellocgw · 2006-02-26 10:14 · Score: 1

The uncracked, apparently garbled messages are in fact a set of hyperbolic functions. They were generated to obscure the fact that the original messages (which remain hidden in a trunk in someone's attic) contain the Lat. and Long. to a cave full of loot the Japanese hid near the end of the war.

--
https://app.box.com/WitthoftResume Code: https://github.com/cellocgw

Re:It's not the message, but THE message that matt by Anonymous Coward · 2006-02-26 10:14 · Score: 0

> if you throw in enough mouse, cat will loose.

Lose? I think rather, that's what the cat thinks of as a "target rich environment". :)

Comment removed by account_deleted · 2006-02-26 10:48 · Score: 1

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Almost done... by Tablizer · 2006-02-26 11:21 · Score: 1

ALL YOUR BASE AR....

--
Table-ized A.I.

Codebreakers by Mark_MF-WN · 2006-02-26 12:32 · Score: 1

It's hard to overestimate the value of clever ideas. That's why, in addition to the usual mathematicians and cipher experts, Bletchley Park included a number of puzzle fans, crossword afficianados, and other game experts. When it comes to clever ideas about Human behaviour, those kinds of people are indispensable. The people running Bletchley Park were clearly quite clever themselves, assembling such a group. Clever ideas (and, by the same logic, stupid ideas like starting a war with an industrial superpower even though your existing enemies are proving to be more than you can handle) can change the world in profound ways.

Mmm, tasty botnet! by Fjornir · 2006-02-26 13:56 · Score: 1

I LOVE how the client installer creates an enigma-client user! Not only that the installer batchfile gives the enigma-client user a default password.... I wonder just how many slashdotters computers have a gaping backhole at the moment?

--
I want a new world. I think this one is broken.

First one broken! by Zog+The+Undeniable · 2006-02-26 21:58 · Score: 1

I've had a crack at message 1:

"Was passiert?"

"Jemand stellte uns die Bombe auf"

"Alles Ihren Merchantschiffs sind zu wir belongen".

--
When I am king, you will be first against the wall.

message deciphered by Anonymous Coward · 2006-02-27 03:27 · Score: 0

"Remember to drink your Ovaltine!"

Re:It's not the message, but THE message that matt by shmapty · 2006-02-27 08:14 · Score: 1

I'm sure there are few or many ways to encrypt at greater probability to the limit of randomness itself. But what is the point of encrypting something that does not carry equal amount of security with integrity of the encrypted data once unecrypted?

A one-time pad is simply a non-repeating set of truly random characters, essentially a shared-secret between parties. It is entirely unrelated to "security" and/or "integrity" which are different concepts entirely with "security" being a process and "integrity" being the ability to verify that something, whatever it is, hasn't been damaged, tampered with, or otherwise compromised..

Do you believe in DNA encryption?

What does that mean, using 4 states instead of just 2 (binary)?

Third Message broken! by PM1234567890 · 2006-03-06 22:28 · Score: 1

Date: 2006-03-07 10:06:36
Score: 4737591
UKW: B
W/0: B241
Stecker: ATCLDHEPFGIOJNKQMURX
Rings: AAHU
Message key: MCME

vvvjschreedyrjaufgeleitkursfuenffuenfmradnichtsgef undenymarscaierebefohlenesquadratxstanrmrtmarquant onjotadreineunnsunfuenfxsssooovieryseedrexyeinsnul yyeinsnulbedecktyvwoachtmbsteigtynbbelsichttinssmt

Re:Third Message broken! by PM1234567890 · 2006-03-06 23:07 · Score: 1

Date: 2006-03-07 10:10:34
Score: 5211199
UKW: B
W/0: B241
Stecker: ATCLDHEPFGIOJNKQMURX
Rings: AAJV
Message key: MCOF

vvvjschreederjaufgeleitkursfuenffuenfgradnichtsgef undenymarscaierebefohlenesquadratxstanrortmarquant onjotadreineunneunfuenfxsssooovieryseedremyeinsnul yyeinsnulbedecktyzwoachtmbsteigtynbbelsichteinssmt

ist noch nicht ganz korrekt dekodiert. Der Inhalt lautet etwa:

von Schreeder:

Auf Geleitkurs 55 Grad. Nichts gefunden, marschiere befohlenes Quadrat. Standort Marqu. AJ 3995, SSSOOO, 4 Seemeilen, 10,10 bedeckt, 28 Millibar steigt, Nebel Sicht 11m

die Übersetzung:

From Schreeder:

On escort course 55 degree. Nothing found. Marching Square. Position Marqu. AJ 3995, SSSOOO, 4 Seemiles, 10,10 dull, 28 Millibar rising, fog visibility 11m

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