Talk:Enigma machine/Archive 1

message: At Ww's suggestion, I (someone unfamiliar with cryptography, except for Singh's excllent book) gave this a look to see how it looks to us amateurs. :-)  Looks good, actually.  Early on in Operations, though, several references are made to a picture that doesn't seem to be there.  If the picture referenced is the one at the top of the article, it should be moved.....but actually, it's hard to see the details in that picture that are being referred to in the Operations Section.  Is a large pic available?
In the "Basic Cryptanalysis" section, I think you take too much time trying to cover cryptanalysis in the abstract....I start to wonder what all this has to do with Enigma.  I'd cut a lot of it, and focus on the cryptanalysis done on Enigma (I think it's right to note a couple of principles that people should consider when reading, but really if you think they'll need to know about cryptanalysis, I'd just drop a link to that article).
The description of Enigma's method of encoding is hard to follow....though I think it's well written.  But it's such a complex scheme that I had trouble following it (and I've read Singh's book at least twice).  I think a diagram would be useful -- I would encourage one of you crypto fanatics to do it in a drawing program somehow.  Singh has great diagrams, as I recall, which are of course copyright, but I think if we could build something like that for illustrative purposes here, it would be great -- certainly it helped me understand his book.
Also, in a couple of places the text feels like it's been edited over a few too many times.  For example, you make casual reference to "Ultra" before explaining what Ultra was, probably because that paragraph has been cut and added to many many times.  I'd suggest someone go through very carefully and make sure that codenames and cryptographical terms are explained at their first mention, and that the style is generally fluid.  I think the article generally reads well, though -- not a big deal.
Finally, in the middle I start to swim in the expanse of text.  I think a few more carefully placed headers would help me see the structure of the article more clearly, and move through it more efficiently as a reader.  I hope no one thinks my ideas are a criticism of some excellent work here -- this is a great article!  But I'm trying to help out with a little peer review.  If you need me to explain any of this, feel free to drop me a note, or leave a response here.  Keep up the great work! Jwrosenzweig 20:39, 15 Apr 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: General thoughts

message: Generally a very nice page, well written, but it speaks more about cracking Engima than the machine itself.  The naval historian Norman Polmar and others have written a few other interesting things.
The shear numbers are worth knowing.  Something between 100,000 to 200,000 Engimas were manufactured (and variants were used until 1990).
Budiansky is good for the numbers of Turing Bombes and Colossi: about 300 and 1-2 dozen, and some visible (in the USA) and rebuilds of each at Bletchley Park, UK.
Polmar in his Spy Book, encyclopedia also noted that the US Army apparently purchased an Enigma for about $250 about 1928 or 1929 and decided against using them.  If this is true, numerous questions arise like what the final disposition of this machine was?  Did Herbert Yardley ever encounter this machine?  And more.
The plugboard, the Steckerboard, was thought by the German Army to add an additional level of security (it didn't), so it was added and that won the contract and begat the mass manufacturing.
:I just noticed this comment, sorry. I seem to remember that the stecker was between keys and rotor, but there is no essential difference if it was between rotors and lamps. 
:Actually, the plugboard did add some security, as it effectively (in modern crypto terms) increased the key length. It increased an attacker's difficulty in determining the correspondence between keys and the first rotor and as a practical matter this was significant. This made a simple approach infeasible and was one of the reasons Dilly Knox (later of BP) was able to break commercial Enigma (presumably model D) but not the German Army version. He was not using Rejewski's inspired mathematical approach, nor his felicitous guess that the Germans would be (rather dimly/dumbly) methodical in assigning keys to intial rotor positions. ww 14:39, 21 Jun 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: General thoughts

message: I have some doubts about "a U boat mistakenly transmitted a messsage using Triton before it was due to be implemented. Realising the error, they re-transmitted the same message using pre-Triton 3 rotor Enigma". The Triton system let the fourth rotor be operated in a fixed position so that it could communicate with three rotor Enigmas, notably those which continued to be used by the weather service. Did the submarine really use a different machine or did it just lock out the fourth rotor? Jamesday 02:00, 21 Jun 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: My memory of this is that the new 4 (or 3.5 if you want to be picky) rotor machines were distributed as possible (ie, when a U-boat or other candidate got back in) and the conversion was to have happened on the morning of such and such a day. Someone on one of the boats had the new machine, but mistakenly used it in 4 rotor mode prior to the effective date and then repeated encryption of the same plaintext in the works_like_the_3_rotor machine compatibilty mode after they realized what they'd done. This was a large crib for BP. Hope this helps. ww 14:29, 21 Jun 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Triton

message: Hi All:
I'm not really a Wiki contributor, but I have writings online and Wiki folk have ported some of them to the Wiki. I have a crypto document and parts of it ended up in Wiki, courtesy of Matt.  I was checking them over and got to prowling around for more crypto data for the next revision of my document.
I notice on the Enigma page comments that some stories about British penetrations of Japanese codes were fabrications.  This rang a bell.  In an early release of my own document, I had commented that there were conspiracy theories that the British had cracked JN-25, knew the Japanese were about to attack Pearl Harbor, and withheld the information to bring the US into the war.
This sounded preposterous on the face of it and I pretty much said so, but then I got a really flaming message from a Britisher over it, who vectored me to a page (I think it was the Bletchley Park website) that said the British *had* cracked JN-25.  No details.  It had the sound of something Tony Sale might say -- I respect Sale's knowledge and find him a good source of information, but he's got a bad case of "flag fever".
"OK, now I'm confused."  What, I ask myself, did the British really know about Pearl Harbor?  Now the Wiki article on the Enigma suggests that stories about British penetration of Japanese codes were to an extent a fabrication.  That would simplify life for me (and give me a bit of satisfaction relative to my Yankophobic friend from the UK).
Any details or references on this matter?  Comments would be appreciated.
Greg Goebel
:Greg, JN-25 was introduced near the end of the 30s. It was a superencyphered code, originally a one book code, using Latin letters (and, I therefore presume, Romaji), and served as the highest level JIN command and control channel. There had been some success in breaking pre-Pearl Harbor JIN codes/cyphers by the Americans and I suppose others (as for instance in association with the Panay incident in which intercepted/decrypted traffic made clear the attack (by JIN Naval aviators) was not, as publicly claimed, a mistake), but there was little Fleet level traffic since most Japanese military activity was on land, and in any case, in China. If you have courier or mail or blinker light communications, you don't need radio, much less encrypted radio. Some progress was made against pre 12.41 versions of JN-25 (some sources claim that as much as 10% of message traffic in mid 41), but lacking sufficient depth, progress was slow. In 40(?) sometime, there was an agreement amongst the Dutch, British, and US to cooperate on Japanese communication cryptanalysis. No credible source of which I'm aware (specifically not including Stinnett in Day of Deceit (2000) -- his grasp of cryptanalytic reality at the time is distinctly limited (see Talk:Attack on Pearl Harbor for some comments)) claims more progress than that against any JN-25 version before 7.12.41. In any case, there was issued a new version of JN-25 on 1.12.41 and everyone was forced back to the start line. With more traffic available starting on the 7th (JIN operations now encompassed major areas away from the home islands -- SE Asia, the Philippines, etc -- and radio was required) the combination of USN Stations Hypo (Hawaii see Joseph Rochefort), Cast (Philippines), and OP-20-G (Washington), together with Hong Kong, Singapore (probably with some support from Bletchley Park), and Batavia made progress against the new version of JN-25. By spring of 42 it was clear some major new JIN operation was in the works, and by late May (just in time!) enough had been figured out about it (mostly from decrypted JN-25 traffic) that setting up the ambush at Midway became possible. 
:See Battle of Wits by Budiansky (US author), Station X and the Emperor's Codes(?) by Smith (?) (UK author), and Combined Fleet Decoded by Prados (US author) for mostly sensible more complete, and reflecting relatively recently available, information. Note that Prados' account, though valuable, is somewhat scattered amongst a larger story. A perusal of Harry Hinsley's books also will turn up (if memory serves) some commentary on British crypto operations against the Japanese. Henry Clausen's book about his investigation near the end of the War is also relevant in that he talked to just about everyone, carried  an astonishing authorization brief from Stimson, and reports no evidence of anyone reading anything other than diplomatic codes/cyphers. However, note that there are two structural problems (at least) with any argument that JN-25 was not readable prior to 7.12.41. First, information release (some material is still classified in the UK or US, though that has been easing in the last decade or so) making older references less than complete (and, sometimes innocently, misleading, eg some of the claims in Farago's work) and, second, it's not possible to prove a negative proposition. Believers can still claim that the information (ie, that JN-25 was fully read prior to 7.12.41) is still classified and that the lack of evidence means nothing.
:There have been various claims made about the state of US/UK/Dutch information prior to 7.12.41 (from various sources). The claims began as early as 8.12.41 (in a recorded comment made by a Congressman, Guy Gillette), and at least initially were politically motivated. Later on was added to the politics in some cases, a little understanding that some Japanese codes or cyphers had been broken, but not much understanding of the context. 
:In particular, it is sometimes said that Purple decryptions foretold Pearl Harbor -- not so, as the Japanese Foreign Office was out of the militaristic loop in control of Japan in part because they were thought to be insufficiently hard nosed. And that JN-25 (or other systems) had been broken -- by the British, or Dutch, or someone. The most credible of these is probably Rusbridger's book, but his source (ie, R Nave's diaries of the time) doesn't support his claims, so its credibility is rather strained as a result. Stinnett claims that JN-25 (which he calls 5-num) was broken by OP-20-G in part because they had produced a manual for its cryptanalysis. This lacks credibility since much depth is required for such a cryptanalysis, the method to be used could be understood prior to being able to apply it, and not very much traffic was available prior to the end of 41 to apply such a method. And there are assorted claims that US crypto (or signals traffic analysis) had the attack force located and tracked across the Pacific after it left the Kuriles (eg, Toland in Infamy). Some of Toland's informants went public and disputed his account of their experience (eg, Ogg who was Seaman Z, if my memory of the pseudonyms is correct) and the two strains of they knew in Washington from the Dutch seem to have little behind them, as nearly as I can make out. Nonetheless, there have been History Channel documentaries citing such 'evidence' of foreknowledge. They get seen by far larger numbers than read any of the more plausible accounts, which helps keep the foreknowledge conspiracy pot a-boilin'. 
:I trust this helps some. If not, we probably should continue this (ie, support for your research) in email, as WP Talk pages aren't really meant for such things. My email address is usable from WP. ww 14:43, 29 Jun 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  JN-25 Fabrications 

message: Sigh, as usual I failed to make the question specific enough.
To be a bit more specific:  somebody put comments on the Enigma
article about fabrications concerning British codebreaking
operations.  I am trying to find the person who made the comments
and obtain a general idea of what statements were fabricated
and who did the fabrications.
Do I believe that anybody had cracked JN-25 and knew about
Pearl Harbor?  The idea is silly on the face of it, and no
persuasion is necessary on that count.
:Greg, Oh well...  The fabrications that were meant probably refer to Rusbridger and his book, and allegations that either derive from it or which have circulated independently in the hidden history of Pearl Harbor community. As nearly as I can make out, many (most?) of these are not easily traceable. You've heard about the 100mpg carburettor that GM (or Standard Oil, I can't remember which) bought up and put on the shelf, of course. Urban legends and their surburban and rural and seagoing counterparts are quite hard to trace. ww 14:05, 1 Jul 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Clarification on JN-25 Fabrications 

message: This is a long article, though shorter than it was since much material was removed to Ultra. Several of the todo suggestions here have the effect of adding material which, though interesting, will not add to a reader's overall understanding. They are in significant respect a sort of inside baseball, of interest only to fanatics (in this case, cryptiacs, I suppose). Eg, Zygalski sheets (there was a different name used at BP, but I can't bring it up just now; Clifford?), Hervel tip, indicator systems, Banburismus, rodding, and so on. If these should be in WP, and I can certainly agree that they should be, they shouldn't be here, but rather in a separate article -- Breaking Engima or something similar. jwr's comment (above) is relevant, and definitive on this degree of detail, in this article, I think. He at least doesn't have a cryptiac's bias.
As for trimming the disclosure section, I think this is a different kettle of fish. (Not Lorenz fish either). There is a considerable degree of bumpfh in the available literature in and around Enigma, its nature, its operation, its cryptanalysis, and the uses and significance of its output. Some of this is from close participants (Winterbotham on the distribution side), (the story about the Polish underground's ambush of a truck carrying an Enigma -- in Gordon Welchman's Hut Six account and elsewhere), and so on. The reasons for this include governmental secrecy, staged release of information formerly secret, deliberate misinformation, ... Our Gentle Reader should be informed of this, as it is central to the subject, and knowledge of the subject. Just where and how this should happen is another question I think. This section is somewhat jarring as it is about Enigma from another perspective than the rest of the article, but how better to do this is not clear. We have a responsibilty to our Gentle Reader which requires something along these lines. We will not have a better example from contemporary crypto for, presumably, some years (decades) yet. ww 16:25, 28 Jul 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: We need balance. There's something wrong if we have a page long section describing how the Enigma story was revealed and fail to mention the various methods used to break the Enigma by the allies; the story itself is more central than how the story was first told. I'm certainly not suggesting we have pages and pages explaining exactly how each individual method works, but an overview of the cryptanalysis is essential. We can't assume that the "Gentle Reader" is a layperson, or not interested, or anything of the sort. I suggest we add everything; sections which seem too detailed or minor will obviously suggest themselves as candidates for being summarised and split off into separate articles. — Matt 22:26, 28 Jul 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: comment on 28 July ver of todo list