Grill (cryptology)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Polish Cipher Bureau
Biuro Szyfrów
Methods and technology
Locations
Personnel
Deputy Chief
Chief of Radio Intelligence
Chief of German Section
Maksymilian Ciężki
Chief of Russian Section
Jan Graliński
Russian Section cryptologist
Piotr Smoleński
The Enigma
cipher machine

The grill (Polish: ruszt), in cryptology, was a method used chiefly early on, before the advent of the cyclometer, by the mathematician-cryptologists of the Polish Cipher Bureau (Biuro Szyfrów) in decrypting German Enigma-machine ciphers.[1]

Method

The grill method is described by Marian Rejewski as being "manual and tedious"[1] and, like the later cryptologic bomb, as being "based... on the fact that the plug connections [in the Enigma's commutator, or "plugboard"] did not change all the letters." Unlike the bomb, however, "the grill method required unchanged pairs of letters [rather than] only unchanged letters."[2]

The grill method found application as late as December 1938 in working out the wiring in two Enigma rotors newly introduced by the Germans. (This was made possible by the fact that a Sicherheitsdienst net, while it had introduced the new drums IV and V, continued using the old system for enciphering the individual message keys.)[3]

Notes

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 Rejewski 1984e, p. 290
  2. ↑ Rejewski 1984c, p. 242
  3. ↑ Rejewski 1984d, p. 268

References

  • Kozaczuk, Władysław (1984), Enigma: How the German Machine Cipher was Broken, and how it was Read by the Allies in World War Two, edited and translated by Christopher Kasparek [a revised and augmented translation of W kręgu enigmy, Warsaw, Książka i Wiedza, 1979, supplemented with appendices by Marian Rejewski], Frederick, MD, University Publications of America, ISBN 0-89093-547-5 
  • Rejewski, Marian (1984c), Summary of Our Methods for Reconstructing ENIGMA and Reconstructing Daily Keys, and of German Efforts to Frustrate Those Methods: Appendix C  of Kozaczuk 1984, pp. 241–45
  • Rejewski, Marian (1984d), How the Polish Mathematicians Broke Enigma: Appendix D  of Kozaczuk 1984, pp. 246–71
  • Rejewski, Marian (1984e), The Mathematical Solution of the Enigma Cipher: Appendix E  of Kozaczuk 1984, pp. 272–291


This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike; additional terms may apply for the media files.