ebay Enigma

One can either sell a faulty mainboard for EUR 5,83 on ebay (plus EUR 7,00 p+p, which is more than the winning bid).

Or one can sell an actual Enigma cipher machine. Auction ends tomorrow and will earn the seller a fortune incomparable to my puny EUR 5,83.

Introduced in 1926, the German Enigma provided the world’s strongest military encryption for several years. Due to enormous Polish and British efforts (and the stereotype crib “Oberkommando der Wehrmacht” = Wehrmacht high command), even the advanced naval code had been cracked by mid-1941. Things again changed when German Kriegsmarine replaced old M3 versions (auctioned above) with new M4 Enigmas (having 4 rotors) on 1st February 1942 and at the same time introduced the “Triton” key network. For the following ten months Axis U-Boat messaging was secure again, making the North Atlantic a lot less safe place for allied ships.

Until today, three radio signals intercepted in November 1942 remained undecrypted, so the distributed computing M4 Message Breaking Project was founded in January 2006. Using approx. 2.500 clients, two of the codes were broken in February and March. U264 / Kapitänleutnant Hartwig Looks reporting from his first patrol:

From Looks:

Radio signal 1132/19 contents:

Forced to submerge during attack, depth charges. Last enemy location 08:30h, Marqu AJ 9863, 220 degrees, 8 nautical miles, (I am) following (the enemy). (Barometer) 1014 Millibar (tendency) falling, NNO 4, visibility 10.

Thrilling ! Forget about SETI@home, this is the real deal. The M4 client is a quick 2.3 MB install, and so I am helping to decipher the final message now.

My recommended read on the cryptography topic: The Code Book.

Addendum: Highest bid for the Enigma M3 is EUR 55.050, with bids worth ~ EUR 20.000 on final auction day. Buyer is a new ebay member who only just opened an account…