Axis with secure communication

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Admiral Beez

Major
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10,618
Oct 21, 2019
Toronto, Canada
Two changes in history...

1936, through sources in Poland, Germany discovers the fundamental mathematical and algorithmic flaws in its signals encryption system, including a full understanding of the weaknesses of the Enigma machine.

1937, Japan discovers that William Friedman and the SIS have broken their diplomatic codes and learn the US code-breaking infrastructure and methods, such as IBM punch cards. Japan takes these lessons into account in developing JN-25 and closely managing its use.

Now, no code is unbreakable, even the seemingly cryptographically-inept Germans and Japanese were able to intercept some Allied communications. But now the Axis know that their opponents are making code breaking a priority.
 
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As to the first, the German Armed Forces had more than enough information to know that their Enigma ciphers were, including more than one lost (or stolen) set of keys and manuals. They also had a number of bad habits (especially the Luftwaffe), such as repeating messages with less secure ciphers and a lot of consistent boilerplate. Those errors were not technical; they were cultural within the Luftwaffe. The Kriegsmarine was much better with its cipher security, but its wolfpack tactics also forced a lot of radio traffic. It doesn't matter how good you ciphers are if the locations of all you submarines can be determined by the radio signals they produce.
 


The treaty of Versailles prevented ( as in if they did so allies would invade Germany) the German military (what there was of it) from practising cryptography. Some expertise did develop but they were informal experts in departments dedicated to other fields such as signals and telegraphy and often run by engineers rather than mathematicians this is the cause of the weakness in German cryptography.

Hence German cryptography developed around commercial enigma machines. However they were ahead of the allies in deploying mechanical encryption. The allies copied the German methods (sigba and typex) but merely added extra rotors and complications.

The Germans never stopped improving their machines and . Had they have managed wide spread introduction of the rewireable reflector UKWD Bletchley part would have been sent blind but it proved impossible to manufacture them in quantity.

Umkehrwalze D, or UKW-D was a field-rewirable reflector for the Enigma-I cipher machine. It was introduced in January 1944 by the German Air Force (Luftwaffe) as an alternative to the existing reflectors UKW-B and UKW-C, in an attempt to improve the security of the Enigma machine. A special variant was available for use in the Naval M4 Enigma. It is also known as UKW Dora.

Another improvement to the cipher strength of the Enigma, was the development of the so-called Lückenfüllerwalze that was being introduced towards the end of the war, together with UKW-D, for all Enigma traffic. It stepped the reflector in uneven sequences.

The Germans used DEHOMAG punch card computers to crack allied codes. It was calculated that these machines, using 50,000 punch cards would be able to crack enigma.

Nothing was done when this vulnerability was revealed. There were several such warnings given.

So the experts were giving warnings, no one with the skills was listening and passing on the warning.
 
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There were plenty of grounds to suspect that Enigma and other codes were being broken, no code is unbreakable, but the way it was operated invited compromise. Investigations seemed to start with the premise that it and others werent being broken rather than that they could be. As I understand it, post war, the Germans werent surprised that it was broken, they were surprised that it was being done on an industrial scale, almost in real time.
 
The Brits conducted at least one operation specifically to capture an intact Enigma, off Norway -- 1941 iirc. That should have alerted German SIGINT to possible compromise. Another warning-sign the Germans didn't act upon quickly enough was the sinking of the Bismarck's supply ships in the wake of the battleship's loss. Those two events should have, and perhaps did, alert B-dienst to possible compromise. Perhaps that led to Shark being adopted?

Kahn's book Seizing the Enigma is the sourcing for these (admittedly hazy) recollections of mine.
 
I suppose this is the diversion I'm seeking, where the Germans (and Japan) understand and act on their communication vulnerabilities.

Looking at Dehomag - Wikipedia it's amazing that a regime can have such computer power and still be invading Russia on horseback.
 
Punch card systems were widely used, i remember a documentary showing how it was used to simulate nuclear reactions on the Manhattan project, I have vague memories of being taught them in the 1960s before Texas instruments made their calculators affordable.
 



It should be noted that this Wikipedia article has been manipulated by hasbarat. The German census was anonymous and not linked to name or address and provided no means of tracing or tracking any religious or ethnic group. The claim is logically impossible It's just a narrative spin used to support a law suite against IBM. Likewise with the use of these machines to schedule railways traffic that went to concentration camps Despite the IBM connection DEHOMAG machines were very sophisticated most importantly mostly of local German design, capable of mathematical and logical operations beyond mere card sorting.

Konrad Zuse developed computers with a colleague that stored code on expired newsreal film and conducted floating point opperqations. They were used to solve systems of differential equations for aeroelastic flutter and such like instead of code breaking.
 
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Any code system that relies on the enemy not having a captured a code decode machine for its security is close to worthless. The algorithm itself needs to be so strong on its own that capture of a machine is no cause for concern.

The German enigma machines likely needed 5 instead of 3 rotors or at least a rewireable reflector that was changed every week. Early weakness in the code allowed break ins and that allowed an code breaking infrastructure to develop that was able to grow and keep pace with German improvements. Had greater care been taken to begin with this may not have happened.

Having said that, British attempts to capture a enigma indicated a strong British effort. I cryptography paranoia is a virtue.
 

We had one in 6th form at high school. It was a Canon unit and we programmed it by using a paper clip to punch out the code and numbers.

I did see real IBM punch card machines used in a bank in the 1980s. The cards must race through at about 10-20 cards per second.
 
There were many weaknesses in the Enigma system, not only the machines and how they worked but also the way they were used, sometimes in complete contravention of good practice.
 
I used IBM punch cards for a computer course when I was pretending to go to college back in 1974 or 1975.
 
Rule is any code is breakable and expect your enemy to break it.

Not sure why you would ever think otherwise.

Same with internet....the nonsense I write is now out of my control and can be used in evidence against me. Forever. So either accept that or live in a cave.
 
The problems come when you have to tell people like Adolf and Hermann that you need a new code because the present one has been broken for years.
 
SaparotRob said:
What about Uncle Joe?
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Oh Joe was very easy going about such things, probably just cut them from his Christmas card list. In fact the work of Bletchley park and their collegues in USA was never disclosed to Joe expecting that the use of German codes would remain after the war, this was at least partially successful. I remember when the secrecy around Bletchley and Enigma wasnt lifted until the mid 1970s, I remember it happening. That is incredible considering 5,000 worked at Bletchley alone.
 
Admiral Beez said:
But why were the Axis so rubbish at breaking Allied signals?
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I don't know if they were or weren't, but I suspect that both US and Commonwealth armed forces knew that they were reading other nations' codes and expected the other countries were trying equally hard to read theirs and were equally competent. In other words, they accorded their enemies' signals intelligence services comparable capabilities to their own, and tended to try harder to avoid the procedural flaws that made Axis communications less secure than they should have been from a strictly technological view.
 
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