Cracking the Unbreakable: The Eigma Code Story

Written By: Nishant Jothilingam

Introduction

 During World War II, the German military relied on a special machine called ‘The Enigma Machine’ to send encrypted messages that the Nazi’s believed were unbreakable. Its complex system of rotating wheels and electrical circuits produced millions, if not billions, of possibilities and combinations, making it seem like an almost impossible challenge for Allied codebreakers. Yet, through ingenuity, persistence, resilience, and collaboration, mathematicians and cryptanalysts (Most famously Alan Turing and his team at Bletchley Park, England) managed to crack the seemingly impossible code which allowed World War II to be preponed to about 2-4 years. And this not only preponed the war, but also laid the foundation for modern computing and cybersecurity. The Enigma Code Story is a tale of secrecy, intelligence and the triumph of human intellect against seemingly impossible odds.

Encryption and Decryption

In order to understand the contents of this article, we must first touch upon the topic of encryption and decryption. Encryption is the process of scrambling up readable data (plain text), into an unreadable code (ciphertext) using algorithms and an encryption key (that only the sender and receiver know about). Ensuring only authorized people/groups with the correct key can decipher and access the original information and protect the data. Some examples of the applications of this technique are in transit (like online banking), or at rest (like in a hard drive). Now decryption is the same thing, but this time, instead of hiding the data, you are decrypting it by finding what the hidden unreadable data is, and figuring out what the message is. Usually done by the encryption key to decrypt what the data is saying (This is often done by the receiver since they need to know what the data says, but people who try to figure out what the unreadable data says, can also try to decrypt the data with their own methods.) Just like how Alan Turing did with the Nazi’s, more on that later in the article.

The Enigma Machine

The Enigma Machine was a sophisticated cipher device used by the Nazis to protect military communication during World War II. Its system of rotors, plugboards and electrical pathways allowed it to have billions of possible combinations, making the secret messages that were being sent through, seem unbreakable. Each day, operators changed the machine’s settings, ensuring that even if one message was decoded, the next would be different, to ensure maximum security of said messages. And now for how The Enigma Machine works. This machine is highly complex and works like an electromechanical typewriter that scrambles letters using rotors that rotate, a plugboard and a reflector, creating a unique substitution cipher for each keypress on the machine. This makes messages unreadable without the exact daily settings to reverse the process. When a key was pressed, an electrical signal went through the plugboard, into the rotors (which changed its position on each press), then hit the reflector, and went back through the rotors in a different path, and lit up a different path, and lit up a different letter on the lampboard. This technology of encrypting data was a very brilliant idea that the Germans came up with, since it gave them an upper-hand against everyone on secret attacks and this made them much stealthier (with their attacks.)

The Challenge of Codebreaking

For the Allies, breaking Enigma was essential to survive the Second World War, not just about curiosity on what the messages could’ve been, but instead the next big thing that the mathematicians were going to do was vital for the survival of millions of people. German U-boats threatened supply lines across the Atlantic Ocean, and encrypted orders led troop movements. Early attempts to crack the code failed multiple times, but the necessity of war pushed mathematicians, cryptanalysts and engineers to collaborate on the problem that lay before the history of the entire world (The fate of the world was in their hands).

Bletchley Park and Alan Turing

The turning point of this problem came to Bletchley Park, Buckinghamshire, England, where a team of brilliant minds worked together tirelessly. Alan Turing, a mathematician and logician. Who was born on June 23rd 1912 at London, Britain (Almost exactly two years before World War I). He was bullied and seen as an outsider when he went to English Boarding Schools. He was bullied for the fact that he was so deeply focused into mathematics and the fact that he was homosexual led to an early death by poisoning himself with a cyanide-laced apple though some evidence points to accidental death, but most attribute it to his persecution for homosexuality after his 1952 conviction for "gross indecency" led to chemical castration. But, Alan Turing along with his team of mathematicians and cryptanalysts designed a second machine called “The Bombe,” (which took around 5-6 months to be designed and built) a machine that could test Enigma settings at incredible speed. This creation allowed the Allies to read German messages real-time. The work was completed with high secrecy, (meaning that most of the world didn’t know about it until after the war was won by the Allies.), with thousands of staff contributing to the effortful push that led the Allies to victory. This machine worked by automating the grueling process of finding daily Enigma machine settings, using electrical circuits and rotating drums to simulate Enigma's rotors and plugboard, rapidly testing thousands of potential daily settings against known plaintext (cribs) to find contradictions, and stopping when it has figured the code for the day out.

Impact on World War II

The breaking of Enigma shortened the war by an estimated two to four years. It gave the Allies crucial insights into German strategies of waging war, including U-boats. For context, a U-boat can often be referred to as a German submarine, and the thing that differentiates it from a normal submarine is that it is a surface vessel that could submerge for limited attacks unlike modern submarines, which are primarily used for long, time consuming underwater battles. U-boats also introduced snorkel technology for extended submerged ops (And another major thing about the German U-boats is that in the early production of them they mainly ran on diesel for surface speed and electric for submerged stealth, but needed to surface to recharge/attack). its positions and planned offensives. This intelligence, known as “Ultra”, was so valuable that it was guarded with much secrecy (even commanders were often unaware of its source.) All of this thoughtful planning and designing eventually led to the  victory for the Allies against the German Nazi’s.

Conclusion

The breaking of the Enigma code still remains one of the most remarkable achievements of the 20th century. What began as a last minute desperation to turn the tables during the Second World War, led to the triumph of mathematicians, engineering and human determination. The success at Bletchley Park not only saved millions of lives and hastened the end of World War II but also ignited the flame of modern computing. The Enigma Code Story is more than a tale of cryptography, it is a reminder that even the most complex puzzles that seem impossible can be solved when intellect, collaboration, and perseverance join forces and work together.