Re: Hey old people

[Drsolly <drsollyp () drsolly com>]

On Tue, 27 Dec 2005, Blue Boar wrote:

> Drsolly wrote:
> > > A. Getting the actual hardware (without which the allies were completely 
> > > clueless)
>
> Versions of the hardware had been sold commercially since the 1920s.  It 
> couldn't have been that hard.

That was the typex (I think), and the German military used a machine that 
was based on that, but which wasn't the commercial version.
 
> > The whole point of Enigma (and devices like it) was that you couldn't 
> > brute-force it.
>
> That was a design goal, yes.  Which was not met.

Actually, I think it was met. Although maybe with todays computing power 
it could be brute-forced, it couldn't be at that time (and I'm not certain 
that it could be today).

> > Also, remember that at that time a "computer" was a person 
> > with a pencil and paper.
>
> Which time? 

At the time the Enigma was adopted by the German military, which was the 
1930s.

> The point of the Enigma crack was that Turing build an 
> eletctro-mechanical computer to assist with the cracking, no?

To assist, yes. But not to brute-force.
 
> Related to the original topic I started, this time (1940's) was the 
> birth of electric computers.

You mean "digital electronic", there's quite a big difference.

> To whatever degree they are accurate, Wikipedia has a couple of good 
> articles:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptanalysis_of_the_Enigma
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enigma_machine
>
>                                               BB

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