Webinar Video
Questions & Answers
Q: For the voice scrambler, were patents available that could be reverse engineered?
A: Two very important branches in voice communication were and are CELP and MELP. Type inside Google "CELP compression patents" and be astonished that these developments are still going on this day. One of the older patents can be found too. Have a look at this link for more information, just as an example:
Note that Philips Usfa in their top years were one of the first to implement such speech coding. See this link:
Later this was covered by patents too, but realize that you may not use this valid patented technology for product developments until the patent is (was) expired. But certainly one is able to *prepare* him/herself in case of patent expiring to push a new product on the market, probably with a newer patent to cutoff competition. This still happens a lot. Patents by themselves must be clear enough to explain what companies want to protect. Competition certainly can learn from this information, even if the patent is pending…
Q: Is it true Enigma was designed by two Dutch naval officers?
A: Correct. Messrs van Hengel and Sprengler were the ones. Please have a look at our page on the cryptomuseum:
Q: As a citizen, do I have the right to use encrypted phone for example? Or is it prohibited, and just for secret agents ;)
A: It depends on where you are on our globe. There are countries where it certainly is forbidden, but as far as we know in Europe and in the United States one may use cryptology to protect individual or IP (Intellectual Property) information. But hey, don't blame us when a cross is in front of your name if you do so ;-)
Q: Is it possible to find the encryption key by looking to statistics of letters in text, e.g. some vowels that appear more often and hence you can already give higher probabilities to 5 of the 26 letters. Was that not possible with Enigma already?
A: It certainly was. But good listening to radio nets, recognizing the operator and search for typical German official behavior was much more efficient. Almost every message started with "AN_" and then, one can imagine "AN_HERR_OBER…." . So they searched for possible wheel positions where this would come out. Much more efficient than solving this problem with statistics in those days!
Q: I read somewhere that German navy used a different Enigma machine, is that correct?
A: Correct, it was the M4 naval machine. Look here on our web pages:
But please realize that the navy first started with an M3 machine. This machine was compatible with the 3-rotor surface Enigma-I, but was another build. Lots of other types were built during war time, even with extremely hard to break wheels, the 'Lückenfüllerwalze', please look at it and realize what headache Bletchley would have had if these rotors were used…
Q: This may be an out of subject question… Any hint for protecting the growing number of passwords, PIN codes, etc.)?
A: Not really: Having the same problem here ;-) The only thing is that I tend to 'upgrade' my passwords depending on the importance of stuff. Always use at least one of these characters: "!@#$%&**()".
Q: Anything to show related to the deciphering tools?
A: One tool I can mention because it is quite known: Cryptool. Look at this link: https://www.cryptool.org/en/
Q: Is the movie "Imitation Game" realistic?
A: Let us first state that we find it a fantastic film, because of the way how it is made and that we like the subject. But from an historical point of view the film did some short cuts. But hey, nobody wants a boring story. If we can advise you a good book to read about Alan Turing, then, please consider this one: http://press.princeton.edu/titles/10413.html