Solving A Puzzle from WWII

[dalek]

Anybody here up to the challenge????

HCEY ZTCS OPUP PZDI UQRD LWXX FACT TJMB HDVC JJMM ZRPY IKHZ AWGL YXWT MJPQ UEFS ZBCT VRLA LZXW VXTS LFFF AUDQ FBWR RYAP SBOW JMKL DUYU PFUQ DOWV HAHC DWAU ARSW TXCF VOYF PUFH VZFD GGPO OVGR MBPX XZCA NKMO NFHX PCKH JZBU MXJW XKAU OD?Z UCVC XPFT

This is one of two that were found after the war, and have yet to be unencrypted, even the old "enigma" machine is unable to crack the code...

Very interesting article from the BBC.Nazi Codes (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/4763854.stm)

Amazing what the original code crackers had to work with back in the 1940's, and only pure luck in getting a hold of one of these "enigma" machines, otherwise things may have turned out differently.

[genXer]

Enigma didn't work?!? Ouch. Well - I think will check this out from home later and jump in meebe. I wonder if my past crypto instructors are working on this? Here's the Krah's M4 Project Site:


http://www.bytereef.org/m4_project.html

...
..
.
Amazing though - when I first started searching - just how many different types of "M4 Projects" there were... forgot to include Krah's name at first - DOH!:

http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&rls=GGLG,GGLG:2005-48,GGLG:en&q=project+M4

[thehorse13]

This is an example of a polyalphabetic cipher. What you need is the keyword used to encipher this text and the actual multiple alphabet cipher used. I know that I've seen popular Nazi keywords used in these types of messages. Perhaps you can start trying some.

Obviously, the Nazis were aware of frequency analysis.

If you want to see an example of a polyalphabetic cipher, take a look at the Vigenere cipher.

Best of luck.

--TH13

[d0pp]

and only pure luck in getting a hold of one of these "enigma" machines

There were actually two Enigma variants, and the Allies were only able to get one. The second one had an extra wheel IIRC, and was far more complex.


I'm assuming this "code" would be in 1940's German?

[foxyloxley]

I got it :eek: .........

message to interpol :
please send flowers to my mum for her birthday
message to read sorry I won't be there love Fritz
:D

[Broomiebar]

Surely the CIA is able to crack it, they're just not ready to
let the world know yet.

[nihil]

Hmmm.............

During the war, teams of codebreakers based at Bletchley Park, in the UK, scrambled to unravel German communications in an attempt both to undermine the German war machine and to save the lives of soldiers and seamen.

But who gives a damn about the City of Coventry and its citizens?...................Churchill is to blame for that one...............

Yes, Churchill and Roosevelt had a lot in common..........a pair of matched dog turds on the sidewalk! Roosevelt would not even have joined if Hirohito had not given him a nudge..............as for WWI, well Twatchill was first sea lord?...........and the Lusitania was a British ship, and it was carrying a lot of wealthy Americans.............and it was in "Jane's Fighting Ships" (bit odd for a passenger liner?)...................:rolleyes:

As for the "U-Boat" stuff, that is total nonsense. It was ASDIC and RADAR that got to them........they have to breathe, and even a snorkel unit could be detected. And flying boats such as the Short Sunderland and Consolidated Catalina were deadly...........the sub didn't even know that they were there.

We knew that the Germans knew where our convoys were, we knew they would attack...........big deal? and what's new? you don't need a codebreaker for that, you need more bloody destroyers and frigates.

Ack! Phtt! "historians"?................ you have got to be joking?

[dalek]

Hi nihil

I know you are a deeper thinker then that:But who gives a damn about the City of Coventry and its citizens?...................Churchill is to blame for that one

If Churchill had of evacuated Coventry, the Nazi's would have known that their precious codes were broken and would have changed them, which would probably have prolonged the war...not good, I don't want to make light of the citizens of Coventry and their sacrifice, but I believe London was not spared much of what Hitler was throwing at England during the blitz, so everyone wether they liked it or not, made sacrifices, right?

As for ASDIC and RADAR, these didn't come about until later in the game, what really stopped the U-Boats were the fact that they developed the "Snorkel" too late, if they had of had that at the start, then they would be able to stay submerged when doing their attacks and also avoid the corvettes which protect the convoys.Also Hitler and Canaris had a falling out, and like every other mistake Hitler made, the production of U-Boats fell off, and so the convoys improved their record of getting through the wolf packs.

Do you know how hard it is to see a periscope at sea, even in 5ft swells, or the North Atlantic, also all the ASDIC did was report back that there was an object at a certain depth, could be a whale, when a Diesel Sub goes Ultra quiet and slips under a thermal layer, no sonar on this planet is going to find it. Radar was only good if the sub was on the surface, so being a sub, they were submerged a lot....

The fact that we knew the codes during the war, probably saved more lives then lost??

[nihil]

Hey dalek

Depth?............down six-fifty, full left rudder (Perisher I and Perisher II?)

:D

My complaint is about the pseudo historians that are emerging..........they don't understand the full impact. Sure Coventry was sacrificed, but the enigma machine was never a big deal in ASW. Both sides were comitted by then?

:)

[dalek]

Depth?............down six-fifty, full left rudder (Perisher I and Perisher II?)

Hey nihil...you familiar with those? I was on one in 79, we had 3 Brits, 1 Aussie and 1 Canadian and 1 Dutch trying it out, man the Dutch guy was a hoot, in the middle of an exercise he would revert to his native tongue, what a laugh watching the helmsman trying to understand him, was okay though one of our Sonar types just happend to come from Holland and so he became the helmsman during the Dutch skippers exercises. Was a great 3 weeks, it was the finals as well, they all passed, we had to drag the Dutchman through though, as teacher wasn't too keen on him, I think the more emotional/stressed he got, the harder it was to articulate his instructions in English, which of course for perishers is a requirement.

(one of the hardest courses on the planet 6 Months classroom and 6 Months operational, and then the perishers final exams, you flunk, your off boats forever, you pass, and your a golden boy, fast tracked for promotions in the fleet, which is funny as most operational posts for a sub skipper is 2 yrs long, then it's onto the surface fleet, pretty intense stuff)

My complaint is about the pseudo historians that are emerging..........they don't understand the full impact. Sure Coventry was sacrificed, but the enigma machine was never a big deal in ASW. Both sides were comitted by then?

I concur....

Dolphin Code: 16 (A) ;)

[nihil]

Notwithstanding 14 (A) :D

?

[@tt!tud3]

"I think there is more satisfaction for people engaged in the project to know that they have been able to do something that Bletchley Park couldn't do," he said.

What a *censored* stupid thing to say. Bletchley Park didn't have computers 60 years ago. They took some of the brightest people in the free world and had them use their MINDS to crack the codes.


Enigma didn't work?!? Ouch. Well - I think will check this out from home later and jump in meebe.

Actually ENIGMA was solved before the war ended.

The stupidity of this article was that there was no need
to decode transmissions prior to it being cracked open.

They solved all future transmissions, but left unsolved
transmissions previous to their successful decryption.

[d0pp]

Surely the CIA is able to crack it, they're just not ready to
let the world know yet.

CIA doesn't really do cryptographical work. That is handled by the NSA at Fort Meade.

[genXer]

Originally quoted by TH13
This is an example of a polyalphabetic cipher. What you need is the keyword used to encipher this text and the actual multiple alphabet cipher used. I know that I've seen popular Nazi keywords used in these types of messages. Perhaps you can start trying some.

Obviously, the Nazis were aware of frequency analysis.

If you want to see an example of a polyalphabetic cipher, take a look at the Vigenere cipher.

Best of luck.

--TH13

Oh man - that takes me back. I still remember cracking my first code during training - simple cipher - but still a good feeling when you get the crack.


Originally quoted by foxeyloxey
I got it .........

quote:
message to interpol :
please send flowers to my mum for her birthday
message to read sorry I won't be there love Fritz


So you don't think it ended with "Er-ah ich bin ein Berliner!"?

[nihil]

OK.

The enigma machine was NOT a German invention...............they bought it........MI6 got a copy.................it should really not have been such a big deal, as it was secure enough for the time...............but, it was quite widely deployed and had our personal favourites........"users".

Now, if they took a shortcut...............and one of them was bound to.................we could use our version of the machine to decode stuff. Even when they added an extra wheel..............human error?



:)

[d0pp]

"Er-ah ich bin ein Berliner!"?

ROFL

[zencoder]

Originally posted here (http://www.AntiOnline.com/showthread.php?threadid=274124#post891083) by @tt!tud3
What a *censored* stupid thing to say. Bletchley Park didn't have computers 60 years ago. They took some of the brightest people in the free world and had them use their MINDS to crack the codes.

Actually ENIGMA was solved before the war ended.

The stupidity of this article was that there was no need to decode transmissions prior to it being cracked open.

They solved all future transmissions, but left unsolved transmissions previous to their successful decryption.

Wrong.
Source (http://www.bletchleypark.org.uk/content/machines.rhtm)
Colossus
The first machine designed to break the Lorenz was built at the Post Office research department at Dollis Hill and called ‘Heath Robinson’ after the cartoonist designer of fantastic machines. Although Heath Robinson worked well enough to show that Max Newman’s concepts were correct, it was slow and unreliable.
Max Newman called in the help of Tommy Flowers, a brilliant Post Office Electronics Engineer. Flowers went on to design and build ‘Colossus’, a much faster and more reliable machine that used 1,500 thermionic valves (vacuum tubes). The first Colossus machine arrived at Bletchley in December 1943. This was the world’s first practical electronic digital information processing machine - a forerunner of today’s computers.

...and from the article...
Using early computers, Bletchley Park decoded thousands of intercepts in a knife-edge race to head off U-boat attacks.

Yes, they needed the best and brightest. But the aid of electric systems was necessary to do the repetative mechanical work of code-breaking so it could be reliable AND fast enough to be of any value at all to the war effort. If they had done all the cracking via pure mental sweat equity, they'd still be at it...and we'd be singing Das Lied der Deutschen and watching David Hasselhoff every night on TV. :jester:

"Enigma" wasn't solved... The algorithm and protocols that the Enigma machines used was determined well enough (with large effort on the Allies part) to reliably decrypt many of the transmissions...until 1942 when the Germans changed to a new Enigma platform (correct d0pp, it was the 4 wheel) and a new algorithm.

[br_fusion]

Would it make sense to say that the longer the encrypted text produced by a polyalphabetic cipher, the easier it is to discover the original text? Especially if the keyword that produces the encrypted text is a small number of characters.