The Influence Of The Enigma

One of the most important needs for espionage was in the deciphering of the ENIGMA. [176] This was used to code and decode German messages sent and received between commanders and such. [176] It was very hard to decipher the ENIGMA because of the way it was set up. [176] What made it so difficult to decipher was the process by which a letter in an original message was transformed into a different one for the transmitted message. [176] The process involved, among other things, three motors in each machine that were chosen from a set of five. [176] Each of them had twenty-six settings, and a plugboard, which connected the keyboard letters to the lampboard letters. [176] For example the first time the L key was pressed a B might light up, but because the rotors turned further entries of L on the board would not produce another B but rather other letters. [176] US intelligence along with help from other countries was eventually able to make a duplicate machine that would help them in decoding messages. [177] Without help from espionage in this instance the US and their allies would be susceptible to unknown attacks and movements of armies without having a chance to

The research question being investigated is “To what extent did breaking the Enigma code aid the Allies in winning World War II?”. This involves the practically “unbreakable” code that the Germans used during World War II. The Allies were able to break this code, which some historians think helped the Allies win the war. To understand whether this point is true or not, the background of the cracking of the Enigma Code was established. The Allied program which dealt with all the information being uncovered by the Enigma Code, was called the Ultra Program. Then, the beginning battles, the Battle of the Atlantic, Battle of Britain, North Africa Campaign, Invasion of Normandy, Battle of the Bulge, Battles in South America, and the Balkan Campaign

The cipher disk dates back to the Civil War, when it was used by both the Confederate side (CSA stands for Confederate States of America) and the Union side (the initials A.J.M. stand for Union Chief Signal Officer General Albert J. Myer). The goal of this invention was to provide a way for people that were in signaling distance of each other to communicate by deliberate movements of flags or other objects. It also utilized a secret arrangement of letters and numbers. It was about three and three-fourths of an inch to four inches in diameter and was usually made of wood or a thick, durable, paper-like material. It had two disks of different sizes that revolved on a central pin. The disks were divided along the outer edges into thirty equal

5 remarkable British scientists had gotten their hands on an actual Enigma machine smuggled out of Berlin. They had put tremendous effort into decoding the Nazi's messages by using their cryptanalytic abilities but had failed because of the lack of information on the machine's

“the keyboard for inputting letters, the scrambler unit for encrypting the letters and the lamp board for displaying the enciphered letters” (Lendl). In order to break the Enigma Machine, the code breakers had to find the daily settings that the German used and understand them. However, it is important to know that Polish cryptographers already broke the Enigma machine in 1932 as Marian Rejewski reconstructed a replica of the Enigma i.e. Bomba machine. However, Turing used Rejewski’s ideas and improved the bombe machine so that the machine could go through all the possible combinations of the Enigma rapidly (Lendl). The polish Bomba inspired Alan Turing for the construction of his own Bombe machine. The Bombe machine was crucial for the breaking of Enigma’s signals. This machine is not considered as a computer and does not perform calculation, but was designed “to carry out a systematic search to determine the following components of an Enigma key: the rotor order, the ‘rotor core starting positions’, and some of the ‘steckers’” (Carter). Due to the work of the Bletchley Park codebreakers, the United Kingdom had access to the German communications and could predict future naval attacks, this allowed the prevention of several

The Allies used Ultra greatly throughout the course of WW2. As mentioned earlier, Ultra benefited the Allies as it provided them with information about the Axis’ powers such as locations of where they would attack next or even supply lists. The Battle of the Atlantic was an event where the use of Alan Turing’s work paid dividends. At this point, Alan Turing and his crew were now dealing with the Naval Enigma, which had been more difficult to decrypt as the naval enigma developed over the course of the war. There were several instances where the Allies were able to capture Naval Enigma settings, which benefited Turing and the code breakers as they would not have to waste time using the bombes to acquire the key settings. The Allies captured a German ship called the Krebs, which contained naval Enigma machines, and codebooks, which provided the key settings for the previous month. It was suggested that the Allies

The Colossus Mk 1 or the first analogue computer, a response to the German enigma code, was first shown working in December of 1943 and later the Colossus Mk 2,

When a fellow general received the message, he would wrap the paper around his corresponding scytale to decipher the message (Tyson 2014). Since the advent of computers though, encryption has become increasing important and relies almost solely on cryptographic means to secure information. When speaking about encryption today, it refers more to the process rather than the mathematical formulas used to scramble data. The basic idea behind encrypting a computer message is such that it is scrambled with a sequence of random bits, known as a key, and only parties with the corresponding key can transpose it back into a comprehensible format. These keys are created via a cipher, otherwise known as an algorithm. When a user sends a message, known as the plaintext, across a network, the computer applies an algorithm to the information to encode it, resulting in a ciphertext (Encryption Basics 2014). This method can be best summarized visually:

Encryption on the other hand, is nothing new to humans.It has been used for millenniums, and can be traced as far back as ancient Egyptian history. There are many famous, but one stands out. Caesar Cipher, which is working on a very simple system, shifting the alphabet. This code is very simple to break, but there are other codes that are much harder. Equatorie of Planetis is a substitution cipher as well, but is not a shift of the alphabet. The way to solve this cipher is based on a letter system that’s called frequency analysis .It can be decoded with a method called frequency

Centuries ago, man used to write on paper with a pen. The innovation that we have within ourselves brought our ancestors the idea of inventing something which in place of using a pen just used a paper and the letters or the text was encrypted on it by a machine. The efforts yielded us the term “Typewriter”. It was a mechanical device which had the letters of the alphabets placed on it with essentials like a button which was used to create spaces between words and the strokes of the letters produced the exact same words on the paper through mechanically moving thongs which impressed letters on the paper. A typical typewriter is shown in the figure; it was the first commercial typewriter which was brought in the market. Christopher Stoles patented

operations on the Eastern Front (Enigma Key Broken). The Germans thought there code was too

Many developments in science contributed to the development of the telegraph. Alessandro Volta invented the battery in 1800. Shortly after in 1820 Hans Oersted deflected a magnetic needle with an electric current. This showed there was a connection between electricity and magnetism. Gale, Vail, and Morse invented a telegraph that worked by applying pressure to a key which would complete the electric circuit. In order to use the telegraph Samuel Morse and Alfred Vail invented the morse code. The alphabet was translated into dots and dashes. Originally a telegraph operator would mark the signals on paper, then translate them back into English. As time progressed, however operators began to understand the code just by hearing the clicking of the receiver. A receiver became apart of the process. The receiver would pronounce the beeping sounds. Allowing the operator to translate the message being

All around the world there are different mysteries and enigmas. Ranging from solved to unsolved. All depending on where you are. Though there are some mysteries that span the world, enigmas that are known to everyone. But how could they be known to everyone? The internet! A constant web connecting everything and everyone together. With it being so huge and popular, you must assume there are some unexplainable things. To start, an enigma is someone or something that is difficult to understand or explain. Such as cryptic messages and strange videos.

Word War II era One-time pad was the most common encryption technique because it is virtually impossible to break. So if it is compromised or misused it will cost grave damage to the its country. For instance, U.S. and U.K. cryptanalytic success codenamed Venona allowed U.S. cryptanalysts to decrypt the message which led to exposure of a number of Soviet agents in the U.S. and the U.K.

The first sign of cryptography was documented on Egyptian scribes where non-standard hieroglyphs were used on clay tablets. (Whitman, 2011, p. 351) The Egyptians were the first documented