The Enigma Machines
The Enigma rotor cipher machine was potentially an excellent system. It generated a polyalphabetic substitution cipher, with a period before repetition of the substitution alphabet that was much longer than any message, or set of messages, sent with the same key.
A major weakness of the system, however, was that no letter could be enciphered to itself. This meant that some possible solutions could quickly be eliminated because of the same letter appearing in the same place in both the ciphertext and the putative piece of plaintext. Comparing the possible plaintext Keine besonderen Ereignisse (literally, "no special occurrences"—perhaps better translated as "nothing to report"), with a section of ciphertext, might produce the following:
| Ciphertext | O | H | J | Y | P | D | O | M | Q | N | J | C | O | S | G | A | W | H | L | E | I | H | Y | S | O | P | J | S | M | N | U |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Position 1 | K | E | I | N | E | B | E | S | O | N | D | E | R | E | N | E | R | E | I | G | N | I | S | S | E | ||||||
| Position 2 | K | E | I | N | E | B | E | S | O | N | D | E | R | E | N | E | R | E | I | G | N | I | S | S | E | ||||||
| Position 3 | K | E | I | N | E | B | E | S | O | N | D | E | R | E | N | E | R | E | I | G | N | I | S | S | E | ||||||
| Positions 1 and 3 for the possible plaintext are impossible because of matching letters.
The red cells represent these crashes. Position 2 is a possibility. |
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Read more about this topic: Cryptanalysis Of The Enigma
Famous quotes containing the words enigma and/or machines:
“The wounded surgeon plies the steel
That questions the distempered part;
Beneath the bleeding hands we feel
The sharp compassion of the healer’s art
Resolving the enigma of the fever chart.”
—T.S. (Thomas Stearns)
“In Hell all the messages you ever left on answering machines will be played back to you.”
—Judy Horacek (b. 1961)