A graduate college student at the University of Cambridge, Hal Evans, created the first fully functional one copy of a cyclometer – a machine built in the early 1930s by Polish mathematicians to help decipher secret messages sent by the Germans via the cipher machine Enigma.
It is almost the same size as a very large laptop, but much heavier, with cables, switches and ten-pound rotors. The 21st Century Mileage Edition is currently in the living room of Evans Professor Tim Flack, a lecturer in Electrical Engineering at the University of Cambridge who is conducting some research.
Just like the original, Evans' cyclometer can create a huge list of all the possible ways in which a plain text could be translated from an Enigma encryption text, the technology used by the Germans. The machine semi-automates the process of recognizing the results of every possible solution to the Enigma code.
Demonstrating how the machine works from Zoom, Flack said that the cyclometer was an early example of cryptographic genius and that it played a huge role in the development of the Bombe by Alan Turing, which was used to "break" Enigma's German code. during World War II.
"Turing's Bomb came to a point where Polish methods were no longer sufficient because the Germans had increased security to such an extent that they no longer worked. But the people of Bletchley Park could not have done what they did without the information from the Polish cryptographers. "
Το αρχικό πολωνικό κύκλομετρο κατασκευάστηκε από μια ομάδα με επικεφαλής τον κρυπτολόγο Marian Rejewski τη δεκαετία του 1930, σαν απάντηση στην απειλή του πρώτου πολέμου με τη Γερμανία. Εκείνη την εποχή, οι Γερμανοί χρησιμοποιούν ήδη τη μηχανή Enigma για να επικοινωνούν κωδικοποιημένα με ραδιοφωνικά messages.
The Enigma protocol was based on a mechanism that contained the 26 letters of the alphabet. One sender enters the text into the machine, with each letter activating another to operate a different keyboard. The new text was random characters and could be typed on the receiver machine to convert the encrypted text to plain readable text.
The mechanism that converted the plaintext into ciphertext consisted of a complex system of rotors, reflectors, and tables. An Enigma machine usually contains a set of three spindles, each of which can be set to one of the 26 letters of the alphabet. How the rotors were adjusted determined which light will be lit to generate the cipher text.
In all, there were hundreds of thousands of ways to configure the machine before sending a message. This setting was the key to the message and was communicated by the sender to the recipient to decrypt the communications. To make things more difficult, the Germans would change the key very often, making communications through Enigma very powerful.
