From today's TIMES ONLINE : Idling computers crack Nazi Enigma codes
Martin Postranecky <mp-/[email protected]>
| Newsgroups | gmane.science.cryptography.bletchley-park |
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Times Online March 02, 2006 Idling computers crack Nazi Enigma codes ---------------------------------------- By Sam Knight An amateur's internet project is using idling computers to help crack three Nazi codes that eluded the Enigma codebreakers of the Second World War. Launched in January, the project has already broken one of the three messages, from a U-Boat commander forced to dive during an attack on November 25, 1942. The computers of 2,500 strangers are now whirring away, trying to decode the remaining two. Stefan Krah, a German-born cryptologist from Utrecht, in the Netherlands, started the network in January after writing a programme that combined the brute force of connected computers with a mathematical formula based on previous codebreaking work. He offered the software to readers of two online bulletin boards with the words: "Clearly the project is from the 'Because we can' department. Is it realistic to hope that anywhere between 10-100 people would take part?"..../snip/ ....The remaining messages facing Mr Krah were first published in Cryptologia, an academic journal, in 1995 by Ralph Erskine, a naval historian from Belfast. The codes were among the thousands that sat, unbreakable, for ten months during 1942 as the Allies struggled to catch up with the M4 upgrade of the Enigma. To join Mr Krah's project, follow the instructions here : http://http//www.bytereef.org/m4_project.html see : ----- http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,13509-2066177,00.html http://http//www.bytereef.org/m4_project.html