Template talk:Cipher machines

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[edit] What should we include?

What are the general guidelines for including things here? Obviously we don't want them all! E.g. for secure voice, should we list the X-system (used by Churchill and Roosevelt in WWII), or Turing's Delilah system? Noel (talk) 21:40, 5 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I'm afraid I haven't been very discriminate so far, simply dumping all the articles I could find on crypto machines. But, as you point out, we're likely to get more and more articles, so at some point we might have to pick and choose the most prominent systems; it's probably OK for the time being, though? And thanks for the "Misc" fix — much better. BTW, do you know if Turing's Delilah ever got used for anything? — Matt Crypto 21:51, 5 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Sure, looks good for the moment.

As to the Delilah, according to Hodges, Turing (pp. 346), no. It was checked out by Dollis Hill, who found it secure; the Cypher (sic :-) Policy Board (an inter-agency board set up in '44) was interested, but they wanted Bayley (from Hanslope, who had worked with Turing on it, and took it to completion when Turing moved on) with it, and Bayley's boss refused to give him up, so it was forgotten. Which was too bad - it was a technological tour-de-force of some magnitude. Noel (talk) 22:14, 5 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Going back to this template, I think we should break the Secure Voice up into at least STU Signalling and SCIP Signalling. Maybe add another line for the Layer level devices like the KG-84, KG-250, KG-100, KG-184 etc. I will be adding info probably on all these plus Kiv-7/19, Omni, Sectera devices, plus several others. Being the newb I do not want to just start hacking away without at least seeing what was wanted. --Terry 18:05, 31 August 2005 (UTC)

It'd be great to have articles on all this stuff! So, you're suggesting a division into three categories for the secure voice line: STU, SCIP and Layer level devices? There's also likely to be a bunch of other secure voice equipment, too; for example, some of the UK BID devices are for secure voice, and ancient stuff like SIGSALY, Turing's "Delilah" etc. Maybe the best approach is evolutionary; whenever one line gets too big, just split it in the most sensible fashion. We can always refactor later ;-) — Matt Crypto 15:23, 2 September 2005 (UTC)