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The Enigma machine is a cipher device developed and used in the early- to mid-20th century to protect commercial, diplomatic, and military communication.It was employed extensively by Nazi Germany during World War II, in all branches of the German military.
List of Enigma machine simulators lists software implementations of the Enigma machine, a rotor cypher device that was invented by German engineer Arthur Scherbius at the end of World War I. [ 1 ] and used in the early- to mid-20th century to protect commercial, [ 2 ] diplomatic, and military communication.
In April 1937 [33] Knox made his first decryption of an Enigma encryption using a technique that he called buttoning up to discover the rotor wirings [34] and another that he called rodding to solve messages. [35] This relied heavily on cribs and on a crossword-solver's expertise in Italian, as it yielded a limited number of spaced-out letters ...
In cryptography, the clock was a method devised by Polish mathematician-cryptologist Jerzy Różycki, at the Polish General Staff's Cipher Bureau, to facilitate decrypting German Enigma ciphers. The method determined the rightmost rotor in the German Enigma by exploiting the different turnover positions.
On 1 February 1942, the Enigma messages began to be encoded using a new Enigma version that had been brought into use. The previous 3-rotor Enigma model had been modified with the old reflector replaced by a thin rotor and a new thin reflector. Breaking Shark on 3-rotor bombes would have taken 50 to 100 times as long as an average Air Force or ...
Decryption of the Enigma Cipher allowed the Allies to read important parts of German radio traffic on important networks and was an invaluable source of military intelligence throughout the war. Intelligence from this source and other high level sources, such as Cryptanalysis of the Lorenz cipher , was eventually called Ultra .
While the Enigma machine was generally used by field units, the T52 was an online machine used by Luftwaffe and German Navy units, which could support the heavy machine, teletypewriter and attendant fixed circuits. It fulfilled a similar role to the Lorenz cipher machines in the German Army.
Much of the German cipher traffic was encrypted on the Enigma machine. Used properly, the German military Enigma would have been virtually unbreakable; in practice, shortcomings in operation allowed it to be broken. The term "Ultra" has often been used almost synonymously with "Enigma decrypts".