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- TL;DR Summary
- Enigma replica built by student
Enigma was a machine used by the Germans during World War II to encrypt their military communications. It played a crucial role in the war and its code was considered unbreakable for a long time.
Enigma used a series of rotors and plugboard connections to scramble the letters of a message. The sender and receiver had to set the rotors to the same starting position in order to decrypt the message.
The Enigma machine had over 150 trillion possible combinations, making it nearly impossible to break by hand. Additionally, the Germans changed the rotor settings daily, making it even more challenging to decipher their messages.
Alan Turing and his team at Bletchley Park created a machine called the Bombe that could test different rotor settings and find patterns in the encrypted messages. They also used information from captured Enigma machines and codebooks to aid in their efforts.
With the advancements in technology, the Enigma code can now be broken relatively quickly by computers. However, it still requires a lot of computing power and specialized algorithms to do so. The Enigma machine is also still used for educational and recreational purposes today.