Enigma-Cracking Bombe Recreated 131
toxcspdrmn writes "Volunteers at Bletchley Park have recreated a working replica of the electromechanical bombe used to crack the Germans' Enigma encryption. The bombe was designed by Polish cryptologists and refined by Alan Turing and colleagues at Bletchley Park. The replica joins a recreated electronic Colossus — generally considered the first electronic computer. Impressive work when you consider that Winston Churchill ordered the originals to be completely destroyed at the end of WWII."
Colossus, you say? (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:1, Funny)
Deserved honour, indeed. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Deserved honour, indeed. (Score:5, Informative)
One of the worst things Churchil did was not allowing the continuation of this project and continual research in the field. As an English man and a Conservative I feel thats been one of our worst own goals... Silicon Vally could have been in Kent (or, even better, Grimsby!). But then again we did something similar to Babage and his difference engine.
Still, it's nice to see what some of the greatest people in the world at the time did in their field, even if it does bring up old regrets...
Not your fault (Score:4, Interesting)
Babbage got suprisingly generous funding, but unfortunately he was ahead of his time in another way -- he practiced feature creep. He kept redesigning while the machine was being built, which is part of the reason he needed such generous funding.
Re:Deserved honour, indeed. (Score:5, Informative)
Well, he did allow continuation, it's just that it was under ultratight security in a department that would become today's GCHQ (Government Communications HQ - our equivalent of the NSA). The reason for that security is obvious; he wanted Britain to keep the competitive advantage of being able to spy on friends and allies without anyone being aware of that ability. Go and read up on the history of British SIGINT during the post war years if you're interested. There's a fair bit on Wikipedia about GCHQ and it's precedessor, the Government Code and Cipher School (Bletchley Park to you and me).
Re: (Score:1)
There was also the thing about the russians reusing one time pads that we (the UK) cracked during the cold war. The UK was always in the forefront of cracking stuff. Unfortunately nowadays we seem useless...
Re: (Score:2)
As for 'unfortunately nowadays we seem useless' - I'm never one to credit the state wi
Re: (Score:2)
It's a lesson in the cathedral and bazaar [catb.org].
GCHQ = cathedral
Silicon Valley = bazaar
Which one do you think won?
Re: (Score:2)
meanwhile ibm helped the germans (Score:2)
their wealth.
Re:Deserved honour, indeed. (Score:5, Insightful)
For all values of 'different'.
John.
Re:Deserved honour, indeed. (Score:4, Interesting)
I am currently reading "Alan Turing: The Enigma" (http://www.turing.org.uk/turing/), and while I am not much for biographies, it is pretty good so far. It is quite long and detailed, but I am anxious to get through it. The foreword is by one of my favorite authors, Douglas Hofstadter. Can't wait to get his new book in 2007.
If you are a geek, read Godel Escher Bach, and The Mind's I. And if you really want to tackle something, try Metamagical Themas. It's like a good hot sauce - tasty, yet painful, leaving you wanting more. :)
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
I have that book at home, but haven't read it. It is actually my wife's.
When we were dating, we went to a big bookstore. We parted ways, she went for the language section. She was getting her master's in French linguistics at the time. I wandered around to various sections.
We met up about an hour later, each of us with several books. I was excited to have found Metamagical Themas, because I loved Hofstadter's other books I had read. She was excited about the one she found,
Re: (Score:2)
Paradoxically, it is about twice as long!
Re:Deserved honour, indeed. (Score:5, Interesting)
Quotation (Score:1)
All the World War II ifs and maybes (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2, Offtopic)
McCarthy had his big thing against communists in the fifties and hhhe also seemed to bring homosexuality into the deal. The reality was in Britain, Guy Burgess was definitely gay and a traitor ausing a lot of damage but th
A true shame is the way Bletchley Park is treated (Score:5, Interesting)
But they need financial help to keep the place running. Parts of the place really need financial investment - the Huts where the code breaking happened are barely standing. They've had to sell off some of the land around the house to developers (who are building a housing estate) to pay for the upkeep. Some of the volunteers were going round interviewing people who'd worked there during the war, they were so short of money that once they'd transcribed the interviews, they'd tape over the recordings and use the same tape again in the next interview to save money on buying new audio tapes.
If you think the work carried out at Bletchley Park during the war was valuable, or fascinating, contribute to keeping the place running as a museum. Visit the place! Buy some cool stuff from the shop! send them a donation! Please.
Re:A true shame is the way Bletchley Park is treat (Score:2)
On the other, it currently has a lot of authenticity and a certain shabby charm - I'd really hate to see it turned into some kind of glossy ultra-modern WWII theme park.
Imagine.. (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
A beowulf cluster of these... (Score:2)
Marian Rejewski (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marian_Rejewski#The_
John.
Re:Marian Rejewski (Score:5, Informative)
It is even less well known that Turing's Bombes were unable to solve the 4-wheel Naval Enigma. The 4-wheel Naval Enigma was actually solved by engineers working for NCR in Dayton Ohio, led by Joe Desch. Their contributions were classified until the mid-90s, and so were not well known. See:
1) http://www.daytoncodebreakers.com/ [daytoncodebreakers.com]
2) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Desch [wikipedia.org]
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Marian Rejewski (Score:5, Informative)
However, although Turing/Welchman's bombe paid explicit homage to the Polish work in the choice of name, its task was fundamentally different. The bombe provided a means to look for message settings based on the cipher text and conjectured plain text. Its weakness was the requirement for plain text, which was a massive task to obtain through traffic analysis of sterotyped messages, `kisses' with broken systems such as the Dockyard Key, weather reports transmitted in other cipher systems and so on. Its strength was that it was independent of the indicator system, which was one of the easier things to change in the Enigma system.
The Polish contribution lay in the machines themselves, the analysis of the indicator systems and the bomba (bomby? spelling may be wrong): together they showed other people that Enigma could be attacked, and provided a plentiful supply of cribs. Had the Poles not succeeded, it's unlikely that the British could have got the resources for their work. But to claim that the Polish work was the basis for the Bletchley work subsequent to the changes in the indicator system is not right.
And, if we're being picky, there might have been the odd vacumn tube in the implementation of the diagonal board's ``all on or none on'' algorithm. But bombes were essentially mechanical devices. The four-rotor ones must have been amazing to be near...
ian
Re:Marian Rejewski (Score:5, Interesting)
It was actually Marian Rejewski who designed the Cryptologic bomb [wikipedia.org]. Bomba being the polish word for Bomb.
Turing developed the Electro-Mechanical Bomb which was capable of cracking the more sophisticated versions of the Enigma code.
It's well worth taking a trip to Bletchley Park if you get the opportunity.
It's more than just code breaking. It covers the whole history of computing.
Re: (Score:2)
If you go to Bletchley Park, you will see that all the early work was acknowledged. However, with all so much German high command communications going via Enigma, there was no possibility of securing the plaintexts without the system at BP. Forget the mechanisation, there was also a vast human organis
Re: (Score:1)
Plainly, he was the giant 'upon whose shoulders everyone else stood' when it came to defeating the Enigma process.
A decent place to start: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marian_Rejewski [wikipedia.org]
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
I first became interested in cryptography from the novel "Enigma" by Robert Harris in the mid-nineties, next time you have a long flight with a lay over check it out. Nothing overly technical, but its interesting to read a story with such
Re: (Score:1, Insightful)
Don't you know that history is _always_ defined and written by the winners? And that's the reason we just don't know a lot of stuff. If this can happen to as recent history as WWII, I wonder what we have been learning so far in the name of history!!
Re: (Score:2)
Collossus is not a computer (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Collossus is not a computer (Score:4, Insightful)
Colossus was used to break the Lorenz SZ 40/42 cipher used for communicating between high level members of Hitler's regime. The Lorenz teleprinter had 12 rotors as opposed to the 4 wheels on the Enigma. The bomba was uses to break the 4 wheel Enigma.
Because the Colossus machine was highly classified for many years Tommy Flowers and his team were deprived of the recognition they deserve.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Blue Gene isn't Turing Complete.
Of course Colossus was't Turing Complete.
FatPhil
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Useless objection. We all understand that Turing-completeness requires infinite memory. So, when we say that a machine is Turing-complete, we are understood to mean "This machine is Turing-complete qua available memory".
Oh. I'm sorry. I didn't realize that you were disrupting the conversation just to show off your alleged mental prowess.
Re: (Score:2)
Why? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Why? (Score:5, Interesting)
It's always rumoured that Collossi were in service at Cheltenham into the sixties, attacking various Fish-style machine baudot-code ciphers. It doesn't seem unreasonable to suggest that a bombe or two were kept as well: with the use of the diagonal board, they were probably faster than an emulation in a computer would have been.
ian
Re: (Score:3)
The DDR definitely continued to use both for some period after the war. The Soviets continued to use methods used in the telex stream ciphers that could be attacked by Collossus. I'm sure that Collossus didn't survi
Re: (Score:2)
"After World War II, some fifty bombes were retained at Eastcote, while the rest were destroyed. The surviving bombes were put to work, possibly on Eastern bloc ciphers (Smith, 1998). The official history of the bombe states that "some of these machines were to be stored away but others were required to run new jobs and sixteen machines were kept comparatively busy on menus. It is interesting to note that most of the jobs came up and the operating, checking and oth
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: (Score:1)
There are a number of versions of the Enigma machine on display as well, including a pre war commercial version with labeling in English. As I recall, the German military version added another rotor.
A bombe?! (Score:3, Funny)
Turing Bombe emulator? (Score:2)
Re:Turing Bombe emulator? (Score:4, Informative)
ahref=http://homepages.tesco.net/~andycarlson/enig ma/enigma_j.htmlrel=url2html-10809 [slashdot.org]http://homepages .tesco.net/~andycarlson/enigma/enigma_j.html>
There's others. Check the Wikipedia entry
Re: (Score:2)
Actually, building a hardware replica isn't too difficult with some perseverance. Back in college, I took a digital electronics course that entailed a fairly difficult final project. Three people got together and made a device that recreated the enigma. They used EEPROMs instead of turning wheels, a PS/2 keyboard instead of a typewriter, and a few PALs to handle everything else (like mod26
Text-to-Enigma-to-Text translator (Score:2)
You mean you want a program where the input and the output are the same?
Re: (Score:1)
I did, the code isn't very good but i've checked with original messages and it works. It's written in PHP and it's open source: Misterio [sourceforge.net]
Re: (Score:2)
Oh no! (Score:5, Funny)
Somebody set up us the bombe!
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
Origin of the name (Score:4, Funny)
It is unknown when the final e from bombe was dropped.
Internal evidence that this story is false (Score:5, Insightful)
The actual approach to technology of the MOD is this:
Ignore British invention for 20 years or so
Buy it when it is produced in the US
Claim that British technology is inadequate and we must always follow the Americans.
And if you think I'm bitter about the Cocks encryption method (RSA), or the entire postwar history of British technology - yes, I am.
Re: (Score:1)
And the crowd chanted: It truly roxors our boxors!
Not the first electronic computer (Score:3, Informative)
Please see this chart [wikipedia.org] before making such claims. It is only the second electronic computer but the first programmable electronic computer.
Re: (Score:2)
Having just returned from a remote part of northern India, I discovered almost everything about the place in Wikipedia is:
a: Plagiarised from the handful of guidebooks that exist
b: At least 15 years out of date - just like the guidebooks!
Wheee...
DMCA? (Score:1, Flamebait)
tick tick tick (Score:4, Interesting)
Hopefully they'll do more than just display it. I would love to hear the ticking sound of one running. (Incidentally, that's where the name "bombe" comes from.)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
The recerated design came from engineers notes (illegally retained) and a few photographs.
The phrase 'I am not worthy' comes to mind...
The subject led me to believe... (Score:2)
...this was an article about an explosive device capable of cracking Bill Gates' innermost thoughts... but perhaps I was mistaken...
Wasn't Conrad Zuse first? (Score:4, Interesting)
http://www.idsia.ch/~juergen/zuse.html [idsia.ch]
Re: (Score:2)
They dont even compete in the eniac vs zuse-2 match...
Re: (Score:2)
The bombes were electromechanical devices used on enigma, colossus was a programmable computer built at bletchley park and used to crack lorentz.
As usual we Brits had it destroyed and then kept the whole project under wraps for decades after the war, losing out on any technological advantage it might have given us. Tommy Flowers, the designer/builder was a worker for the general post office and he built colossus out of parts he borrowed from them. When the war was over he had to give
Pictures hard to come by (Score:5, Informative)
More pictures (Score:2)
http://gallery.spacebar.org/f/a/photo/viewpic/1/52 2/1/ [spacebar.org]
http://gallery.spacebar.org/f/a/photo/viewpic/1/52 3/1/ [spacebar.org]
http://pictures.spacebar.org/f/a/photo/viewpic/2/4 91/1/ [spacebar.org]
To See or not to See (Score:2, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
xfghb chnbg snhwq (Score:2, Insightful)
The bombe's were built in Dayton (Score:2, Informative)
http://www.daytondailynews.com/search/content/pro
Re: (Score:2)
Re:The bombes were built in Dayton (Score:2)
The early bombes were built by The British Tabulating Machine Company [demon.co.uk]. The later, improved version (with a printer) was built by NCR in Dayton. The initial British Tabulating Machine version just slowed and stopped after a hit, and someone had to crank the thing backwards to the hit point, record the settings, and restart, since many hits were false alarms. The improved version would stop, reverse to the hit point, print the stop info, and restart.
Visit Bletchley Park if you're in London. It's a shor
American bombe bigger than UK bombe (Score:1)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
A. T. (Score:1, Redundant)
Machines? We don't need no steenkin' machines (Score:3, Interesting)
Arne Carl-August Beurling (February 3, 1905 - November 20, 1986) was a mathematician and professor of mathematics at Uppsala University (1937-1954) and later at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, USA.
In 1940 he single-handedly deciphered and reverse-engineered an early version of the Geheimfernschreiber (one of the "Fish cyphers") used by Nazi Germany, and created a device that enabled Sweden to decipher German teleprinter traffic passing through Sweden from Norway on a cable. In this way, Swedish authorities knew about Operation Barbarossa before it occurred. This became the foundation for the Swedish Swedish National Defence Radio Establishment (FRA). (The cypher in the Geheimfernschreiber is generally considered to be more complex than the cypher used in the Enigma machines.)
Generally considered the first? (Score:2)
Colossus was the first of the electronic digital machines to feature limited programmability. However, it was not a fully general purpose computer, not being Turing-complete, even though Alan Turing on whose research this definition was based, worked at Bletchley Park where Colossus was put into operation. It was not then realized that Turin
Re: (Score:2)
And why would the Colossus be the first computer, and not the Z3?
Somebody set us up the bombe. (Score:1)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
In the history of cryptography, a bombe was an electromechanical machine used by British and American codebreakers to help break German Enigma machine signals during World War II. The bombe was invented by Alan Turing with an important refinement suggested by Gordon Welchman. Using the Turing-Welchman bombe, the Allies were able to read a high proportion of the German Enigma traffic, and it was the primary tool used for this purpose.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombe [slashdot.org]
Re: (Score:2)
Url (Score:3, Informative)
Bombe (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Bombe, Bomba, Bomby, let's call the whole thing of (Score:2)
"Bombe" (Score:2)