Concerning the actual design of the enigma machine, I am still not completely sure how it works. From what I understand, there are 26 rotors in the machine and at least one of the rotors shifts every time one letter is encrypted. Then in order to decrypt, you would need to know the initial settings of the encryption machine, and it would simply go backwards? Or I guess you would need to know the terminal settings so that it could go backwards? I am not entirely sure? And how does the key work?
I actually would like to talk to you about some of these questions, and others that I have including:
-How does the key work? Our example in class was PGH PGH PGH. Why was it sent three times?
-Why did eliminating the diagonal help them to solve the message quicker? What exactly does that mean?
-I understand that if they could predict certain words that would be used in the cipher texts (like weather and Hitler) but how did knowing the ways that people would choose random words help them? Like that woman who predicted that Cilly was the name of his girlfriend? Why were they instructed to use 5 random letters at the beginning of every message? It would make it harder to crack I presume?
I guess that movie was really interesting and moving, but as far as Cryptography goes, it just left me with more questions. I guess I will see you again in your office!!
Oh and by the way, I was happy to at least know what a Beale cipher was, all because of that tedious, tedious (but fun) project!
No comments:
Post a Comment