Talks to Watch

Cracking Enigma in 2021 - Computerphile

2.9M views · Apr 12, 2021 · 21:20 · 3 HN recommenders · 4 mentions · discussed 2021–2024

Dr Mike Pound of Computerphile shows how a modern laptop can crack Enigma, using a ciphertext-only attack based on an older paper. He compares it with the tooling in CrypTool.

Why Hacker News points people here: HN recommends it as a good starting point on practical Enigma cryptanalysis with modern hardware.

“would be a good place to start.”HN comment, 2021

What Hacker News said 4

RecommendswhiskeytuesdaySep 2021

“would be a good place to start.”

Good starting point on cracking Enigma

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I would think that the recent computerphile video "Cracking Enigma In 2021" would be a good place to start. this video

in “The Scandalous History of the Last Rotor Cipher Machine” · view on HN
RecommendsgregsadetskyApr 2022

“This is also a good companion video”

Feasibility of cracking Enigma with modern compute

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Super interesting, thanks! This is also a good companion video -- this video -- about the feasibility of cracking Enigma "in 2021" i.e. using computational power available to us today. TLDW & AFAIK: it's crackable (just as it was back then, using a bag of approaches & heuristics), but you still couldn't plain brute force an encrypted message today if you didn't have any portion of the plain text, the Enigma was using 10 plugboard pairs, etc. Also see link

in “How did the Enigma Machine work? (2021) [video]” · view on HN
RecommendsH8crilAMay 2024

“made a good video on practical cryptanalysis of the Enigma using modern hardware”

Practical ciphertext-only cryptanalysis of Enigma

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AFAIK the Germans kept improving both the Enigma itself and the procedures for using it. For example there was some specific weakness that the Polish attacks used, but at some point Germans figured it out and "patched" it. By the end of the war they could change the "encryption key" even more often than once a day, whereas before the war they could reuse the same key for many months. The Poles didn't break all Enigma setups till 1939 because one didn't have to it yet to effectively collect intelligence. Also because they hadn't existed yet :) Enigma was actually pretty good, but it had a major design flaw: insufficient diffusion. The YouTube channel Computerphile made a good video on practical cryptanalysis of the Enigma using modern hardware: this video . In short, if you know what you're doing you can do ciphertext-only attacks given long enough messages and minimal knowledge about the distribution of the plaintext (their example relies only on the fact that the plaintext is in English).

in “Interview with Marian Rejewski, the first person to crack Enigma (1974) [video]” · view on HN
Cites itaquovaJun 2023

“With some clever tricks, and the advantage of hindsight, it can be done reasonably quickly on a modern computer.”

Enigma can be cracked quickly on a modern computer

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An episode of Computerphile attempted to answer the question - this video . TL;DW: With some clever tricks, and the advantage of hindsight, it can be done reasonably quickly on a modern computer.

in “P1030680: Unbroken Enigma message (U534, 01 May 1945)” · view on HN