The Enigma Machine
 

158,962,555,217,826,360,000 combinations!

I've always been fascinated by the Enigma machine. Here are two very good videos describing how it worked and its biggest flaw.

Cracking this code must have saved countless lives!

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<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/V4V2bpZlqx8" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>

And an entertaining but somewhat inaccurate movie about breaking the code.

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https://slate.com/culture/2014/12/the-imitation-game-fact-vs-fiction-how-true-the-new-movie-is-to-alan-turings-real-life-story.html

Polish Cipher Bureau.

It is cool to see that explained. I have of course seen the enigma machine in many movies. The allies did capture one of the machines during the war as I remember.

I always loved the fact that the Japanese and Germans were very good code breakers, and were 100% stumped and clueless with the Navajo code talkers we used in WW2.

The Poles were busy breaking Enigma as early as 1928, with the industrial version. They had already broken the military version prior to the start of the war and turned it over to the French and British three weeks before they were invaded. They knew the Germans were coming.

Thanks Dan. I didn't know about this.

I presume the Germans had switched encryption on their machines during before or during the war?

ok, read up : they Germans added complexity and more rotors that prevented the Polish techniques from keeping up

The CIA/NSA hacked the modern variant of this made by some Swiss company.

added only one rotor 3 to 4

germans just used the same weather reports every day with the identical beginnings
that greatly aided decoding the newer 4 rotor machines

the reports gave time and location of the sending station
allies knew the beginning script so the rotor settings could be matched

we read their mail real time and they never got it

yes the poles crack it and gave it to the allied power

u-boats reports were a key in the shipping war the reports gave positions every day
making avoiding them or sending killer groups eazy

Thanks for all this info everyone.

I think it was brought out in a film, or I read it somewhere, that not all German plans was revealed so they wouldn't suspect that we were eavesdropping. If that's true, must've been a tough selection to make, possibly putting many lives in jeopardy.

95-96 I was at gun show in kern county. Looking through a pile of crap for Mauser parts I uncovered a strange typewriter. stared at it for a minute before Realizing what it was. He wanted $9000. I thought about offering him my car. Couldn’t come to a deal.

He said it came from India. Did some research after the fact. The British captured thousands of enigma machines after the war. At the same time colonies were breaking away all over the empire. British intel gave Kenya, India, South Africa, etc a gift of “uncrackable” code machines.

I had heard that the Germans always included "Heil Hitler" on all messages - so the intelligence angencies were able to use that to help decode as well.

You should re-watch "The Imitation Game" ... maybe you just did not see it.
That was a very big deal in the film....

Relative of one of the codebreakers was on one of the ships they allowed to be torpedoed... they could have warned them... did not...

The movie U-571 is all about recovering an enigma machine from the Germans. The closing credits mention several different successful missions where they were "stolen."