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Breaking Enigma

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Claudiu Camenentchi
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6 views

Breaking Enigma

Uploaded by

Claudiu Camenentchi
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Breaking

Enigma

Apostol Anca, Zugravul Daria, Camenențchi Claudiu,


Simionov Vlad
Enigma

• Enigma was a cipher device used by Nazi


Germany’s military command to encode
strategic messages before and during World
War II.
• In 1939, with the growing likelihood of a
German invasion, the Poles turned their
information over to the British, who set up a
secret code-breaking group known as Ultra.
Because the Germans shared their encryption
device with the Japanese, Ultra also
contributed to Allied victories in the Pacific.
The way Enigma works

The Enigma machine produced


encoded messages. Electrical
This constant altering of the
signals from a tipewriter-like
electrical pathway produces a very
keyboard were routed through a
long period before the pattern—the
series of rotating wheels as well as
key sequence or substitution
a plugboard that scrambled the
alphabet—repeats.
output but did so in a way that was
decipherable with the right settings.
How an Enigma machine works

• When a key on the keyboard is pressed, one or more rotors move to form a new rotor configuration
which will encode one letter as another. Current flows through the machine and lights up one display
lamp on the lamp board, which shows the output letter. So if the "K" key is pressed, and the Enigma
machine encodes that letter as a "P," the "P" would light up on the lamp board.
• Each month, Enigma operators received codebooks which specified which settings the machine
would use each day. Every morning the code would change.
• For example, one one day, the codebook may list the settings described in the day-key below:
• 1.1. Plugboard settings: A/L – P/R – T/D – B/W – K/F – O/Y
• A plugboard is similar to an old-fashioned telephone switch board that has ten wires, each wire
having two ends that can be plugged into a slot. Each plug wire can connect two letters to be a pair
(by plugging one end of the wire to one letter’s slot and the other end to another letter). The two
letters in a pair will swap over, so if “A” is connected to “Z,” “A” becomes “Z” and “Z” becomes “A.”
This provides an extra level of scrambling for the military.
• To implement this day-key first you would have to swap
the letters A and L by connecting them on the plugboard,
swap P and R by connecting them on the plugboard, and
then the same with the other letter pairs listed above.
Essentially, a one end of a cable would be plugged into the
"A" slot and the other end would be plugged into the L slot.
Before any further scrambling happens by the rotors, this
adds a first layer of scrambling where the letters
connected by the cable are encoded as each other. For
example, if I were to encode the message “APPLE” after
connecting only the "A" to the "L", this would be encoded
as ”LPPAE”
• 2. Rotor (or scrambler) arrangement: 2 — 3 —1
• The Enigma machines came with several different rotors, each rotor providing
a different encoding scheme. In order to encode a message, the Enigma
machines took three rotors at a time, one in each of three slots. Each different
combination of rotors would produce a different encoding scheme. Note: most
military Enigma machines had three rotor slots though some had more.
• To accomplish the configuration above, place rotor #2 in the 1st slot of the
enigma, rotor #3 in the 2nd slot, and rotor #1 in the 3rd slot.
• 3.3. Rotor orientations: D – K –P
• On each rotor, there is an alphabet along the rim, so the operator can set in a
particular orientation. For this example, the operator would turn the rotor in
slot 1 so that D is displayed, rotate the second slot so that K is displayed, and
rotate the third slot so that P is displayed.
The Enigma machines produced a
polyalphabetic substitution cipher. A
purely random key sequence, containing
no repetitive pattern, would, in principle,
make a polyalphabetic substitution cipher
unbreakable.

The reason The operator set the machine’s rotating


wheels and plugboard to different
why Enigma predetermined positions according to
was so hard daily orders, regularly changing the
cipher.
to break
The people who broked the
Enigma code
• The Enigma code was broken through
the collaboration of the French secret
service, the Polish Cipher Bureau, and
the British government cryptological
establishment, Bletchey Park. Although
all these agencies contributed to
breaking Enigma, the roles of Polish
mathematician Marian Rejewski and
English mathematician Alan Turing were
essential.
The way Enigma
was cracked
• In 1932–1933 Polish mathematician
Marian Rejewski deduced the wiring
pattern inside the wheels of Enigma,
assisted by Enigma operating manuals
provided by the French secret service, to
make a successful decryption machine.
When the Germans improved their
encryption, rendering Rejewski’s work
outdated.
• English mathematician Alan Turing
developed a more advanced machine
that was deciphering Enigma messages
by 1940.
Alan Turing

• Alan Turing was a brilliant mathematician.


Born in London in 1912, he studied at both
Cambridge and Princeton universities. He was
already working part-time for the British
Government’s Code and Cypher School
before the Second World War broke out.
• In 1939, Turing took up a full-time role at
Bletchley Park in Buckinghamshire – where
top secret work was carried out to decipher
the military codes used by Germany and its
allies.
The Bombe

• Alan Turing invented along with


fellow code-breaker Gordon
Welchman – a machine known
as the Bombe. This device
helped to significantly reduce
the work of the code-breakers.
From mid-1940, German Air
Force signals were being read
at Bletchley and the
intelligence gained from them
was helping the war effort.
The bombe was an electro-mechanical device that replicated
the action of several Enigma machines wired together. A
standard German Enigma employed, at any one time, a set of
three rotors, each of which could be set in any of 26 positions.

At each position of the rotors, an electric current would or


would not flow in each of the 26 wires, and this would be tested
in the bombe's comparator unit. For a large number of positions,
the test would lead to a logical contradiction, ruling out that
setting. If the test did not lead to a contradiction, the machine
would stop.

The operator would then find the point at which the test passed,

The Bombe record the candidate solution by reading the positions of the
indicator drums and the indicator unit on the Bombe's right-
hand end panel. The operator then restarted the run.
structure
Turing’s bombe

Turing’s method was based on the


use of “cribs”—comparing
patterns of the encrypted
message and a known portion of
His circuit also eliminated the
plaintext, such as a weather
layer of encryption generated by However, this process needed to
update—to break the key. He was
the plugboard. By connecting the be run 60 times for each of the
also aided by the fact that no
scramblers in series, each possible scrambler combinations,
letter was ever coded as itself. He
scrambler fed off the and the plugboard settings still
decided not to replicate one
combinations from the earlier one, had to be deciphered once the
Enigma machine so as to decode
and only 17,576 scrambler correct scrambler settings were
a message, but, rather, he
combinations would need to be identified.
designed an electrical circuit
checked.
consisting, effectively, of three of
these machines, each running all
159 quintillion combinations to
arrive at the right setting.
Biblyography

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptanalysis_of_th
e_Enigma#
• https://www.iwm.org.uk/history/how-alan-turing-
cracked-the-enigma-code
• https://www.britannica.com/topic/Enigma-
German-code-device
• https://www.britannica.com/topic/Enigma-
German-code-device
• https://brilliant.org/wiki/enigma-machine/

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