This is an interesting news that again shows how useful a computer can be. Using a network of computer terminals, 3 German cryptography enthusiasts have successfully cracked one of the most complicated encrypted codes used by Nazi army during World War II back in 1942.

The complex ciphers were encoded in 1942 by a new version of the German Enigma machine. Part of the reason Allied army losses in the North Atlantic throughout 1942 was the advancement in this German encryption techniques.

Quoted:
German messages were encoded using the fearsome Enigma machine, which used a series of rotors, often augmented by a so-called “plugboard”, to scramble transmissions not meant for Allied eyes.

The machines used ever-changing rotor wheel combinations and electrical currents to produce unique coded messages.

Plugboards further complicated matters by swapping pairs of letters over during the encoding process, greatly increasing the numbers of possible encryptions.

Stefan Krah is the one started this tedious decrypting process mainly motivated by his basic human curiosity. He wrote a custom code-breaking program which initially attracted about 45 users to run his program on their computer for the cracking project. The project is now having around 2,500 separate computer terminals contributing.

Stefan Krah’s codebreaking software utilizes a combination of “brute force” attempts to guess the correct message embedded in the encrypted codes. For your information “brute force” attempts can be used to crack any password in vulnerable login system by trying a large number of letters and numbers combinations exhaustively.

All hard works turned into fruitful outcome when the program successfully decrypted the following encoded codes :-

NCZW VUSX PNYM INHZ XMQX SFWX WLKJ AHSH NMCO CCAK UQPM KCSM HKSE INJU SBLK IOSX CKUB HMLL XCSJ USRR DVKO HULX WCCB GVLI YXEO AHXR HKKF VDRE WEZL XOBA FGYU JQUK GRTV UKAM EURB VEKS UHHV OYHA BCJW MAKL FKLM YFVN RIZR VVRT KOFD ANJM OLBG FFLE OPRG TFLV RHOW OPBE KVWM UQFM PWPA RMFH AGKX IIBG

into this :-

Forced to submerge during attack. Depth charges. Last enemy position 0830h AJ 9863, [course] 220 degrees, [speed] 8 knots. [I am] following [the enemy]. [barometer] falls 14 mb, [wind] nor-nor-east, [force] 4, visibility 10 [nautical miles].

The above code is just one of the three unsolved Enigma intercepts that were published in a cryptography journal in 1995. Cracking the first cipher is no doubt a proud milestone in cryptography history. Now the next target is to decrypt the remaining two unsolved ciphers.