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back to article Turing's rapid Nazi Enigma code-breaking secret revealed

Blighty's communications eavesdropping nerve centre GCHQ has issued two papers written by superboffin Alan Turing on the maths behind code-breaking. The documents, held in secret for 70 years, laid the foundations for the quick and efficient decryption of Nazi Enigma-scrambled messages - a breakthrough that lopped about two …

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  1. Kevin Turvey

    Unbreakable

    If Enigma had been used properly it would have been unbreakable (even today), in most cases it was the lazyness of the operators that allowed us to "crack the code".

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    1. Michael Shelby
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      Re: Unbreakable

      There were still inherent design flaws in the machine. For example, the fastest moving wheel was on the right-hand (output) side of the machine. This meant that, for long stretches of messages, the whole rest of the machine could be treated as a constant, which made breaking the codes possible. You're right about human factors making it even easier, but Enigma was not perfect.

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      1. Kevin Turvey
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        Re: Unbreakable

        I agree it was'nt perfect, probably nothing manmade (personmade?) is, but I've read somewhere that if it was used correctly it would still be unbreakable, but I'm not an expert in this, so maybe I'm wrong.

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        1. graeme leggett Silver badge
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          Re: Unbreakable

          "Cribs" were a big help giving you a attack on the code. No point in having a perfect encryption of messages if you know that the original starts "Dear Adolf, I'm sorry for not writing sooner....?"

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      2. Anonymous Coward
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        Boffin

        Re: Unbreakable

        An even more fundamental design flaw in the Enigma machine is that a character cannot encipher to itself, this is because the lamp board and key board shared the connection for a given character.

        Add that to its other flaws and it became possible to break it, although the 4-wheel Enigma used by the German Navy did take significant extra work to find a way in.

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    2. Francis Boyle Silver badge
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      Re: Unbreakable

      Any security system that relies on users acting like machines rather than humans is inherently flawed.

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    3. haughtonomous
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      Re: Unbreakable

      The weakest link in any process is usually the people involved.

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    4. Trygve Henriksen
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      Re: Unbreakable

      Not completely unbreakable if used right, but...

      (Enigmas were in use for a long time after WWII... )

      And the operators weren't lazy, either. They were following strict protocol.

      What the Germans did wrong was that at the beginning of EVERY message, they sent an 'offset' code giving the final 'operator decided' adjustment of the daily code. then they incredibly enough REPEATED that 'offset'.

      Germans were nothing but thorough... After all, there was the chance that the first few codes were misread by the receiver...

      They correctly assumed that long messages was bad, though, and that a lot of short messages sent on the same day, using the exact same code would be just as bad. They just screwed up on how to do the 'offset' key exchange.

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      1. Kevin Turvey
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        Re: Unbreakable

        Maybe lazy was the wrong word though I remember something about an operator having to re-send a long message and he didnt bother to change the rotor settings or something which helped Bletchley Park decrypt the message, also they always started with a station weather report which had a limited number of variables which aided decrypting, and another bored operator who simply pressed the same letter many times for some reason which also aided Bletchley Park to work out the rotor settings, my memory is a bit fuzzy about the details, mostly it seemed to be human error compounded by the official method/system of using Enigma not being the most secure.

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      2. Ilgaz
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        Needless use of enigma

        Needlessly using enigma for publicly available data helped too. They used weather reports. Say the weather report for London, 22c and rain. They were waiting that message (knowing content) to verify.

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  2. haughtonomous

    re: Unbreakable

    This piece of work is powerful despite the use of a primitive typewriter and pen, and lack of use of Powerpoint, MathCad, Word etc. These days it would most likely be given scant attention and disregarded as an 'unprofessional' piece of work.

    How we have lost our way with all these modern 'productivity' tools, which are for the most part exactly the opposite. Turing would have utterly rejected them, I'm sure!

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    1. Anonymous Coward
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      Anonymous Coward

      Re: re: Unbreakable

      "How we have lost our way with all these modern 'productivity' tools, which are for the most part exactly the opposite. Turing would have utterly rejected them, I'm sure!"

      Er - we are talking about a chap who could read 32 character hexadecimal in reverse and do mental arithmetic with the numbers. This is the same geezer who arrived at the concept of a universal machine, a concept now referred to as a Turing Machine. We refer to devices with enough computing power and programmability to run arbitrary algorithms as Turing Complete.

      I think he would have been amazed and delighted by modern technology, and would have used symbolic computation to the utmost to construct some of the objects he used logic to prove statements about.

      (Just call me Keith for now, got to be careful)

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  3. haughtonomous

    Turing is an egg

    or rather, he is in danger of being over-egged. There were many others who made major contributions to cracking Enigma, not to mention modern computing. Tommy Flowers, for example. We seldom hear of those unsung heroes.

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    1. Ilgaz
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      Re: Turing is an egg

      Being forced to suicide and not being credited may have been contributed to Turing mania.

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  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    National Archive

    Has a really crappilly slow website.

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  5. Anonymous Coward
    Headmaster

    Strange El Reg Mathematics

    By what obscure system does an even which took place last friday coincide with one which will occur on 23 June?

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  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Wonder how much further on we would be had He not been drivin to his death early. So sad.

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  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    "In December 1932, the Polish Cipher Bureau first broke Germany's military Enigma ciphers. Five weeks before the outbreak of World War II, on 25 July 1939, in Warsaw, they presented their Enigma-decryption techniques and equipment to French and British military intelligence.[3][4][5] "

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enigma_machine

    All this talk about Enigma and Turing and never even a word about who actually cracked the code. :(

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  8. bep

    Pole dancing

    There were several enigma codes and I don't think the Poles broke all of them. The navy code was particularly vital for defeating the U-boats. I believe that even with all the brilliance and equipment, they still needed cribs to break the codes quickly, which were usually obtained in the field or at sea at great personal risk to those involved

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