ANN: obfuscate

[Mark Lawrence]

Paul Rubin wrote:
> Mark Lawrence <breamoreboy at yahoo.co.uk> writes:
>>> The predecessor of the Enigma was cracked by Polish scientists years
>>> before WW2 started....
>> I believe that all of Enigma was eventually cracked cos of two major
>> flaws.
> 
> I think it never would have been cracked if it hadn't been cracked
> (whether by the Brits or the Poles) before the war started, using
> commercial versions of the Enigma that they had access to.  The military
> Enigma and its operating methods got more sophisticated as the war went
> on, and the cryptanalysts were able to keep up with it by incrementally
> improving techniques that they were already using at scale.  If they
> were suddenly confronted with the full-blown military system in the
> middle of the war, it would have been a lot harder to do anything about
> it.  At least, most of the Enigma-related books I've read give that
> impression and even come out and say such things.
I completely agree.
> 
>> Further, the far more powerful Geheimscreiber was also cracked at
>> Bletchley by using Colossus.  Sorry some years since I read the book
>> about this so can't remember the title or author.
> 
> See  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colossus_computer
> That was almost at the end of the war though.