32 Facts About Enigma machine

Enigma machine is a cipher device developed and used in the early- to mid-20th century to protect commercial, diplomatic, and military communication.

The Enigma machine was considered so secure that it was used to encipher the most top-secret messages.

Enigma machine has an electromechanical rotor mechanism that scrambles the 26 letters of the alphabet.

Poland's sharing of her achievements enabled the western Allies to exploit Enigma machine-enciphered messages as a major source of intelligence.

Enigma machine was invented by German engineer Arthur Scherbius at the end of World War I This was unknown until 2003 when a paper by Karl de Leeuw was found that described in detail Scherbius' changes.

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Several different Enigma machine models were produced, but the German military models, having a plugboard, were the most complex.

From Romania they traveled on to France, where they resumed their cryptological work, collaborating by teletype with the British, who began work on decrypting German Enigma machine messages, using the Polish equipment and techniques.

These design features are the reason that the Enigma machine was originally referred to as the rotor-based cipher machine during its intellectual inception in 1915.

Enigma machine's security comes from using several rotors in series and the regular stepping movement of the rotors, thus implementing a polyalphabetic substitution cipher.

Naval version of the Wehrmacht Enigma machine had always been issued with more rotors than the other services: At first six, then seven, and finally eight.

The four-rotor Naval Enigma machine accommodated an extra rotor in the same space as the three-rotor version.

The reflector ensured that Enigma would be self-reciprocal; thus, with two identically configured machines, a message could be encrypted on one and decrypted on the other, without the need for a bulky mechanism to switch between encryption and decryption modes.

In use, the Enigma machine required a list of daily key settings and auxiliary documents.

The procedures for German Naval Enigma machine were more elaborate and more secure than those in other services and employed auxiliary codebooks.

An Enigma machine's setting specified each operator-adjustable aspect of the machine:.

Enigma machine was designed to be secure even if the rotor wiring was known to an opponent, although in practice considerable effort protected the wiring configuration.

One of the earliest indicator procedures for the Enigma machine was cryptographically flawed and allowed Polish cryptanalysts to make the initial breaks into the plugboard Enigma machine.

Enigma machine moved the rotors to the WZA start position and encoded the message key SXT.

Enigma machine then set up the message key, SXT, as the start position and encrypted the message.

Since the operation of an Enigma machine enciphering a message is a series of such configurations, each associated with a single character being enciphered, a sequence of such representations can be used to represent the operation of the machine as it enciphers a message.

Character mappings for a given configuration of the Enigma machine are in turn the result of a series of such mappings applied by each pass through a component of the Enigma machine: the enciphering of a character resulting from the application of a given component's mapping serves as the input to the mapping of the subsequent component.

Swiss used a version of Enigma called Model K or Swiss K for military and diplomatic use, which was very similar to commercial Enigma D The machine's code was cracked by Poland, France, the United Kingdom and the United States; the latter code-named it INDIGO.

Enigma machine seldom carried high-level strategic messages, which when not urgent went by courier, and when urgent went by other cryptographic systems including the Geheimschreiber.

Enigma machine I is known as the Wehrmacht, or "Services" Enigma machine, and was used extensively by German military services and other government organisations before and during World War II.

Four-rotor Enigma machine was introduced by the Navy for U-boat traffic on 1 February 1942, called M4.

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Enigma machine G, used by the Abwehr, had four rotors, no plugboard, and multiple notches on the rotors.

German-made Enigma machine-K used by the Swiss Army had three rotors and a reflector, but no plugboard.

The Enigma machine is fully restored and CMoA has the original paperwork for the purchase on 7 March 1936 by the German Army.

Replicas are available in various forms, including an exact reconstructed copy of the Naval M4 model, an Enigma machine implemented in electronics, various simulators and paper-and-scissors analogues.

Rare Abwehr Enigma machine, designated G312, was stolen from the Bletchley Park museum on 1 April 2000.

Shortly afterward, the Enigma machine was sent anonymously to BBC journalist Jeremy Paxman, missing three rotors.

Unique rotor Enigma machine called Cryptograph was constructed in 2002 by Netherlands-based Tatjana van Vark.