6/3 What kind of encryption scheme is used in the German Enigma Machine?
Is it symmetrical encryption? Why was it so hard to crack in the 40s?
\_ I believe it was a poly-alphabetic cypher that changed on each
letter (therefore, yes it was symmetric). So, the first
letter in a mesage would use one cypher, the next would use
another. The standard machine used 3 wheels, so the opertator
would set the 3 wheels to that day's setting, and type in
either the message or the cypher-text. Each would produce the
other. This kind of message is easy to break with a computer,
and lots of example messages, but I wouldn't want to work it
out on a sheet of paper. Of course the setting changed
(daily?) frequently, and when the settings changed, you got
almost a whole new encryption problem. There are LOTS of pages
on this, and example java applets. Google.
\_ And if you like novelisations, Neal Stephenson's _Cryptonomicon_
and Robert Harris' _Enigma_ cover both the math and the history
quite nicely.
\_ Actually, the German field soldiers tended to set them (there
were more wheels later on) to swear words, so there was
actually a decent message depth. -chialea
\_ They had plenty of sample messages when nearly every unit that
had one all sent happy birthday messages to hitler.
\_ interesting weakness- the rotors were hard-wired- so for a given
position the mapping of one letter was reversible. Say the code
key was XXX and you typed A and got a Z... if you had typed a Z
you would also get a A. For the rotors in that position. Ask
chialea for how useful that actually would be. -brain
\_ Applet http://www.ugrad.cs.jhu.edu/~russell/classes/enigma |