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Sunday, March 05, 2006

Nice quote....

"Being powerful is like being a lady. If you have to tell people you are, you aren't."
-- Margaret Thatcher

Online amateurs crack Nazi codes


Three German ciphers unsolved since World War II are finally being cracked, helped by thousands of home computers.


The codes resisted the best efforts of the celebrated Allied cryptographers based at Bletchley Park during the war.


Now one has been solved by running code-breaking software on a "grid" of internet-linked home computers.


The complex ciphers were encoded in 1942 by a new
version of the German Enigma machine, and led to regular hits on Allied
vessels by German U-boats.


Allied experts initially failed to deal with the German
adoption in 1942 of a complex new cipher system, brought in at the same
time as a newly upgraded Enigma machine.


The advancement in German encryption techniques led to significant Allied losses in the North Atlantic throughout 1942.


















Forced to submerge during attack. Depth charges. I am following the enemy










Kapt Hartwig Looks
25 November 1942












The three unsolved Enigma intercepts were published in a cryptography journal in 1995 and have intrigued enthusiasts ever since.


Although assumed to have little historical significance,
they are thought to be among just a handful of German naval ciphers in
existence still to be decoded.


Exponential growth

The latest attempt to crack the codes was kick-started
by Stefan Krah, a German-born violinist with an interest in
cryptography and open-source software.


Mr Krah told the BBC News website that "basic human
curiosity" had motivated him to crack the codes, but stressed the debt
he owed to veteran codebreaking enthusiasts who have spent years
researching Enigma.













UNSOLVED CIPHER #1





HCEY
ZTCS OPUP PZDI UQRD LWXX FACT TJMB HDVC JJMM ZRPY IKHZ AWGL YXWT MJPQ
UEFS ZBCT VRLA LZXW VXTS LFFF AUDQ FBWR RYAP SBOW JMKL DUYU PFUQ DOWV
HAHC DWAU ARSW TXCF VOYF PUFH VZFD GGPO OVGR MBPX XZCA NKMO NFHX PCKH
JZBU MXJW XKAU OD?Z UCVC XPFT








He wrote a code-breaking program and publicised his project on internet
newsgroups, attracting the interest of about 45 users, who all allowed
their machines to be used for the project.


Mr Krah named the project M4, in honour of the M4 Enigma machine that originally encoded the ciphers.


There are now some 2,500 separate terminals contributing to the project, Mr Krah said.


"The most amazing thing about the project is the
exponential growth of participants. All I did myself was to announce it
in two news groups and on one mailing list."


Nevertheless, in little over a month an apparently
random combination of letters had been decoded into a real wartime
communication.


In its encrypted form the cipher makes no sense at all, reading as follows:









Bletchley Park, near Milton Keynes, UK
Bletchley Park was thought to cut WWII by two years








"NCZW VUSX PNYM INHZ XMQX SFWX WLKJ AHSH NMCO CCAK UQPM KCSM HKSE INJU
SBLK IOSX CKUB HMLL XCSJ USRR DVKO HULX WCCB GVLI YXEO AHXR HKKF VDRE
WEZL XOBA FGYU JQUK GRTV UKAM EURB VEKS UHHV OYHA BCJW MAKL FKLM YFVN
RIZR VVRT KOFD ANJM OLBG FFLE OPRG TFLV RHOW OPBE KVWM UQFM PWPA RMFH
AGKX IIBG"


Unencrypted and translated into English, the message suddenly comes to life:


"Forced to submerge during attack. Depth charges. Last
enemy position 0830h AJ 9863, [course] 220 degrees, [speed] 8 knots. [I
am] following [the enemy]. [barometer] falls 14 mb, [wind]
nor-nor-east, [force] 4, visibility 10 [nautical miles]."


A check against existing records confirmed that the
message was sent by Kapitanleutnant Hartwig Looks, commander of the
German navy's U264 submarine, on 25 November 1942.

BBC's wildlife archives released

Content from the BBC's Natural History Unit has been made available free of charge over the internet.


The Open Earth Archive will include previously unseen clips from new wildlife series Planet Earth.


Footage can be viewed, downloaded and edited into personal projects as part of the Creative Archive Licence.

Read more...