Registered: Nov 2001
Location: Rio de los Brazos de Dios
Posts: 3876

Many people these days are not aware of the fact that the success of the British-American team in WWII was due in part to the fact that the British team at Bletchley Park early in the war broke the German military code encoded by their super-secret Enigma machine which the Germans were sure was unbreaqkable. Coupled with this feat the US Office of Naval Intelligence also broke the Japanese diplomatic code then the Japanese Naval code. These decodings allowed us to know that
the attack on Midway Ialand was going to occur and when and where, that Admiral Yamamoto was going to the Philippines on a certain day and a myriad of other Japanese plans

These secrets were immediately shared between the two countries.

I am reminded of this because I have just finished reading a book called "The Man Who Broke Napoleaon's Code" by Mar4k Urban.
It is a biogrphy of George Scovell who was a major on Lord Wellington's staff and was one sharp cookie at breaking codes. Very good book.

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oxsan


Don't kick until yer spurred.

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Registered: Jul 2000
Location: A New England
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I have an apartment maybe 5 miles from Bletchley Park.

Apparantly the recent movie 'Enigma' covered the story quite well.

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Registered: May 2001
Location: Louisiana
Posts: 987

Codes are neato. Isn't there supposed to be a movie coming out about one of our codes in WWII? I think it was the Cherokee one and they movie is about protecting it or something.

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Registered: Jul 2000
Location: A New England
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Windtalkers

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Registered: Jul 2000
Location: Location Location
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I'm pretty sure that it wasn't the British that did that. It was Ben Affleck.

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Registered: Aug 2001
Location: Land of Entrapment
Posts: 660

And it's from the Navajo not the cherokee..

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Registered: Jul 2000
Location: Sedona, Arizona
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The language of the Dineh.


the Germans also screwed up when they didn't figure out what all those towers were that the Brits had along thier coast.
If they had figured out the British radar early on, it would have changed the course of the war dramatically.

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Registered: Aug 2001
Location: Land of Entrapment
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They knew what they were but didn't believe the brits could have it.. Germany lost the war because they were led and contianed way too many dumbasses..

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Registered: Nov 2000
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Isthay eadthray isway eryvay informativeway aboutway ethay
odecay eakingbray escapadesway ofway ethay alliesway uringday
orldway arway otway.

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Registered: Nov 2001
Location: Rio de los Brazos de Dios
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It was the British who broke the enigma code alright but they did get a big boost from the Polish Underground who actuaqly stole an Enigma machine and smuggled it out of Poland to the British. The Germans changed the Enigma several times and there were long periods when the British struggled frantically to break the new code. They did always succeed.
In both WWII and the Viet Nam war the US used Navajo radiomen
to send messages not in code but in their native Navajo language (en clair as the French would say). Navajo is so complex
and so filled with unusual features (like the fact that the most frequent consonant in the Navajo language is the glottal stop) that none of these messages were read by the enemy. Navajo is one hell of a language.

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Registered: Jan 2002
Location: UK
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Interstingly, the argument about who broke Enigma first took place ina Linux Magazine Letters page about cryptography. It is true that the Poles broke Engima early. However, they broke Enigma that only had three cyhper wheels, they also only managed it by stealing a pass book.

By the time Blethcley Park was intercepting signals Enigma had moved on to become a four wheel machine for the Army, and the Naval version 'Shark' had five wheels and the rotation of the settings was held in a book on a submarine and there only.

I have watched the film that Goatboy mentions, and in that film they are dealing with the fact that Shark was becoming impossible to crack. The only way they could crack Shark was by letting the Germans attack a merchant convoy from America, at this point they would start trasmitting using a signal book that Bletchey had access too, this was how Bletchley got back into Shark.

Turing also invented the first valve computer at Belthcley that ran sequences on Engima. This was the difference between the poles and the british cracking of Enigma/Shark.

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Registered: Nov 2000
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Oxsan...you just made me want to read "Little Big Man" again.

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Registered: Jul 2000
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If you're ever in need of one of them thar enigma machineries, well, here ya go:

http://www.ugrad.cs.jhu.edu/~russell/classes/enigma/

cryptography is a fun spectator sport.

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Registered: Jan 2002
Location: UK
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http://www.bletchleypark.org.uk/

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Registered: Nov 2001
Location: Rio de los Brazos de Dios
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After a cryptographer breaks a code and tells you how he did it the feat seems very simple. It is done by logic, a super knowledge of the language in which the code is written, and as much information as possible about the situation prevailing when
the message was encoded. There is one other way the British used sometimes called "a bombe" which is a machine that sits and grinds for hours arranging all of the characters in a message in all possible combinations and permutations Then a cryptographer sits for hours reading the printout to see if any of the arrangements make sense.

The longer a message is the easier the code to break. The more messages you have in the same code the better.

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Registered: Aug 2001
Location: Hilbert Space
Posts: 35561

With my hypothetical quantum computer I will break your RSA encryption.

Then using your hypothetical quantum computer you can construct a safer code than RSA.

But it will be cool, for a bit.

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Registered: Jul 2000
Location: Sedona, Arizona
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It was Navajo that I was refering to when I said, "The language of the Dineh".
That is what they originally called themselves and it means "the people". Navajo was what the Spaniards called them. The 'v' sound wasn't part of their language and even now if you listen to one of them say Navajo, they are actually saying "Nabajo".

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Registered: Aug 2001
Location: Hilbert Space
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quote:

---

Originally posted by wonderaz
It was Navajo that I was refering to when I said, "The language of the Dineh".
That is what they originally called themselves and it means "the people". Navajo was what the Spaniards called them. The 'v' sound wasn't part of their language and even now if you listen to one of them say Navajo, they are actually saying "Nabajo".

---

Last edited by Smug Git on 05-24-2002 at 08:10 PM

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Registered: Nov 2001
Location: Rio de los Brazos de Dios
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The Navajo still call themselves the Dineh--as do the Apache.

I am fascinated by the Navajo language (which I do NOT speak or read) and their culture. It is full of little courtesy nuances that I think are significant to the people themselves. Strangely enough
Navajo is more closely related to Tibetan than any other language other than Apache. Apache and Navajo are similar enough that they can talk to each other.

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Registered: Jul 2000
Location: Sedona, Arizona
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That be true. I am surrounded by both, the Navajo Nation to the north and the Yavapai Apache to the south.

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Registered: May 2001
Location: Louisiana
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Eh well "our codes" = American codes b/c I beez 'merican.

And yeah, mixin up the tribes... that's what I get for only half watching a preview for the movie about a week ago.

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Registered: Apr 2002
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if anyone wants a great fictional book that relates to this, check out Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson. Rereading it now, and it's great the second time around as well.

Gets into the mindfuck of breaking the enemies code, but only being able to use it so much or the enemy will know that you broke their codes.

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Registered: Nov 2001
Location: Rio de los Brazos de Dios
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But Smug your Hypothetical Quantum Computer (HQC) couldn't translate Navajo because it contains sounds not related to written symbols such as tonal glide on vowels up and tonal glide on vowels down and glottal stops for which there is no written symbol. So the HQC would have its quanta tied.

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Registered: Aug 2001
Location: Hilbert Space
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It would have to 'listen' to the sounds; being sounds, they can be digitally encoded. In fact, voice recognition is already performable; in this case, the main problem would have been realising what the langauge was and then coding it, although in practice it should be possible to break language as raw data, I don't know if anyone has ever done it (doubt it, yet).

The disadvantage of having a spoken code is, of course, that you can't transmit information very fast (although I guess that you could pre-record it and then compress it before transmission).

Everything can be digitally coded, though, although the variation from person to person would be a complication.

S'pretty interesting, this stuff. The chance of the HQC becoming anything vaguely real is pretty small (certainly for the near future at least).

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