Acoustic Cryptanalysis - History

History

Victor Marchetti and John D. Marks eventually negotiated the declassification of CIA acoustic intercepts of the sounds of cleartext printing from encryption machines. Technically this method of attack dates to the time of FFT hardware being cheap enough to perform the task—in this case the late 1960s to mid-1970s. However, using other more primitive means such acoustical attacks were made in the mid-1950s.

In his book Spycatcher, former MI5 operative Peter Wright discusses use of an acoustic attack against Egyptian Hagelin cipher machines in 1956. The attack was codenamed "ENGULF".

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