Normally, ten sets of plugs were used leaving six letters ‘self-steckered’.Ĥ.
The plugboard was then set up according to the same instructions. After setting the index ring on each rotor, the three wheels were arranged on the machine’s spindle in the order prescribed in the daily instructions for machine initialization.ģ. The daily instructions would also specify the reflector.Ģ. Three wheels were selected from a set of five in the case of the Army and Air Force machines and from a set of eight in the case of the Naval machines.
Procedure for operating the machineĮnigma was set up according to daily instructions by adjusting the following parameters (this has been simplified to exclude the more complex Kriegmarine machines):ġ. From here it passed back to the plugboard and then to the lampboard where a lamp corresponding to the now enciphered character was illuminated.īecause of the reflector’s function in the encipherment process, no plaintext character could ever encipher to itself – another weakness in the system that was exploited to great effect by the Allied cryptanalysts. Additionally, once during a complete revolution of each wheel, the wheel to its immediate left stepped forward one place.Īfter passing through all three wheels the signal reached the reflector which performed two functions – it changed the signal’s identity once again and also sent it back, in the reverse direction, through the three wheels to the entry stator. With each keystroke the extreme right-hand wheel moved one position before encipherment took place. Each of these had twenty-six contacts on each of its faces, cross-wired in a random fashion so that the identity of an incoming character was changed three times as it passed through the three wheels.
ENIGMA MACHINE SERIES
if A was switched to Z, then Z was switched to A, a weakness that was to be exploited by Allied cryptanalysts.įrom the plugboard the signal then passed to the entry stator which passed it to the first of a series of three rotors. The plugboard substitution was reciprocal – i.e. If the particular socket did not contain a plug, the identity of the input character was unchanged. The signal left the keyboard and passed through a plugboard (known as a Steckerboard) where, if the plugboard socket contained a connector, its identity was switched to a different letter.
ENIGMA MACHINE WINDOWS
Principles of operationĮnigma Machine showing the plugboard at the front, the input keyboard, the glass windows where the encrypted letter would light up and, above them, the three rotors in their slotsĪ message to be enciphered was input from a keyboard which had a QWERTZUIO layout. It has been estimated that the machine had one hundred and fifty-nine million million million possible combinations. The strength of the Enigma was that it changed the pattern after each individual letter was inputed.
ENIGMA MACHINE CODE
The key to breaking any code is spotting a pattern. The receiver needed to know the exact settings of the transmitting machine in order to reconstitute the coded text. Enigma allowed an operator to type in a message, which was then scrambled by the machine based on certain settings. The Enigma is an electro-mechanical encrption machine based on alphabetic substitution – i.e.
0 kommentar(er)
