Author Topic: Cracking the Enigma Code. (Read 249 times)

jihad · « **on:** August 28, 2001, 02:42:00 PM »

Check the listings for your local PBS station, tonight the story about Station X and their cracking of the Enigma Code is on NOVA.

miko2d · « **Reply #1 on:** August 28, 2001, 04:15:00 PM »

I've seen it before. Very interesting piece. The main point is: do not get sloppy. Allies would not have been able to decode the transmissions if they were not able to exploit the human-related errors like predictable or unchanging key combination.

If the first three letters of unencoded key are HIT only belief that nobody is trying to intercept your message would allow a person to use LER as the second (encoded) part of the key.

Facinating, all those snippets of history - how the things were really done vs. what is commonly known.

miko

Sandman · « **Reply #2 on:** August 28, 2001, 07:01:00 PM »

If you enjoyed that, I can recommend some fiction to read... Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson. It jumps between World War II and present day and centers around crypto and the internet.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0380973464/qid=999043826/sr=2-2/ref=aps_sr_b_1_2/104-7599307-7403110

MarkVZ · « **Reply #3 on:** August 29, 2001, 05:08:00 AM »

That was an interesting program, thanks for the reminder Jihad.

I found it amazing that they could build a computer like that to analyze those messages back in '43. They say it was the world's first programmable computer ever.