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The piece of paper that fooled Hitler

bbc.co.uk

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Re: The piece of paper that fooled Hitler

#41

Post by oiuytghyujki »

stcredzero wrote: post #20

I from a crypto history book I read in high school: in WWI, German intercepts of Russian transmissions have the Russians illusions of German tactical genius. Somehow, Germans would often be in position to confound the Russians. The reason for this: Russian code clerks were badly trained. Sometimes there would be a couple of attempts to send a message followed by a plain-text transmission by the frustrated code clerk.…

It wasn't a nonce as such - it was a key exchange, slightly more like a salt in modern terms.

One of the main failings of the Germans was their love of formal introductions and sign offs in official messages, especially by the navy which otherwise had rather better crypto than the other branches. However if you are already stuck with a language that has a very fixed word and sentence structure you don't help by signing all your messages with the same 40 character long formal greeting.

Re: The piece of paper that fooled Hitler

#42

Post by oiuytghyujki »

protomyth wrote: post #38
oiuytghyujki wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All crypto systems fail when faced with human operators! There was one story of an Afrika corp operator who sent HIT - LER as the 2 'secret' triplets every day for the entire North Africa campaign. Then disastrously he was captured! It's an interesting question as to whether at least the best (4-wheel naval) system could be cracked without operator error or deliberate plain text seeding. The only flaw of the enigma i…

All crypto systems fail when faced with human operators! Also doesn't help if you don't destroy your crypto books / equipment when boarded: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U-505

It's an interesting bit of military psychology that while every side in WWII broke their enemy's codes - all of them believed all their own codes to be unbreakable!

Re: The piece of paper that fooled Hitler

#43

Post by oiuytghyujki »

danshapiro wrote: post #28

Did anyone else notice that the BBC tarted up their headline to the point that it's actually false? The piece of paper was written by the Germans. It didn't "fool" them. It was proof that the Germans had been fooled, but I guess that's not quite as good for linkbait.

If you have broken the enemies crypto AND he doesn't know you have - then you can also send fake messages which they are going to believe.

So the Brits could have sent a message ordering a few panzer armies from Normandy to the Pas de Calais. It doesn't seem that this was ever done - presumably because it gave the game away.

Even more interestingly - the Brits kept secret that they had cracked enigma into the 1980s because after the war they distributed the 'uncrackable' German code machine to lots of rather gullible allies

Re: The piece of paper that fooled Hitler

#44

Post by zandor »

stcredzero wrote: post #20

I from a crypto history book I read in high school: in WWI, German intercepts of Russian transmissions have the Russians illusions of German tactical genius. Somehow, Germans would often be in position to confound the Russians. The reason for this: Russian code clerks were badly trained. Sometimes there would be a couple of attempts to send a message followed by a plain-text transmission by the frustrated code clerk.…

A really great book [1] which details how Marian Rejewski, Jerzy Rozycki and Henryk Zygalski exploited a lot of these human errors and managed to keep up with the changes of the Enigma machine.

[1] If you can find it somewhere for a fair price, http://www.amazon.com/Enigma-German-Machine-Foreign-intellig...

Re: The piece of paper that fooled Hitler

#45

Post by Mithrandir »

markkat wrote: post #19

This is very tangential, but I just happened to finish the "Guns of August" by Barbara Tuchman last night. If any HN military history buffs have not read it yet, do pick it up. Although about the opening of WWI, it provides some great insight into both World Wars.

Another excellent book is "Inside the Third Reich" by Albert Speer (ex Minister of Armaments.) Definitely worth the time.

http://www.archive.org/details/Inside_the_Third_Reich_Albert...

http://www.amazon.com/Inside-Third-Reich-Albert-Speer/dp/068...

Re: The piece of paper that fooled Hitler

#46

Post by InclinedPlane »

elwin wrote: post #17
BluePoints wrote: post #15

I want to know how one actively becomes a 'double agent' - anyone know any books that tell the 'story' here or in similar cases?

Because of their code-breaking, British intelligence was able to catch most German agents as soon as they arrived. Some of them were given the opportunity to "turn double". One example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eddie_Chapman

Note that "given the opportunity" meant "given the choice between execution and turning double agent".

Re: The piece of paper that fooled Hitler

#47

Post by InclinedPlane »

elwin wrote: post #17
BluePoints wrote: post #15

I want to know how one actively becomes a 'double agent' - anyone know any books that tell the 'story' here or in similar cases?

Because of their code-breaking, British intelligence was able to catch most German agents as soon as they arrived. Some of them were given the opportunity to "turn double". One example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eddie_Chapman

Note that "given the opportunity" meant "given the choice between execution and turning double agent", though some chose to turn themselves in and offer themselves up as double agents of their own will.

Re: The piece of paper that fooled Hitler

#48

Post by mturmon »

zandor wrote: post #44
stcredzero wrote: post #20

I from a crypto history book I read in high school: in WWI, German intercepts of Russian transmissions have the Russians illusions of German tactical genius. Somehow, Germans would often be in position to confound the Russians. The reason for this: Russian code clerks were badly trained. Sometimes there would be a couple of attempts to send a message followed by a plain-text transmission by the frustrated code clerk.…

A really great book [1] which details how Marian Rejewski, Jerzy Rozycki and Henryk Zygalski exploited a lot of these human errors and managed to keep up with the changes of the Enigma machine. [1] If you can find it somewhere for a fair price, http://www.amazon.com/Enigma-German-Machine-Foreign-intellig...

If you're in the vicinity of Ft. Meade, you can visit the "National Cryptologic Museum"

http://www.nsa.gov/about/cryptologic_heritage/museum/index.s...

which is outside the NSA headquarters. They have old Enigma machines, which are quite compact, about typewriter size, as well as a decoder, which is more like a bank of refrigerators. And a lot of other artifacts. It seemed to be mainly a labor of love by retirees and crypto geeks, rather than some officially compiled museum. Rather touching, in a surprising way.

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