Code team cracked Soviet's ciphers

[InfoSec News <isn () c4i org>]

http://portal.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2003/06/02/ncode02.xml

By Neil Tweedie
(Filed: 02/06/2003) 

[ http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1842750046/c4iorg  - WK]

The codebreakers of Bletchley Park not only broke into the secrets of 
the German Enigma machine, but also succeeded in cracking the main 
Russian machine ciphers.

The success of British cryptanalysts during the Second World War in 
cracking the German machine is well known, but their work on Soviet 
machines has remained secret.

Now, for the first time, details of GCHQ's early Cold War successes 
against the Soviet Union are revealed in The Spying Game, by Michael 
Smith. He describes how one of the most precious secrets of the early 
Cold War was betrayed to the Soviet Union by an American spy.

Smith says the British codebreakers agreed to work with the Americans 
on Soviet codes and ciphers. By September 1946, the academics turned 
codebreakers were sending the Americans material produced from a 
Russian enciphered teleprinter system they had codenamed Caviar.

But their best successes came after a move from Bletchley Park to 
Eastcote, Middlesex, when they broke main Soviet military machine 
ciphers known as the Poets series. 

This followed GCHQ's breaking of the first Poet system in early 1946. 
Called Coleridge, it was used by the Soviet army, navy and air force 
on main communications networks in the USSR.

Coleridge gave the Western allies an insight into Soviet military 
strength, capability and dispositions. The information was second only 
to Soviet atomic secrets on the British intelligence wish list.

But on October 29 1948 - later known as Black Friday - Warsaw Pact 
codes, ciphers, and communications procedures were changed. 

The codebreakers' secret had been handed to the Russians by William W 
Weisband, their agent in the US army.



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