Newly Released Papers from NSA Journals
The papers are old, but they have just been released under FOIA.
Entries Tagged "history of cryptography"
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Sending Coded Messages with Postage Stamps
The history of coded messages in postage-stamp placement. I wonder how prevalent this actually was. My guess is that it was more a clever idea than an actual signaling system. And I notice that a lot of the code systems don’t have a placement that indicates “no message; this is just a stamp.”
Cracking the Copiale Cipher
I don’t follow historical cryptography, so all of this comes as a surprise to me. But something called the Copiale Cipher from the 18th Century has been cracked.
EDITED TO ADD (11/14): Here’s the academic website.
NSA Acronyms
The second document in this file is the recently unclassified “Guide to Historical Cryptologic Acronyms and Abbreviations, 1940-1980,” from the NSA
Note that there are still some redactions.
New Information on the Inventor of the One-Time Pad
Seems that the one-time pad was not first invented by Vernam:
He could plainly see that the document described a technique called the one-time pad fully 35 years before its supposed invention during World War I by Gilbert Vernam, an AT&T engineer, and Joseph Mauborgne, later chief of the Army Signal Corps.
[…]
The 1882 monograph that Dr. Bellovin stumbled across in the Library of Congress was “Telegraphic Code to Insure Privacy and Secrecy in the Transmission of Telegrams,” by Frank Miller, a successful banker in Sacramento who later became a trustee of Stanford University. In Miller’s preface, the key points jumped off the page:
“A banker in the West should prepare a list of irregular numbers to be called ‘shift numbers,'” he wrote. “The difference between such numbers must not be regular. When a shift-number has been applied, or used, it must be erased from the list and not be used again.”
It seems that Vernam was not aware of Miller’s work, and independently invented the one-time pad.
World War II Tunny Cryptanalysis Machine Rebuilt at Bletchley Park
Neat:
The rebuild team had only a few photographs, partial circuit diagrams and the fading memories of a few original Tunny operators to go on. Nonetheless a team led by John Pether and John Whetter was able to complete this restoration work.
Pether explained that getting the electronics to work proved to be the most difficult part of the restoration process.
“We’ve succeeded in rebuilding Tunny with scraps of evidence, and although we are very proud of our work it is rather different from the truly astonishing achievement of Bill Tutte’s re-engineering of the Lorenz machine,” he said. “Sourcing 200 suitable relays and dealing with the complex wiring schedules was difficult, but we really got in tune with the original team when we had to set up the electronic timing circuits. They were a continuous source of problems then as they are even now for the rebuild team—except the original team didn’t even have the benefit of digital storage oscilloscopes.”
The rebuild took place in four stages: the construction of a one-wheel Tunny to ensure that timing circuits and relays worked correctly, followed by progressively more complex five-, seven- and 12-wheel Tunny. At each stage, the rebuilds were tested. Key components for the Tunny rebuild were salvaged from decommissioned analogue telephone exchanges, donated by BT. The same components were used to complete the earlier Colussus rebuild project.
Now they have a working Tunny to complement their working Colossus and working Bombe.
Biliteral Ciphers
Interesting article on William Friedman and biliteral ciphers.
Recently Declassified NSA History Document
“American Cryptography During the Cold War 1945-1989; Book IV: Cryptologic Rebirth 1981-1989.” Document was first declassified in 2009. Here are some newly declassified pages.
Civil War Message Decoded
EDITED TO ADD (1/12): More information here. The key was “Manchester Bluff”.
Sidebar photo of Bruce Schneier by Joe MacInnis.