30th November 2009
Solving the Enigma: History of the Cryptanalytic Bombe
“As the German military grew in the late 1920s, it began looking for a better way to secure its communications. It found the answer in a new cryptographic machine called “Enigma.” The Germans believed the encryption generated by the machine to be unbreakable. With a theoretical number of ciphering possibilities of 3 X 10114, their belief was not unjustified.1 However, they never reached that theoretical level of security. Nor did they count on the cryptanalytic abilities of their adversaries.
