Application and Misapplication of the Czechoslovak STP Cipher During WWII (original) (raw)
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Diplomatic Ciphers Used by Slovak Attaché During the WW2
Linköping Electronic Conference Proceedings
Slovakia was an allied (puppet) state of Germany during WW2. In various Slovak and Czech archives, we found previously unknown details about diplomatic ciphers used by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs during WW2 in Slovakia. Here we present cipher systems used by Slovak Attaché and give insight into the encryption problems of the Ministry and embassies. 1 The Slovak State name was officially used between March 14 and July 21, 1939. In July 21, 1939 the Slovak State was declared as a republic and renamed to Slovak Republic. The Slovakia acronym was also in use. 2 Overview of the Slovak military ciphers used during the WW2 can be found in (Antal et al., 2019).
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Linköping Electronic Conference Proceedings
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The work of British and American codebreakers led by Alan Turing at Bletchley Park in breaking the Enigma cipher machine during World War II has been well-documented, and rightfully recognized as one of the most extraordinary achievements of the human intellect. However, without the success of Polish codebreakers led by Marian Rejewski in the 1930s on an earlier version of Enigma, the work by the British and Americans in the 1940s might have taken much longer, prolonging the war at the potential cost of untold additional lives. The mathematics integral to the Polish method for breaking Enigma involved some basic theory of permutations. The purpose of this paper is to present an overview of these ideas and how they served to this effect. To assist in demonstrating this, technology involving Maplets will be used.
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Germany’s codebreaking efforts during the First World War remain largely unrecorded. Previous analysis of the Bavarian Sixth Army’s efforts to decipher Royal Navy ciphers revealed the central role played by Ludwig Föppl, who subsequently became one of Germany’s leading academics. Drawing on Föppl’s unpublished memoirs, this article explores his experience in the war, including a detailed account of how he cracked two Allied ciphers and codes. The article also provides the first account of Föppl’s service in the Second World War. Föppl’s service is used to explore the German Army’s attitude to civilian experts and is contrasted with British practice.
Science Museum Group Journal, 2022
The Top Secret: From ciphers to cyber security exhibition at various Science Museum Group sites from 2019 to 2022 explored the remarkable, little-known world of codebreaking, ciphers and secret communications from the trenches of the First World War to cyber security today. At the heart of the exhibition was the personal and technological story of codebreaking at Bletchley Park, the British centre for codebreaking and cryptanalysis during the Second World War, as well an acknowledgement of the vital prewar contribution of the Polish Cipher Bureau. Zygalski sheets, developed by Polish codebreaker and mathematician Henryk Zygalski in 1938, were a manual grid-based cardboard system used by the Polish Cipher Bureau and Bletchley Park to aid the decryption of German Enigma machine cipher messages. Lacking original artefacts and visual historical representation thereof, the Top Secret curator Dr Elizabeth Bruton turned to external experts on the Polish cipher bureau and codebreaking in the Second World War, Dr Dermot Turing (writer) and Jeremy McCarthy (volunteer at The National Museum of Computing (TNMOC)). The ensuing email conversation explored how the design and use of the Zygalski sheets could be reconstructed from the existing and sometimes contradictory evidence and sources. This conversation offers a rare insight into the research process and expert peer review behind an exhibition object and label. Secondly, we offer a reflection on museum practice, exploring how the resulting reconstruction was interpreted and displayed within the Top Secret exhibition alongside authentic historic artefacts from the Science Museum Group's and GCHQ's historic collections.
Trying to Make the MAGIC Last: American Diplomatic Codebreaking in the Early Cold War
Diplomatic History, 2007
No reader of this journal needs to be reminded of the importance of communications intelligence (Comint) in the history of the Second World War. 1 No account of the war can now be deemed complete without reference to the work of Allied and (to a lesser extent) Axis codebreakers. Indeed, as communications intelligence has moved out of the shadows of history, scholars, who in the past remained blissfully unaware of (or uninterested in) the role of communications intelligence, now must resist the temptation to exaggerate its contributions and to consider the decryption files an evidentiary Aladdin's Cave from which the diligent researcher can expect to extract riches illuminating every aspect of the war. One does not have to be the president of the "Ultra Won the War" Club to acknowledge the centrality of codebreaking in the American intelligence effort during World War II. After Pearl Harbor, the Army and the Navy divided the communications intelligence effort, with the former focusing on foreign army and diplomatic communications and the latter concentrating on foreign naval radio traffic. The briefest glimpse at the U.S. Army's Comint program suggests the scale of the achievement. In the summer of 1939, as the world edged closer to the precipice of war, the roster of the Signal Intelligence Service (the unit in the Signal Corps responsible for intercepting and decrypting the diplomatic communications of foreign governments) numbered scarcely two dozen individuals who, from a suite of cramped rooms in the Munitions Building in downtown Washington, DC, labored with mixed results against the codes and ciphers of four governments: Germany, Italy, Japan, and Mexico. In the summer of 1945, as the world edged closer to the precipice of peace, the same organization, now renamed the Signal Security Agency (SSA), occupied the entire campus of Arlington Hall, a former school for girls in the Virginia suburbs of the capital, from which headquarters it directed the activities of more than ten 1. Broadly understood, communications intelligence includes any information derived from the interception and analysis of any form of human communication. Most commonly, the term is applied to efforts to intercept and analyze the diplomatic, military, and commercial communications of foreign governments. As governments routinely use codes and ciphers to protect their messages, cryptanalysis (the solution of codes and ciphers) is an integral part of communications intelligence.
Cryptographic Systems Used in the Romanian Countries between the 15th - 19th Centuries
Asian journal of social sciences and humanities, 2015
Situated in the southeast of Europe, Romanian Countries had an intense diplomatic activity, even if this was not recorded accordingly in documents of the day. This activity, as well as others made use of cryptography and cryptographic systems. Considering the scarcity of books devoted to this topic, the present paper is a survey regarding some of the encryption systems used in the Romanian Countries in the 15 th -19 th centuries, and will include a comparative approach between these and other encryption systems used in Europe at the same time.
In the Shadow of the KGB: Legacy of Czechoslovak Intelligence (1948-1989)
In the Shadow of the KGB: Legacy of Czechoslovak Intelligence (1948-1989), 2023
Although Czechoslovak foreign intelligence operated in dozens of countries throughout the world between 1948 and 1989, interfering significantly in their political development in some cases, it is still a neglected actor in the history of the secret services. The aim of this study is to clarify the nature of Czechoslovak foreign intelligence and to assess its activities and the types of intelligence work on which it focused. In addition to the organizational structure and its changing face during the various phases of the Cold War, this study also focuses on the most important intelligence operations run by Czechoslovak intelligence abroad, its links to the Soviet State Committee for Security, and its collaboration with other Eastern bloc intelligence services. The second part of this study focuses on the processes leading to the declassification of intelligence documents after the collapse of the communist regime in Czechoslovakia and outlines how to critically interpret and evaluate these surviving archive materials in Cold War history research.