Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Unbroken Enigma Message

enigma.hoerenberg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 46 posts

Re: Unbroken Enigma Message

#11

Post by LMYahooTFY »

emsal wrote: post #5

Tangent, but Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson[1] is a good novel that touches on WWII cryptography topics really well, going decently mathematically deep into the mechanics of how they work. I'm about 75% of the way through. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptonomicon

Serendipitous, I'm also about 75% of the way through!

It's one of the most beautiful books I've ever read. Perhaps the most.

I very highly recommend it, though I imagine much of HN's audience has done so or is at least aware of it.

Re: Unbroken Enigma Message

#12

Post by rjknight »

LMYahooTFY wrote: post #11
emsal wrote: post #5

Tangent, but Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson[1] is a good novel that touches on WWII cryptography topics really well, going decently mathematically deep into the mechanics of how they work. I'm about 75% of the way through. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptonomicon

Serendipitous, I'm also about 75% of the way through! It's one of the most beautiful books I've ever read. Perhaps the most. I very highly recommend it, though I imagine much of HN's audience has done so or is at least aware of it.

I'm also 75% of the way through... my fourth read-through. It's notable how my opinion of the major characters changes each time I read it.

Re: Unbroken Enigma Message

#13

Post by tomjen3 »

emsal wrote: post #5

Tangent, but Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson[1] is a good novel that touches on WWII cryptography topics really well, going decently mathematically deep into the mechanics of how they work. I'm about 75% of the way through. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptonomicon

A great book. If you want to explorer some of the same themes I recommend his Baroque cycle, which carries on with other characters that are the current charecters distant ancestors.

Re: Unbroken Enigma Message

#14

Post by 3001 »

LMYahooTFY wrote: post #11
emsal wrote: post #5

Tangent, but Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson[1] is a good novel that touches on WWII cryptography topics really well, going decently mathematically deep into the mechanics of how they work. I'm about 75% of the way through. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptonomicon

Serendipitous, I'm also about 75% of the way through! It's one of the most beautiful books I've ever read. Perhaps the most. I very highly recommend it, though I imagine much of HN's audience has done so or is at least aware of it.

Please reply your take when you are 99% of the way through

Re: Unbroken Enigma Message

#15

Post by imglorp »

nitrogen wrote: post #3

The page mentions Enigma@Home. How much computation would be required to brute force check all Enigma keys? Edit: found this on Wikipedia: "the military Enigma has 158,962,555,217,826,360,000 different settings (nearly 159 quintillion or about 67 bits)"

That's not how it's been broken historically. Breakers leveraged operational errors like the enemy reusing the same key for multiple messages or having messages with standard formats.

Re: Unbroken Enigma Message

#16

Post by Snild »

saalweachter wrote: post #9

Is there any possibility the cyphertext is wrong ? Either generated with a bug, someone hit the wheel halfway through, copied down wrong, etc? Is there a checksum that authenticates this as a valid cyphertext?

(I'm definitely not an expert. Grains of salt encouraged.)

There were no checksums, so incorrect ciphertext is possible.

But Enigma is a stream cipher, so if there was a missing character or someone bumped the wheel halfway through, it should still be possible to find two separate solutions that produce the plaintext before and after the error, respectively.

Re: Unbroken Enigma Message

#17

Post by zepatrik »

saalweachter wrote: post #9

Is there any possibility the cyphertext is wrong ? Either generated with a bug, someone hit the wheel halfway through, copied down wrong, etc? Is there a checksum that authenticates this as a valid cyphertext?

That's what I first thought as well... But I guess the machines themselves were accurate enough. I mean, if that could happen it would have happened on a daly basis.

Re: Unbroken Enigma Message

#18

Post by killion »

3001 wrote: post #14
LMYahooTFY wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Serendipitous, I'm also about 75% of the way through! It's one of the most beautiful books I've ever read. Perhaps the most. I very highly recommend it, though I imagine much of HN's audience has done so or is at least aware of it.

Please reply your take when you are 99% of the way through

I had the exact same thought. There is no feeling like the frustration of a disappointing ending after being engrossed in a Neal Stephenson book.

When they were paper books at least you could throw them across the room. Now that would break my phone.

Re: Unbroken Enigma Message

#19

Post by aidenn0 »

_Microft wrote: post #6
haram_masala wrote: post #2

“Be sure to drink your Ovaltine.”

"Many resources / allied forces / waste on cracking / advert messages / That bemuses / Burma Shave", see [0] for context. This was not an actual Burma Shave advertisement of course. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burma-Shave

The Dulles Airport Access road had signs "This road is only / For airport users / Don't risk a ticket / From our police cruisers" and I always wanted to put up a 5th sign that said "Burma Shave" but never had the guts to go through with it.

Re: Unbroken Enigma Message

#20

Post by ridruejo »

killion wrote: post #18
3001 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please reply your take when you are 99% of the way through

I had the exact same thought. There is no feeling like the frustration of a disappointing ending after being engrossed in a Neal Stephenson book. When they were paper books at least you could throw them across the room. Now that would break my phone.

Share your frustration. This one did not disappoint me though
Post reply on HN