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Enigma Machine for Sale on eBay
RagingMaxx writes "An Italian antiques dealer has recently put to auction a mint condition, fully operational Enigma machine on eBay. The machine, dated circa 1938, will be sold to the highest bidder in just over a week, but after 30 hours of bidding the price has already surpassed $12,000 US. For those of you who can't afford the real thing, why not make your own?"
I hear that the MPAA is interested in purchasing the machine - as they've heard that it has unbreakable encryption.
Looks like it's only the 3 gear model. If it was the four gear model, I surely would have purchased it :P.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
It comes complete with instructions (cypher-text of course) on how to win the War on Terror. Ask DVD Jon for the key.
Now nobody will be able to understand what I'm saying.
Well, the low price must be due to the fact that you really have to have a set of two to use them......
Try one of the 359 distros. See: http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/ 2007/07/too_many_linux.html
:)))
I can see these being attached to every Blu-ray2 and HD-DVD2 player.....
That looks more like a commercial machine to me. Does anyone see anything that marks it as a military version? Military equipment usually comes with manuals labeled "Machine, Cypher, Field, Mark 5.4.3.12.a" not "Enigma".
sPh
d-r-i-n-k y-o-u-r o-v-a-l-t-i-n-e
Gaahhh! How do I outbid the current price of $XCCCX921 ???
It has the plug board, which means it was the military, not the weaker commercial, Enigma. And, there were no 4 gear models until the 40's.
TFA is nothing more than an enigma wrapped in an ebay auction wrapped in a Slashdot article.
this page claims modern computers can crack an Enigma message in "a few minutes".
But a recent effort to crack some M4 messages using distributed computing estimated some 10,000 PC-hours to break a message.
There are plenty if you Google "Enigma Emulator" or "Enigma Simulator"/"Enigma simulation"
i gma_j.html
http://homepages.tesco.net/~andycarlson/enigma/en
If you want to build something mechanical try a remote control aircraft. Much more fun.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
In the interests of 'National Security', the British Govt. broke up the team that broke the Enigma codes, and 'classified' or destroyed the equipment that they had imagined, designed AND built to help. Thereby setting back the UK IT industry by - oh, let's say 10 years, IMHO.
Not gonna Karma-whore by posting a zillion Wikiped links, but it's all there if you're interested and don't know the story. Worth a read, newbies, since a lot of what you now take for granted was developed by these folks.
to me is not the Enigma machine itself, but the Allied response to it and other Axis crypto systems. If you haven't had the chance yet you should read up on the folks at Bletchley Park, it's one of the most fascinating programs of WW2. Without a doubt the people that worked there contributed as much to the effort as any other single organization and probably shortened the war considerably.
There is a pretty good artile on Wikipedia
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Yes. All VI commands are Enigma encrypted.
If I would make one, it would be all electromechanical instead of electronic. The breaking of the enigma code (as excellently described in e.g. Simon Singh's The code book) was only possible by exploiting implementation details. Kodus to the makers of the electronics kit, but a machine with an implementation different to the original one, loses most of its appeal to me.
A *very* interesting account of the Enigma's history from a postwar Polish perspective, translated in East Germany (I got my copy from the gift shop at the Rundfunkmuseum in Nuremberg). This is a translation from the Polish original.
German Translation: "Im Banne Der Enigma" (Under The Spell Of The Enigma)
Original title: "W krgu Enigmy", published in Warsaw in 1979
Author: Wladyslaw Kozaczuk
Translation published by: Militärverlag der Deutschen Demokratischen Republik
(translator's name not listed)
ISBN 3-327-00423-4
In addition to its rather interesting political perspective, the book has an extremely detailed account of the Polish Intelligence Service's work on Enigma, including material I'd not seen in most of the more accessible Western literature on Enigma. In essence, the Polish crypto boffins had Enigma cracked (including automated cracking machines) before the war even started, but lacked the resources to scale up their efforts as the machines were upgraded (addition of the plugboard and new rotors); that, and the German occupation of Poland and later France, led them to share their findings with Britain, and the history most folks hear about.
BTW, WRT the "Enigma-E" electronic Enigma machine, I highly recommend it. I still get a kick out of decrypting messages with the one I built (in its nifty wooden case). Well worth the cost for those who've gotten the "Enigma virus".
"My strength is as the strength of ten men, for I am wired to the eyeballs on espresso."
Not to invoke Godwin's Law here, but I thought that eBay refused auctions of WWII Nazi German wartime memorabilia? Is it just those items that bear the symbol of the Third Reich? It's a cool object to geek sensibilities. I would say that today, it symbolizes a particularly crafty bit of code-busting on the part of the Allies against Nazi Germany, even moreso than the crafty bit of code-creating clock-engineering work on the part of the Germans. But it's still Nazi memorabilia on some level, which I thought was against eBay rules.
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THis place is _really_ worth a visit. The staff are all retired NSA staff and are glad to talk to you about the exhibits (now that the equipment is declassified!) They have an excellent exhibit on Cold War era supercomputers, with a Cray and a Connection Machine CM-5 on display.
Imagine one of these sitting inside your computer, clunking and whirring everytime you accessed SSL pages.
>>Thereby setting back the UK IT industry by - oh, let's say 10 years, IMHO.
>It still is.
Look, I'm doing my best here guys...
I want a list of atrocities done in your name - Recoil
Not exactly the Enigma, but beautiful nonetheless.
you had me at #!
Bletchley Park not only has Enigma machines, they have recently completed a replica Bombe, and they're working on a replica Colossus.
"Probably justifiable at the time, but one of those slippery slope-type situations like Lincoln jailing journalists under the sedition act....like Gitmo..."
Anything and everything is justifiable... on the side that wins the war. Classify the truth, indoctrinate those who don't know, and kill or imprison those who know enough to throw doubt on your justification.
If I have seen further it is by stealing the Intellectual Property of giants.