1/29/2024 0 Comments Enigma code breaker![]() The team of British and Polish mathematicians and cryptanalysts who worked to intercept and decode German communications was based at the British Government Code and Cipher School at Bletchley Park and the project focused on the Enigma ciphers became known as the Ultra programme. Thanks to Polish intelligence, the British knew how the Enigma machine worked, but in order to break the code they needed to break the key - the settings that were changed by the Germans daily. Soluble ink was used so that the settings could be erased with water if there was a risk of sheets being captured by the Allies. Every month, German Enigma machine operators were issued with a key sheet printed with the daily settings for their network. Each network used different settings, and slightly different machines. As knowing the machine’s settings was the key to decoding the messages, the Germans reset their Enigma machines at midnight every night to maintain security. The text the machine produced was unintelligible unless the receiver knew the rotor and plug board settings on the day the enciphered text was produced. Ciphering depended on the start position of the rotors, which could be removed, rotated and replaced in any order. Messages typed into the machine were scrambled first by movable mechanical rotors inscribed with letters, and then by a plug board of electrical circuits, generating enciphered text. It was capable of generating 159 million million million combinations of cipher using an electro-mechanical cipher machine. How Enigma workedĮnigma represented a new form of encryption using machines rather than hand ciphers or codebooks. This allowed the Luftwaffe to make sudden and devastating attacks and the Kriesgmarine to inflict massive losses on shipping. These communications, transmitted in Morse code by wireless radio, were easy to intercept, but their encipherment using Enigma machines, made them incomprehensible to the Allies. Axis officials and forces used Enigma machines to protect their top-secret radio communications throughout World War II. This model was produced for use in Luftwaffe ground stations its metal case - earlier machines had wooden cases - provided extra protection during field operations. Because it was battery powered and therefore portable, it was taken up and developed by the German armed forces. The machine was invented in 1918 to protect communications in the banking industry. This Enigma machine is one of thousands manufactured in Germany by Ertel-Werk manufacturers.
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