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Bletchley Park és un dels llocs més fascinants de la història del segle XX. Aquí, durant la II Guerra Mundial i buscant la manera de desxifrar els codis militars alemanys, en sorgí la informàtica i els ordinadors.
Aquesta de la imatge és una maquina Enigma M4, del tipus emprat per la Kriegsmarine al final de la guerra. És molt facil d'identificar perque té 4 rotors en comptes de 3. Sense dubte és l'element més famós de la historia del xifratge i la criptologia.
ca.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%c3%a0quina_Enigma
ca.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bletchley_Park
========================================================
Bletchley Park is one of the most amazing historical places related to the XX Century in general and to WWII in particular. Here, during the colossal effort to crack the german military codes, computers and computing science were born (or at least had their main intial development).
This is a Kriegsmarine M4 model Enigma. You can identify it by the 4 rotors, when usually the earlier machines had only 3 rotors. The Enigma machine is without doubt the most famous icon in the history of cryptology
www.youtube.com/watch?v=JJm4-lqRJDc
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enigma_machine
cryptomuseum.com/crypto/enigma/i/index.htm
The emulator (all the site is wonderful):
users.telenet.be/d.rijmenants/en/enigmasim.htm
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bletchley_Park
www.bletchleypark.org/content/museum.rhtm
For an impresive virtual visit, take a look to these videos:
On episode 9 of the Cryptology Podcast Elgindotcom, Karl and Dutchie Flair sit down with former CoinDesk writer Tom Sharkey to talk about his experience at CoinDesk, his love for hiphop and what will happen first... Bitcoin hitting zero or Jay-Z paying off his debt to Live Nation.
PENSACOLA, Fla. (May 14, 2009) Cryptology students at the Center for Information Dominance Corry Station hoist the national ensign for morning colors at Corry Station. (U.S. Navy photo by Gary Nichols/Released)
ENIGMA remains the best known German cryptographic machine of World War II.
Das Heer (Army) ENIGMA cipher machine
Die Luftwaffe (Air Force) ENIGMA
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Die Luftwaffe (Air Force) ENIGMA
Like the Army, the Air Force relied on ENIGMA for coomunications security (COMSEC). As a result of radio intercept and timely analysis, which was aided by poor COMSEC on German radion nets, plans such as decisve air attacks known as the Battle of Britain were revealed to the British well in advance of the intended strike. The losses suffered by the German air force during this time were never regained.
Source National Cryptologic Museum (Added links to Wikipedia)
A slightly different view from Battle of Britain Wikipedia
Effect of signals intelligence
It is unclear how much the British intercepts of the Enigma cipher, used for high-security German radio communications, affected the battle. Ultra, the information obtained from Enigma intercepts, gave the highest echelons of the UK's command a view of German intentions but it seems little of this material filtered down to Hugh Dowding's desk. (It would have had little tactical value in any case.) However, the radio listening service (known as Y Service), monitoring the patterns of Luftwaffe radio traffic, contributed considerably to the early warning of raids
ENIGMA remains the best known German cryptographic machine of World War II.
ENIGMA cipher machine collection
i09_0214 100
One of our NEWEST Podcasts, The Cryptology Podcast, brought to you by Elgin (elgindotcom) Carl (_thecivilright) and Azeem (_azeemkhan) and these gentlemen tackle an untapped lane in our busy podcast realm, which is Crypto-currency.
Sackville Gardens, Sackville Street, Manchester, England, UK
Alan Turing, hailed by many as the father of modern computing, is here represented in bronze. The life sized sculpture, including park bench, by Glyn Hughes, was unveiled on 23rd June, 2001 on what would have been his 89th birthday. Today we celebrate his hundredth.
The plaque at his feet reads, "Alan Mathison Turing 1912 - 1954. Father of Computing Science, Mathematician, Logician, Wartime Codebreaker, Victim of Prejudice."
His was a life cut short by suicide or accidental poisoning, depending on whom you believe. The coroner in 1954 said that he had committed suicide by eating a poisoned apple. He was fascinated by the story of Snow White, where the wicked witch prepared a similar deadly fruit. Jack Copeland, Turing Archive Director, has postulated that cyanide from an experiment in another room could have caused deadly fumes. He suggests that Turing breathed the fumes by accident.
In 1952 Turing met Arnold Murray, spending some time together at Turing's Manchester flat. Later, Murray returned with an accomplice to burgle the apartment. Turing reported this to the police, sharing his suspicion that Murray was the culprit. He naïvely admitted that they were both homosexual. The police saw this brilliant opportunity for an easy couple of arrests attracting maximum Force Brownie Points. All thoughts of the robbery were forgotten in favour of the pursuit of Gross Indecency. What a scoop. Male homosexuality was totally illegal in those days.
After being found guilty at the trial, Turing was given the choice between prison, and a course of chemical castration drugs. He reluctantly took the latter. His ultra secure government clearance was revoked; he spent the remainder of his life working on biological morphogenesis. He used the Fibonacci sequence he saw in plant structure to formulate pattern forming equations.
He was driven to suicide by the inhuman treatment from the supposedly intelligent people around him. His athletic physique that could run a marathon within 20 seconds of the World record was chemically forced into a flabby grotesque with female breasts. He couldn't convince his accusers that he was a human being even when he was standing right in front of them. A truly, tragic failure of the Turing Test.
"You can only see a short distance ahead, but we can see plenty that needs to be done." Closing sentence of Turing's final published work, Computing Machinery and Intelligence, 1950.
Taken on 16th June, 2012 at 1605hrs with a Olympus OM-2SP through a Zuiko MC 50mm f/1.4 lens on 35mm Fujicolor X-Tra 400 ASA negative film, developed in Fuji-Hunt C-41 X-Press chemicals.
©2012 Tim Pickford-Jones.
Sackville Gardens, Sackville Street, Manchester, England, UK.
A different take on that Turing statue.
Mucked about with on the Big Huge Labs site for a bit of quick fun.
Photographic Information
Taken on 16th June, 2012 at 1605hrs with a Olympus OM-2SP through a Zuiko MC 50mm ƒ/1.4 lens on 35mm Fujicolor X-Tra 400 ASA negative film, developed in Fuji-Hunt C-41 X-Press chemicals.
© Timothy Pickford-Jones 2012
Cipher wheel from Charles J. Mendelsohn's copy of Gabriel de Collange's translation of Polygraphiae Libri VI by Johannes Trithemius (1462-1516).
Established heading: Mendelsohn, Charles J. (Charles Jastrow), 1880-1939
Established heading: Collange, Gabriel de, -1572
Established heading: Trithemius, Johannes, 1462-1516
Penn Libraries call number: 652M T735
Penn Libraries catalog record
An exhibit at the National Cryptologic Museum near Washington DC.
More here: www.nsa.gov/about/cryptologic-heritage/museum/exhibits/#s...
We had no sooner pulled into the parking lot of Casa Grande Ruins National Monument in southern Arizona (www.nps.gov/cagr/index.htm) than I saw this cool-looking man and his wife dismounting from their Harley-Davidson tricycle. Who could resist strolling over to inquire about a cool motor trike like that? His response to my interest was open and friendly. Meet Bart.
Bart is 73 and is from nearby Tucson. Our chat was brief because I knew my wife, brother, and his wife were waiting inside the entrance for me. I told Bart that I'd met another couple on a motor tricycle in the Thousand Islands area of upper New York state last year and they loved it. He said he enjoys it a lot but said it's a poor second to the two-wheel Harley he used to ride. "This is not nearly as fluid and fun to ride as the two wheeler which leans into the curves. It's fine for sailing down the Interstate on cruise control but it's not quite the same adventure." I gathered that like my previous trike-riders, the vehicle was a compromise by a wife who had become reluctant to travel on the two-wheeled bike but was willing to keep riding if it was on a trike. He commented that when you buy a Harley, it's different from buying, say, a Honda. "With a Honda you just get a Honda. With a Harley you're buying into the whole Harley-Davidson way of life." I didn't have time to ask him to elaborate but he was clearly referring to the mystique and lifestyle associated with riding a Harley.
I asked if I could take a couple of photos for my photo blog and Bart said "Sure. Just go ahead." I had a mild wide-angle on my camera and didn't have an opportunity to do much to set this one up. I just tried to make sure I didn't get my own shadow in the photo in the strong Arizona sunshine. Bart's wife said there is a contest by Harley Davidson whereby you can submit a photo of someone on a Harley to win some kind of prize but it has to be a current photo as proven by having the rider hold up a current Harley-Davidson magazine. It seemed the thing to do so I took a couple of shots with the magazine as had been suggested.
All that remained was to pull out my note-taking cell phone to get Bart's age and confirm that he's from Tucson. As I asked him to tell me something about himself, his wife jumped in and completed the bio. "He's not going to tell you so I will. Bart's a Physicist and a published author." My eyebrows went up. "Are you kidding me? You never know who you're going to meet doing this project.” I looked to Bart for confirmation and he just gave a shy nod. “Did you teach?" I asked. With a casual shrug he mentioned something about Director of Research for the University of Arizona in Tucson.
Once again 100 Strangers does its thing to help break stereotypes. I wish I'd had more time to find out a bit more about this Harley-riding Physicist but as luck would have it, I returned home to find a nice, brief email from Bart: “We met today at Casa Grande National Monument and you took a few pictures of me on my Harley. It occurred to me riding home that a middle name and age is not much of a citation for your project. You can find a bit more on the back-cover of my recent book… Nice talking with you and good luck on your project.” The link to his book is: www.amazon.com/Science-Mind-John-Bart-Wilburn/dp/1500871141. The note on the book cover hints at a man of many talents who has, among other things, worked for the National Security Agency (www.nsa.gov/) where he was an award-winning Supervising Cryptologic Scientist. (Cryptology is the scientific study of codes.) The description of his book is fascinating in that it explores the historical relationship between Science and the Mind. It looks like rather heady stuff but I look forward to at least browsing it.
Thank you Bart. For the brief chat and for telling me a bit about your Harley and about yourself. You are a most interesting #801 in Round 8 of my 100
Strangers project. Safe riding.
Find out more about the project and see pictures taken by the other photographers in our group at the 100 Strangers Flickr Group page.
Die Kriegsmarine (Navy)
With a naval force small in numbers, but technically advanced, the German Naval High Command, in order to offset Allied Naval superiority, adopted a strategy designed to conceal as much as possible the location, intention and movement of its forces.
Forced by its nature to rely on radio communications, the German Navy issued to each vessel from battleship to harbor defense craft an ENIGMA cipher machine to ensure security. Here, as with other services, the dependence on ENIGMA for communications security proved to be disastrous.
Source National Cryptologic Museum
ENIGMA remains the best known German cryptographic machine of World War II.
From Wikipedia - A four-rotor Enigma was introduced by the Navy for U-boat traffic on 1 February 1942, called M4 (the network was known as "Triton", or "Shark" to the Allies). The extra rotor was fitted in the same space by splitting the reflector into a combination of a thin reflector and a thin fourth rotor.
ENIGMA cipher machine collection
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One of our NEWEST Podcasts, The Cryptology Podcast, brought to you by Elgin (elgindotcom) Carl (_thecivilright) and Azeem (_azeemkhan) and these gentlemen tackle an untapped lane in our busy podcast realm, which is Crypto-currency.
By 1943, Bombes began arriving at the Navy's Nebraska Avenue Communications Annex at a rate of four per week. The WAVES in Dayton began transferring with the machines and were trained to operate the Bombes. By the end of the war, 121 Bobles ran 24 hours per day, searching for Enigma rotor settings. THe machines could search 456,976 setting in 20 minutes.
THe US Navy Bombes were faster than the British machines and the Navy could build them in large enough quantity to make a difference againt the ENIGMAs. Britain turned over the U-boat problem to the US Navy and even requested the US to build an additional fifty machines, of which only 26 were needed before production stopped. The original ninty six were sufficent to handle the U-boat messages, but the ground war was growing and Britain wanted assistance against German Army and Air Force Engma messages. Approximately 65% of the runs on the Bombes were German Navy. Once the daily settings had been retrieved, the Bombes switched over to a three rotor mode and worked against the German army and Air Force. They cound complete a three-rotor run in only fifty seconds.
Source: National Cryptologic Museum
Comment on the above
The four rotor system had 26^4 or 456,976 settings whilst the theree rotor system had 26^3 or 17,756 settings. It looks like the problem scale in a linear way as it took 50 seconds to check 17,756 setting (~350 per second) while the four rotor solution in 20 minutes is ~ 380 settings per second.
also think the designer Joseph Desch sounds like a remarkable engineer that I never heard of before.
Bombe on Wikipedia
Once the British had given the Americans the details about the bombe and its use, the US had the National Cash Register Company manufacture a great many additional bombes, which the US then used to assist in the code-breaking. These ran much faster than the British version, so fast that unlike the British model, which would freeze immediately (and ring a bell) when a possible solution was detected, the NCR model, upon detecting a possible solution, had to "remember" that setting and then reverse its rotors to back up to it (meanwhile the bell rang).
Source of following material : National Cryptologic Museum
Switch Banks tell the Bombe what plain to cipher letters to search for. Using menus sent to the Bombe deck by cryptanalysts, WAVES set each dial using special wrenches. 00 equates to the letter A and 25 to the letter Z. The dials work together in groups of two. One dial is set to the plain test letter and the other to its corresponding cipher letter as determined by cryptanalysts. There are sixteen sets of switch banks, however, only fourteen were required to complete a run. As the machine worked through the rotor settings, a correct hit was possible if the electrical path in all fourteen switch banks corresponded to each of their assigned plaintext/cipher combinations.
Wheel Banks represent the four rotors used on the German U-boat Enigma. Each column interconnects the four rotors, or commutators, in that column. The top commutator represented the fourth, or slowest, rotor on the Enigma, while the bottom wheel represented the rightmost, or fastest, rotor. The WAVES set the rotors according to the menu developed by the cryptanalysts. The first were set to 00, and each set after that corresponded to the plain/cipher link with the crib (the assumed plain test corresponding to the cipher text.) Usually this meant that each wheel bank stepped up one place from the one on its left. When the machine ran, each bottom rotor stepped forward, and the machine electrically checked to see if the assigned conditions were met. If not, as was usually the case, each bottom wheels moved one more place forward. However, the bottom commutator moved at 850 rpm, so it only took twenty minutes to complete a run of all 456,976 positions.
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Cray XMP-24 Mainframe
Serial Number 115
The predecessor of this machine, serial number 102, became operational at the National Security Agency in June, 1983. Serial number 102 was the first XMP delivered by Cray to a customer site, and thus was arguably the most powerful supercomputer in the world at that time. It was a Cray XMP22, containing two processors and two meagewords (16 Megabytes) of main memory. The machine consists of three towers: a CPU (central processing unit) and main memory tower, an IOS tower (Input/Output Subsystem) and a SSD tower (solid-state storage device, or extended memory.
In July, 1987, as part of an upgrade, the original mainframe and IOS were replaced. CPU serial number 115 is a Cray XMP24, containing two processors and four meagawords (32 megabytes) of main memory.
.... an overall performance rating of 420 Megaflops. The machine was retired in February, 1993.
The mainframe weighs 5900 pounds.
250 kVA of 60 cycle power was consumed by this machine.
Also see en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cray_X-MP
In comparison to modern CPU speeds, the X-MP had less than half of the raw power of Microsoft's Xbox console or less than 8% of an Intel Core 2 Duo E6700
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The Codebreakers by David Kahn
Because The Codebreakers dealt with several potentially sensitive subjects, like the National Security Agency, the US Intelligence and defense communities asked to review the manuscript prior to publication. After its review, the Department of Defense stated they "deplored the book" and "it would not be in the national interest to publish it." Kahn deleted certain portions related to NSA and the book was published without further incidence.
Source of material : National Cryptologic Museum
The Codebreakers (from Wikipedia article on David Kahn)
The Codebreakers comprehensively chronicles the history of cryptography from ancient Egypt to the time of its writing. It is widely regarded as the best account of the history of cryptography up to its publication. William Crowell, the former deputy director of the National Security Agency, was quoted in Newsday as saying "Before he (Kahn) came along, the best you could do was buy an explanatory book that usually was too technical and terribly dull." Kahn, then a journalist, was contracted to write a book on cryptology in 1961. He began writing it part-time, at one point quitting his regular job to work on it full time. The book was to include information on the National Security Agency (NSA), and according to the author James Bamford writing in 1982, the agency attempted to stop its publication, and considered various options, including publishing a negative review of Kahn's work in the press to discredit him. A committee of the United States Intelligence Board concluded that the book was "a possibly valuable support to foreign COMSEC authorities" and recommended "further low-key actions as possible, but short of legal action, to discourage Mr. Kahn or his prospective publishers". Kahn's publisher, the Macmillan company, handed over the manuscript to the Federal government for review without Kahn's permission on 4 March 1966. Kahn and Macmillan eventually agreed to remove some material from the manuscript, particularly concerning the relationship between the NSA and its British counterpart, the GCHQ.
The Codebreakers did not cover most of the history concerning the breaking of the German Enigma machine (which became public knowledge only in the 1970s). Nor did it cover the advent of strong cryptography in the public domain, beginning with the invention of public key cryptography and the specification of the Data Encryption Standard in the mid-1970s. This book was republished in 1996, and this new edition includes an additional chapter briefly covering the events since the original publication.
i09_0214 183
Cray XMP-24 Mainframe
Serial Number 115
The predecessor of this machine, serial number 102, became operational at the National Security Agency in June, 1983. Serial number 102 was the first XMP delivered by Cray to a customer site, and thus was arguably the most powerful supercomputer in the world at that time. It was a Cray XMP22, containing two processors and two meagewords (16 Megabytes) of main memory. The machine consists of three towers: a CPU (central processing unit) and main memory tower, an IOS tower (Input/Output Subsystem) and a SSD tower (solid-state storage device, or extended memory.
In July, 1987, as part of an upgrade, the original mainframe and IOS were replaced. CPU serial number 115 is a Cray XMP24, containing two processors and four meagawords (32 megabytes) of main memory.
.... an overall performance rating of 420 Megaflops. The machine was retired in February, 1993.
The mainframe weighs 5900 pounds.
250 kVA of 60 cycle power was consumed by this machine.
Also see en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cray_X-MP
In comparison to modern CPU speeds, the X-MP had less than half of the raw power of Microsoft's Xbox console or less than 8% of an Intel Core 2 Duo E6700
i09_0214 153
Geheimschreiber
Although the ENIGMA remains the best know German cryptographic machine of World War II, in the early 1940's the German military introduced several new cryptographic teletypewriters known under the name Geheimschreiber - sometimes translated as "private secretary", sometimes as "secret writer".
These machines offered on-line encryption and decryption, that is plain test could be typed directly into the machine, automatically converted to encrypted text, and sent directly to the transmitter. In addtion to security, these "secret writers" provided the Germans with the ability to encrypt large volumes of test at high speed.
Learning that the Germans had named an early version of these machines SWORDFISH, the British and Americans bestowed nicknames associated with fish on the machines and the communications links in which they were used. The two most famous are TUNNY and STURGEON.
Just as they developed the Bombe to assist decryption of ENIGMA , the British developed data processing to attack the fish family of machine ciphers. (I must add: This was a whale of a job!) This led to the construction of the COLOSSUS which British historian F. H. Hinsley is "justly claimed as a pioneer programmable electronic digital computer."
The 40 (SZ40) when first encountered in 1940 was nicknamed TUNNY by the British - after a fish better known to Americans as TUNA.
The Schlüsselzusatz SZ40, manufactured by the German firm Lorenz, was used by the German Army for high-level communications, generally between Army groups. It provided on-line encryption and decryption and was capable of handling large volumes f traffic at high speed. The TUNNY depended on wheels for encryption and decryption but unlike ENIGMA it did nut substitute letters but insted encrypted elements of the electrically generated Baudot code used in normal telegraphic transmissions.
Source: National Cryptologic Museum 13 February 2009 with some hyperlinks added
i09_0214 087
Friedman, known as the father of cryptography, had an ability to choose people with special talents to attack the problems faced during World War II. One of those people was John B. Hurt from Viginia. He was the nephew of a congressman, which might have played a role in the decision to hire hime, but he had an amazing mind, perfrectly suited to the job.
On one occasion, Solomon Kullback, Frank Rowlett, and Abraham Sinkov (true greats in American cryptology) were pondering over an SIS (Signal Intelligence Service) message from a prisoner in Columbus, Ohio. It had been written in invented symbols and they were looking a letter frequencies. As Hurt passed by, he looked over their shoulders and started reading the message almost immediately. His uncanny ability to recognize linguistic patterns also led to a major cryptanalytic breakthrough in solving the Japanese diplomatic cipher system known as PURPLE.
He taught himself Japanese without going to school or having any formal training. He had a Japanese neighbor and some Japanese roomates at the University of Virginia and managed to absorb his knowledge of the language from them.
Friedman decided to take a risk with Hurt. Originally, he was looking for a person who knew Japanese and mathematics, but Hurt had no penchant for mathematics. He disliked formal analytical procedures, finding them tedious, but had a knack for just throwing himself into a cipher problem and recognizing patterns of words.
Frank Rowlett says:
Sinkov, Kullback, and I were hired because we had all studied math and foreign languages-Sinkov had taken French; Kullback, Spanish; and I, German. Friedman's efforts to round out the team with a combination mathematician and Japanese linguist had so far failed: the Civil Service Commission, Military Intelligence, and the State Department had all been unable to produce anyone with that rather unusual combination of talents. Soon, however, through the good offices of Congressman Schaeffer of Virginia, Friedman learned of a young man named John Hurt, the congressman's nephew, who, though lacking an extensive math background, was unusually fluent in Japanese. The Army major who interviewed him told Friedman that he had never met an American so proficient in that difficult language.
www.nsa.gov/public_info/_files/cryptologic_spectrum/frank...
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PRESIDIO OF MONTEREY, Calif. -- The Navy's Center for Information Dominance Detachment celebrated the U.S. Navy's 239th birthday by hosting the Navy Birthday Ball at the Monterey Convention Center Oct 5. The evening was punctuated by Navy customs and traditions including ceremonial toasts, recognition of the fallen, fine dining, singing, a cake cutting and a raffle. The evening concluded with dancing late into the night. The guest speaker was James Gilogy, cryptanalyst and code breaker. More than 400 Presidio of Monterey and Naval Postgraduate School sailors and guests along with DLIFLC personnel attended the event. The U.S. Navy was founded Oct. 13, 1775.
Official Presidio of Monterey Web site
Official Presidio of Monterey Facebook
Photo by Michael Beaton, Presidio of Monterey Public Affairs.
Geheimschreiber
Although the ENIGMA remains the best know German cryptographic machine of World War II, in the early 1940's the German military introduced several new cryptographic teletypewriters known under the name Geheimschreiber - sometimes translated as "private secretary", sometimes as "secret writer".
These machines offered on-line encryption and decryption, that is plain test could be typed directly into the machine, automatically converted to encrypted text, and sent directly to the transmitter. In addtion to security, these "secret writers" provided the Germans with the ability to encrypt large volumes of test at high speed.
Learning that the Germans had named an early version of these machines SWORDFISH, the British and Americans bestowed nicknames associated with fish on the machines and the communications links in which they were used. The two most famous are TUNNY and STURGEON.
Just as they developed the Bombe to assist decryption of ENIGMA , the British developed data processing to attack the fish family of machine ciphers. (I must add: This was a whale of a job!) This led to the construction of the COLOSSUS which British historian F. H. Hinsley is "justly claimed as a pioneer programmable electronic digital computer."
The 40 (SZ40) when first encountered in 1940 was nicknamed TUNNY by the British - after a fish better known to Americans as TUNA.
The Schlüsselzusatz SZ40, manufactured by the German firm Lorenz, was used by the German Army for high-level communications, generally between Army groups. It provided on-line encryption and decryption and was capable of handling large volumes f traffic at high speed. The TUNNY depended on wheels for encryption and decryption but unlike ENIGMA it did nut substitute letters but insted encrypted elements of the electrically generated Baudot code used in normal telegraphic transmissions.
Source: National Cryptologic Museum 13 February 2009 with some hyperlinks added
i09_0214 088
The Codebreakers by David Kahn
Because The Codebreakers dealt with several potentially sensitive subjects, like the National Security Agency, the US Intelligence and defense communities asked to review the manuscript prior to publication. After its review, the Department of Defense stated they "deplored the book" and "it would not be in the national interest to publish it." Kahn deleted certain portions related to NSA and the book was published without further incidence.
Source of material : National Cryptologic Museum
The Codebreakers (from Wikipedia article on David Kahn)
The Codebreakers comprehensively chronicles the history of cryptography from ancient Egypt to the time of its writing. It is widely regarded as the best account of the history of cryptography up to its publication. William Crowell, the former deputy director of the National Security Agency, was quoted in Newsday as saying "Before he (Kahn) came along, the best you could do was buy an explanatory book that usually was too technical and terribly dull." Kahn, then a journalist, was contracted to write a book on cryptology in 1961. He began writing it part-time, at one point quitting his regular job to work on it full time. The book was to include information on the National Security Agency (NSA), and according to the author James Bamford writing in 1982, the agency attempted to stop its publication, and considered various options, including publishing a negative review of Kahn's work in the press to discredit him. A committee of the United States Intelligence Board concluded that the book was "a possibly valuable support to foreign COMSEC authorities" and recommended "further low-key actions as possible, but short of legal action, to discourage Mr. Kahn or his prospective publishers". Kahn's publisher, the Macmillan company, handed over the manuscript to the Federal government for review without Kahn's permission on 4 March 1966. Kahn and Macmillan eventually agreed to remove some material from the manuscript, particularly concerning the relationship between the NSA and its British counterpart, the GCHQ.
The Codebreakers did not cover most of the history concerning the breaking of the German Enigma machine (which became public knowledge only in the 1970s). Nor did it cover the advent of strong cryptography in the public domain, beginning with the invention of public key cryptography and the specification of the Data Encryption Standard in the mid-1970s. This book was republished in 1996, and this new edition includes an additional chapter briefly covering the events since the original publication.
i09_0214 146
By 1943, Bombes began arriving at the Navy's Nebraska Avenue Communications Annex at a rate of four per week. The WAVES in Dayton began transferring with the machines and were trained to operate the Bombes. By the end of the war, 121 Bobles ran 24 hours per day, searching for Enigma rotor settings. THe machines could search 456,976 setting in 20 minutes.
THe US Navy Bombes were faster than the British machines and the Navy could build them in large enough quantity to make a difference againt the ENIGMAs. Britain turned over the U-boat problem to the US Navy and even requested the US to build an additional fifty machines, of which only 26 were needed before production stopped. The original ninty six were sufficent to handle the U-boat messages, but the ground war was growing and Britain wanted assistance against German Army and Air Force Engma messages. Approximately 65% of the runs on the Bombes were German Navy. Once the daily settings had been retrieved, the Bombes switched over to a three rotor mode and worked against the German army and Air Force. They cound complete a three-rotor run in only fifty seconds.
Source: National Cryptologic Museum
Comment on the above
The four rotor system had 26^4 or 456,976 settings whilst the theree rotor system had 26^3 or 17,756 settings. It looks like the problem scale in a linear way as it took 50 seconds to check 17,756 setting (~350 per second) while the four rotor solution in 20 minutes is ~ 380 settings per second.
also think the designer Joseph Desch sounds like a remarkable engineer that I never heard of before.
Bombe on Wikipedia
Once the British had given the Americans the details about the bombe and its use, the US had the National Cash Register Company manufacture a great many additional bombes, which the US then used to assist in the code-breaking. These ran much faster than the British version, so fast that unlike the British model, which would freeze immediately (and ring a bell) when a possible solution was detected, the NCR model, upon detecting a possible solution, had to "remember" that setting and then reverse its rotors to back up to it (meanwhile the bell rang).
i09_0214 109z
Geheimschreiber
Although the ENIGMA remains the best know German cryptographic machine of World War II, in the early 1940's the German military introduced several new cryptographic teletypewriters known under the name Geheimschreiber - sometimes translated as "private secretary", sometimes as "secret writer".
These machines offered on-line encryption and decryption, that is plain test could be typed directly into the machine, automatically converted to encrypted text, and sent directly to the transmitter. In addtion to security, these "secret writers" provided the Germans with the ability to encrypt large volumes of test at high speed.
Learning that the Germans had named an early version of these machines SWORDFISH, the British and Americans bestowed nicknames associated with fish on the machines and the communications links in which they were used. The two most famous are TUNNY and STURGEON.
Just as they developed the Bombe to assist decryption of ENIGMA , the British developed data processing to attack the fish family of machine ciphers. (I must add: This was a whale of a job!) This led to the construction of the COLOSSUS which British historian F. H. Hinsley is "justly claimed as a pioneer programmable electronic digital computer."
The 40 (SZ40) when first encountered in 1940 was nicknamed TUNNY by the British - after a fish better known to Americans as TUNA.
The Schlüsselzusatz SZ40, manufactured by the German firm Lorenz, was used by the German Army for high-level communications, generally between Army groups. It provided on-line encryption and decryption and was capable of handling large volumes f traffic at high speed. The TUNNY depended on wheels for encryption and decryption but unlike ENIGMA it did nut substitute letters but insted encrypted elements of the electrically generated Baudot code used in normal telegraphic transmissions.
Source: National Cryptologic Museum 13 February 2009 with some hyperlinks added
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Geheimschreiber
Although the ENIGMA remains the best know German cryptographic machine of World War II, in the early 1940's the German military introduced several new cryptographic teletypewriters known under the name Geheimschreiber - sometimes translated as "private secretary", sometimes as "secret writer".
These machines offered on-line encryption and decryption, that is plain test could be typed directly into the machine, automatically converted to encrypted text, and sent directly to the transmitter. In addtion to security, these "secret writers" provided the Germans with the ability to encrypt large volumes of test at high speed.
Learning that the Germans had named an early version of these machines SWORDFISH, the British and Americans bestowed nicknames associated with fish on the machines and the communications links in which they were used. The two most famous are TUNNY and STURGEON.
Just as they developed the Bombe to assist decryption of ENIGMA , the British developed data processing to attack the fish family of machine ciphers. (I must add: This was a whale of a job!) This led to the construction of the COLOSSUS which British historian F. H. Hinsley is "justly claimed as a pioneer programmable electronic digital computer."
STURGEON Siemens and Halske T52
The German Air Force began using the Siemens T-52 in 1942. The British nicknamed the machine STURGEON. Prototypes of this machine were developed at the request of the German Navy and were first manufactured in 1932.
Like the TUNNY machine, the STURGEON provided the German military with on-line cryptographic encryption decryption with high speed for large volumes of messages. The STURGEON added encryption capability to a standard teleprinter, although some models of STURGEON were later adapted for direct radio transmission.
There is a great report concerning TUNNY and COLOSSUS at www.alanturing.net/tunny_report/
Source: National Cryptologic Museum 13 February 2009 with some hyperlinks added
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Geheimschreiber
Although the ENIGMA remains the best know German cryptographic machine of World War II, in the early 1940's the German military introduced several new cryptographic teletypewriters known under the name Geheimschreiber - sometimes translated as "private secretary", sometimes as "secret writer".
These machines offered on-line encryption and decryption, that is plain test could be typed directly into the machine, automatically converted to encrypted text, and sent directly to the transmitter. In addtion to security, these "secret writers" provided the Germans with the ability to encrypt large volumes of test at high speed.
Learning that the Germans had named an early version of these machines SWORDFISH, the British and Americans bestowed nicknames associated with fish on the machines and the communications links in which they were used. The two most famous are TUNNY and STURGEON.
Just as they developed the Bombe to assist decryption of ENIGMA , the British developed data processing to attack the fish family of machine ciphers. (I must add: This was a whale of a job!) This led to the construction of the COLOSSUS which British historian F. H. Hinsley is "justly claimed as a pioneer programmable electronic digital computer."
STURGEON Siemens and Halske T52
The German Air Force began using the Siemens T-52 in 1942. The British nicknamed the machine STURGEON. Prototypes of this machine were developed at the request of the German Navy and were first manufactured in 1932.
Like the TUNNY machine, the STURGEON provided the German military with on-line cryptographic encryption decryption with high speed for large volumes of messages. The STURGEON added encryption capability to a standard teleprinter, although some models of STURGEON were later adapted for direct radio transmission.
Source: National Cryptologic Museum 13 February 2009 with some hyperlinks added
Interesting T52 link www.quadibloc.com/crypto/te0302.htm
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The Codebreakers by David Kahn
Because The Codebreakers dealt with several potentially sensitive subjects, like the National Security Agency, the US Intelligence and defense communities asked to review the manuscript prior to publication. After its review, the Department of Defense stated they "deplored the book" and "it would not be in the national interest to publish it." Kahn deleted certain portions related to NSA and the book was published without further incidence.
Source of material : National Cryptologic Museum
The Codebreakers (from Wikipedia article on David Kahn)
The Codebreakers comprehensively chronicles the history of cryptography from ancient Egypt to the time of its writing. It is widely regarded as the best account of the history of cryptography up to its publication. William Crowell, the former deputy director of the National Security Agency, was quoted in Newsday as saying "Before he (Kahn) came along, the best you could do was buy an explanatory book that usually was too technical and terribly dull." Kahn, then a journalist, was contracted to write a book on cryptology in 1961. He began writing it part-time, at one point quitting his regular job to work on it full time. The book was to include information on the National Security Agency (NSA), and according to the author James Bamford writing in 1982, the agency attempted to stop its publication, and considered various options, including publishing a negative review of Kahn's work in the press to discredit him. A committee of the United States Intelligence Board concluded that the book was "a possibly valuable support to foreign COMSEC authorities" and recommended "further low-key actions as possible, but short of legal action, to discourage Mr. Kahn or his prospective publishers". Kahn's publisher, the Macmillan company, handed over the manuscript to the Federal government for review without Kahn's permission on 4 March 1966. Kahn and Macmillan eventually agreed to remove some material from the manuscript, particularly concerning the relationship between the NSA and its British counterpart, the GCHQ.
The Codebreakers did not cover most of the history concerning the breaking of the German Enigma machine (which became public knowledge only in the 1970s). Nor did it cover the advent of strong cryptography in the public domain, beginning with the invention of public key cryptography and the specification of the Data Encryption Standard in the mid-1970s. This book was republished in 1996, and this new edition includes an additional chapter briefly covering the events since the original publication.
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James R. Child had a long and distinguished professional career. A pioneer in language testing, his Agency cryptologic experiences began in Arlington Hall even before NSA was established. Jim retired after more than 50 years of government service. By then, he possessed the rare ability to read more than 40 different languages.
Mr. Child began his career at NSA's training facility as a teacher of Slavic languages and Indonesian. He built on this experience as an analyst concerned with various operational language problems, and then as a scientific linguist, analyzing the languages themselves. Later, he presided over the development of standardized reading proficency tests, which were novel because they contained authentic tests, in a large number of languages. They were designed to be given to university language majors and minors applying to the Agency. Many of Mr. Child's tests are still in use.
Recognizing the need to define levels of difficulty of spoken and written tests, Mr Child work intensively with the Agency, other government, and academic colleagues to develop the Interagency Language Roundtable's Language Proficiency Scale (Levels 0-5). This is now used throughout the United States government and in grades K-12, colleges, and universities to determine language proficiency. Jim also touched countless lives because of his development of the VORD, a test he built to assess language learning potential in languages unlike English. It is now given to every language applicant at NSA.
Parry, T.S. & Child, J.R. Preliminary investigation of the relationship between VORD, MLAT, and language proficiency. In T. S. Parry & C.W. Stansfield (Eds.), "Language aptitude reconsidered." Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall Regents/Center for Applied Linguistics.
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Operational ENIGMA rotors
To further enhance ENIGMA's security, the German military issued extra rotors with each machine, two for Army and Air Force, four for the Navy. Each rotor was wired differently and identified with a Roman numeral. Setting up a communications net involved selecting the rotors for the day and placing them in the proper left to right order.
Source National Cryptologic Museum
Comment - presume this is a set of navy rotors as there are a total of seven, three plus four extra. The name of this set looks to be M6829
ENIGMA remains the best known German cryptographic machine of World War II.
ENIGMA cipher machine collection
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As with all cipher machines, it was necessary to know how to set up the ENIGMA so that the sender and receiver could read each others messages. To add to the ENIGMA's complexity, each of the theree German armed services used it's own set of keys, often using a different set of keys for each communications network. The key list shown here was used by the German Army to change ENIGMA settings daily for a one month period. Government and commercial keys would be similar.
Source National Cryptologic Museum
ENIGMA remains the best known German cryptographic machine of World War II.
Some added info (from Wikipedia ENIGMA article)
Walzenlage ( Wheel order )
Each rotor was wired differently and identified with a Roman numeral. Setting up a communications net involved selecting the rotors for the day and placing them in the proper left to right order.
Ringstellung ("ring setting").
alphabet ring of rotor relative to the core wiring. The position of the ring is known as the Ringstellung ("ring setting").
Steckerverbindungen
plugboard (Steckerbrett) settings (10 of 13 appear to be used)
Kenngruppen key identification
ENIGMA cipher machine collection
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Geheimschreiber
Although the ENIGMA remains the best know German cryptographic machine of World War II, in the early 1940's the German military introduced several new cryptographic teletypewriters known under the name Geheimschreiber - sometimes translated as "private secretary", sometimes as "secret writer".
These machines offered on-line encryption and decryption, that is plain test could be typed directly into the machine, automatically converted to encrypted text, and sent directly to the transmitter. In addtion to security, these "secret writers" provided the Germans with the ability to encrypt large volumes of test at high speed.
Learning that the Germans had named an early version of these machines SWORDFISH, the British and Americans bestowed nicknames associated with fish on the machines and the communications links in which they were used. The two most famous are TUNNY and STURGEON.
Just as they developed the Bombe to assist decryption of ENIGMA , the British developed data processing to attack the fish family of machine ciphers. (I must add: This was a whale of a job!) This led to the construction of the COLOSSUS which British historian F. H. Hinsley is "justly claimed as a pioneer programmable electronic digital computer."
The 40 (SZ40) when first encountered in 1940 was nicknamed TUNNY by the British - after a fish better known to Americans as TUNA.
The Schlüsselzusatz SZ40, manufactured by the German firm Lorenz, was used by the German Army for high-level communications, generally between Army groups. It provided on-line encryption and decryption and was capable of handling large volumes f traffic at high speed. The TUNNY depended on wheels for encryption and decryption but unlike ENIGMA it did nut substitute letters but insted encrypted elements of the electrically generated Baudot code used in normal telegraphic transmissions.
Source: National Cryptologic Museum 13 February 2009 with some hyperlinks added
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Cipher volvelle on toilet paper created by Charles J. Mendelsohn for his use while studying Aloys Meister's Die Geheimschrift im Dienste der Päpstlichen Kurie von ihren Anfängen bis zum Ende des XVI. Jahrhunderts.
Established heading: Mendelsohn, Charles J. (Charles Jastrow), 1880-1939
Established heading: Meister, Aloys, 1866-1925
Penn Libraries call number: 652M M477
Penn Libraries catalog record