Security News > 2020 > July > Cambridge student rebuilds Polish Enigma-code-breaking box that paved the way for Turing ... and Victory!

Cambridge student rebuilds Polish Enigma-code-breaking box that paved the way for Turing ... and Victory!
2020-07-15 08:01

A Cambridge post-graduate student has recreated the "Cyclometer", the decryption device devised by Polish mathematicians that informed Alan Turing's later code-breaking efforts.

Turing famously devised the "Bombe", a machine that was capable of decrypting messages encoded by Nazi Germany's fiendish Enigma machines.

Breaking the Enigma code produced intelligence credited with shortening the Second World War and saving innumerable lives.

While Turing has rightly been celebrated, Polish mathematician Marian Rejewski intuited the workings of Enigma and devised machines capable of decrypting Enigma-coded messages.

The team moved to Vichy, France, and later escaped to the UK where they worked at Boxmoor in Hemel Hempstead, and Turing again took up their work to produce his own devices at Bletchley Park.


News URL

https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/07/15/enigma_cracking_cyclometer_recreated/