Re: gEDA-user: [OT] MIT Flea

[Dave N6NZ <n6nz@xxxxxxxx>]

John Luciani wrote:
> On Sun, Sep 21, 2008 at 9:36 PM, Steve Morss
> <smorss@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> 
>> You think those Enigma machines are real?  They are pretty historic (and
>> probably aren't too many of them).
> 
> I think some of them are real and others are reproductions. The display varies
> from year to year. This year's display is the largest that I have seen.
> 
Enigmas are very interesting machines.  This summer I had a chance to 
take a tour of the NSA museum, and they have several, of different 
configurations.  A couple were out in the open for people to type on, so 
of course I had to encode a few silly things.  Rather laborious.  They 
said the standard operating procedure was to have two operators, one 
typing, the other writing down the cipher text.  I can see why.

The thing I enjoyed most was the BOMBE that they had on display (non 
working).  A friend of mine who just happens to be a PhD cryptographer 
tells me that in addition to the BOMBE, cracking was also helped by: 1) 
A clear text letter never represents itself in cipher text, 2) All 
military messages were in a rigid format, 3) they usually started with 
the politically correct "Heil Hitler" after the fixed date/time/ship/etc 
preamble, and 4) the operators often chose their dog's name or their 
girlfriend's name as the code setting word.

-dave


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