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Cryptanalysis of Enigma

practicalcryptography.com

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Re: Cryptanalysis of Enigma

#11
post #9
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, also its susceptibility to both known-plaintext attacks and statistical analysis, though it depends a bit if you're talking about the army version of the enigma or the navy version. Also until very late versions, the machine couldn't map a letter to itself, which was another critical vulnerability. The actual keyspace was around 76 bits [1], which is fairly respectable, particularly for the mid-20th century. Mu…

Another early device problem was the threat model post WWII is of course nations will put up a near Manhattan Project level of effort which turns out to be just enough to break it, everyone knows that. Pre WWII of course, they figured if a PHD mathematician couldn't crack it in a couple hours with chalk and chalkboard, well, surely they'll just give up, right? The ratio of optimism to pessimism was a bit off.

> The ratio of optimism to pessimism was a bit off.

Not much has changed then.

Re: Cryptanalysis of Enigma

#13
I was surprised about this bit:

It is interesting to note that the actual key settings used the indicator 'SIG' with ring settings 'PMP', but the [different] recovered key gives an identical decryption.

So there are keys of the enigma that produce the same ciphertext? Wouldn't that reduce the practical keyspace dramatically?

Also, would that mean a message could be "hardened" by referring to the original key within it? (E.g. "Execute order )

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